Startup Wise Guys (SWG) is one of Europe’s most active B2B accelerators. Through Founders Club, experienced builders form teams, validate market pain, and ship the first scalable product version in a 12-week online execution program.
If you’ve spent your career making systems reliable, scalable, secure—for someone else, this is your chance to build your own platform venture.
This is a co-founder opportunity. The goal is to help you become (or join) a founding team and launch a venture.
Tasks
- Validate platform/infrastructure pain with real buyers (Dev, IT, Sec, Ops)
- Define MVP with clear ROI (cost reduction, uptime, compliance, speed)
- Build the product foundation: infra, observability, deployment, security baseline
- Make smart build-vs-buy decisions to ship quickly
- Prepare a credible scaling story (architecture, reliability, unit economics)
Requirements
- 7+ years in backend/platform engineering, DevOps/SRE, or cloud architecture
- Strong grasp of reliability & scale (observability, CI/CD, infra-as-code, cloud)
- Ability to prototype quickly (not just design)
- Founder-level ownership mentality (you want to build a company)
- ~10–12h/week for 12 weeks
Benefits
- Ship in 12 weeks: validated problem + MVP + iteration loop
- Execution rhythm & accountability (~10–12h/week, deliverables)
- Access to 500+ mentors (B2B, pricing, GTM, fundraising)
- 440+ alumni startups / 40+ countries (benchmarks, intros, learnings)
- Founder-grade CTO toolkit: scoping, architecture narrative, investor readiness
Note: Participation includes a participation ticket to ensure commitment and quality.
Apply if you want to stop being “the platform person behind the scenes” and build your own venture.