The Forum
Accelerator

Everything you need on your B2B SaaS journey from zero to sustainable

Starting a company is really hard – we understand that firsthand. As former SaaS founders and operators, we know the importance of having capital, support, and an outside perspective on this journey.

When you join Forum Ventures®, you’ll have a fractional co-founder with differentiated world class expertise to help with product, GTM, and fundraising. You’ll feel supported and backed by a team and community at the most crucial of times. There are a lot of accelerator programs out there, but none go the extra mile like we do.

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Personalized, hands-on support, wherever you are in the early founder journey

Every company has different needs. We personalize our program, mentors, and expertise where you need it most to get you to where you need to be.

Download our Program package

Idea

MVP

In Market

Traction

Fundraising

Growing

$100k

in Pre Seed Funding (USD)

~$1B

in follow-on funding

750+

Co-Investors

A Dedicated Fundraising Track

Fundraising is a huge part of enabling company growth, but it’s often unchartered territory for founders. Our fundraising track is designed to get you to your next round of funding feeling ready and confident. Founders who raise with Forum Ventures do better than those who go it alone, because we guide you closely through the process from start to finish – bringing an investor mindset to every step.

A Strong Fundraising Narrative

A Professional Investor Deck

Advice & Best Practices from Our Community

Pitch Practice with Investors

Introductions to Qualified Funds

Two Weeks of Investor Meetings

Download our Fundraising Info Package

Your Fractional Cofounders

Your dedicated Managing Director will become an extension of your team, work with you day in day out, act as a sounding board, and ensure you’re always moving forward.

Jonah Midanik,
COO and Managing Partner

Specialties: Storytelling, Narrative, Fundraising
‍

An engineer by trade, Jonah has spent the last twenty years at the intersection of marketing and technology as a serial entrepreneur in Canada. Jonah has been lucky enough to have several different lenses on the founder journey from bootstrapping, to launching new corporate divisions, and raising 8 figures of venture capital. Jonah works hand in hand with founders preparing to fundraise, coaching them on their pitch, narrative, deck, and investor meetings.

Derek Bugley,
Managing Director

Specialties: GTM, Enterprise Sales
‍

Derek Bugley is our most recent Managing Director to join Forum Ventures. He's a 3x B2B SaaS founder, having raised over $30 million in venture financing from the AI Fund, Sequoia, Techstars, and others. He specializes in early go-to-market strategies in highly technical markets and products. His last two startups focused on building AI tools for assessing the skillsets of organizations' talent. Having successfully sold to buying centers at Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, Pinterest, Lyft, and Delta, he is well-versed in both bottoms-up (PLG) and direct-to-enterprise approaches.

Bocar Dia,
Partner

Specialties: GTM, Early Stage Sales, Customer Acquisition
‍

Bocar works 1:1 with portfolio founders through the early stages of building, including go-to-market, founder-led sales, and fundraising. As part of the founding team of the Enterprise product at Hootsuite, Bocar helped the business grow to well over $150M+ and 2,000+ employees in under seven years. Bocar continues to co-found, advise, coach and angel invest in SaaS startups from pre-seed to Series A. Bocar is passionate about helping build and scale hyper growth SaaS companies.

Neal Sarraf,
Managing Director

Specialties: Fundraising, Revenue, Product Management, and Operations
‍

Neal works alongside portfolio founders and supports their 0 to $1M ARR journey. Neal experienced this journey first-hand as the Co-Founder of First Resonance, a manufacturing SaaS business focused on unlocking the potential of the physical world. There, he raised $20M+ in venture funding, grew the team to 40+ employees, and had customers building complex hardware products like rockets and autonomous vehicles. Neal is an engineer by trade and he is passionate about the intersection of software, data, and hardware.

Customer Perks

Get access to over $100k worth of corporate perks, like Hubspot, Carta, Early Growth, and more, exclusive to founders in our community.

Customer Intros

Meet key customers from our network of 300+ F500 and F1000 companies to help drive early product feedback and revenue.

A Community of Alumni and SaaS Mentors

Get matched with best-in-class operators, industry-leading executives, and seasoned founders for 1:1 mentorship.

Peter Zotto

General Manager at Profitwell

Kyle Wiggins

Co-Founder & CEO at Assembly

Pooji Ennamuri

GTM Strategy + Ops @ Couchbase

Alex Kolodkin

Founder & CEO at Set Scouter

Rachel Renock

CEO & Co-Founder, Wethos

Taylor Black

Principal Program Manager at Microsoft

Meghan Pfeifer

Senior Brand Strategist & Product Marketer @ Innovatemap

Matthew Lombardi

Managing Director at OneEleven

"Forum was a very valuable experience for us."

“Forum was a very valuable experience for us. They provided us with key customer introductions to companies in our target market that led to over $200K of revenue. Two months after demo day, we had grown revenue to $850K ARR and were able to close our seed round.”

Sean Thorne
CEO & Co-Founder, People Data Labs

People Data Labs enables companies to build innovative, trusted people data driven products at scale. Sean and his team joined our San Francisco program in August 2015 and we were the first check into the company. They have since gone on to raise close to $10M across a seed and Series A from funds like Susa Ventures, 8VC and Founders Fund.

Program FAQs

For more FAQs about the program and pitch process

Download our info package

How much do you invest in each company & what are your terms?

We provide $100k USD in pre seed funding to each company joining our program. We’re usually the first check in, and we write checks quickly (day 1 of the program), which founders truly appreciate. Our terms are $100k USD for 7.5% equity on a standard, post money SAFE.

What type of companies do you fund?

We fund B2B SaaS companies in any vertical in the early-stage (pre-seed) of your journey who have taken on less than $500k in funding, and have or are about to have an MVP in market.

What type of founders would be a good fit for Forum's program?

We love working with founders who are passionate about what they’re building, have strong founder-market fit, and are looking for a fractional co-founder to guide them and push them to the next stage. We work best with founders who are both driven and coachable.

What is your stance on Diversity & Inclusion?

We believe we have a platform and the responsibility to make an outsized impact on the tech industry. We’re committed to building a diverse team, cohort, and community. We’re actively working on this by increasing diversity in our mentors, building educational modules to help our founders build out their own diverse and inclusive teams, and more.

How does the pitch process work?

When you’re ready to apply, go ahead and fill out our pitch us form. We’ll then get back to you within 1-2 weeks on whether or not it makes sense to have a call with our team.

Do I need to be in one of your locations?

While we have office space available in our three locations – Toronto, New York City, and San Francisco – we are happy to work with founders remotely, wherever they may reside. We also love to connect in person, so we encourage office visits when you can! We also host regular events for our founder community in each of our locations, and we'd love you to join us from time to time.

What does Forum provide, re: corporate discounts etc.?

We provide hundreds of business perks to our founders to help you scale your company in an affordable way. For example, 90% off your first year of Hubspot, or a free subscription to Carta for founders until they raise over $1M. It accumulates to over $100k of savings for each company and if we don't have the perk you're looking for, you can request it, and we'll try to get it for you!!

Meet our Portfolio Founders

They’re unique, ambitious, and resilient. Unwaveringly dedicated to their vision and obsessed with their business. Plus super authentic. Come get to know them.

Felix Orwa

Felix Orwa is the Co-founder of Sote, the operating system for trade in Africa. Sote went on to raise a $3.6M Seed round. Felix is incredibly driven and ambitious; and has a big vision for the impact Sote can have on Africa.

Kate DeWald

Oncue is a software and booking service for moving companies to make it easier for them to run their business from anywhere. Oncue joined our San Francisco program in Jan 2019 and we were the first check into the company. They have since gone on to raise $12M+ in funding across a seed and Series A round from funds like Bowery Capital, Crosslink Capital and Rethink Impact.

Sam Udotong

Sam Udotong is the Co-founder & CTO of Fireflies.ai, an AI assistant for meetings that records and transcribes voice meetings. Sam manages a team that operates out of 5 continents and raised $5 million in seed funding.

Get to know them all