EIR
EIR is IW’s Entrepreneur-In-Residence program (6 months), aiming at providing experienced and exceptionally talented individual professionals with an opportunity and all the necessary resources, including potentially funding from IWDF, to either start their own company or join one of the existing IW and IWDF portfolio companies in a leadership role.
Who is it for?
EIR has been designed for experienced professionals, with clear leadership skills and an impressive industry background, relevant to IW’s focus areas. We expect the EIR to be passionate for and fully committed to entrepreneurship in China, but without necessarily having a crystallized business and product or service idea, nor a team of co-founders. EIR is a program for individuals that require some time, the right resources and an excellent network in order to plan or choose their start-up project and team.
What can you expect?
You can expect what will probably be six of the most important, foundational months in your entrepreneurial career.
Incubation Services
- You will be based at IW’s incubator in Beijing’s Zhongguancun area, China’s prime technology start-up ecosystem.
- IW will provide you with access to its current projects, incubation resources and extensive network.
- In the first three months you will be spending part of your time with IW’s current projects where your experience is a good fit, and part of your time preparing for your own project, including working on idea generation, market research, competition analysis, search for co-founders, etc.
- In the latter three months you will naturally focus on either preparing your own business plan and forming your initial product team or working more and more with one of the current IW projects.
- You will also have a unique chance to participate in a wide range of mentoring sessions conducted by distinguished guests and local or international experts in their field, in a wide range of technology / product and business-related topics.
Funding
- On top of the resources, we will also be covering part of your expenses relevant to the EIR program.
- Should you decide to incubate your start-up at IW, you will be immediately eligible for typical angel round investment.
IW Community
- Following “graduation” from the program, you will also be part of the exclusive IW start-up community and continue to benefit from IW’s network and all the supporting activities that we have in store for you.
You can expect to experience all this in what is a unique start-up environment, where you will also benefit enormously from the day-to-day interaction with the other start-up teams, your fellow entrepreneurs and project team peers.
At the end of the program, we expect that you will either start your own project at IW (it will be eligible for the Acceleration) or join one of the existing IW and IWDF portfolio companies in a leadership role.
How do you apply?
At the moment, application to the EIR program is by invitation only. IW is currently sourcing the participant EIRs from within its own network around China and internationally. For any enquiries or further information on the EIR program, please email us at chuangyejia@chuangxin.com