Forum Ventures, the early-stage B2B venture studio, accelerator, and pre-seed fund, today released performance data from its most recent accelerator cohort, offering a detailed look at revenue outcomes, founder backgrounds, and team composition. The data challenges long-held industry assumptions about what makes a successful early-stage founder.
Across Forum's most recent accelerator cohort, three findings stand out: 64.1% of founders reached early revenue during the program, 58.3% are first-time founders, and 25.6% are solo-founder led. These data points are independent findings from the same cohort, each reflecting a different dimension of who is in the program and what they achieved.
The narrative around early-stage funding has long assumed that the safest bets are repeat founders, co-founding teams, and companies with demonstrated traction before the program begins. Forum's 2026 cohort data offers a different perspective on each of these assumptions. Solo founders, who make up 25.6% of the cohort, can deliver. Many accelerators and early-stage funds favor co-founding teams during evaluation, but Forum's approach of pairing each company with a dedicated Managing Director who works one-on-one weekly provides the operational support and accountability that a co-founder would typically offer.
First-time founders are not a risk factor, according to the data. Despite prior startup experience often being favored by investors, 58.3% of the cohort had never founded a company before. Yet the cohort's revenue and follow-on outcomes are consistent with Forum's three-year averages: a 65% fund-through rate and an 80+ NPS score across the portfolio. First-time founders who receive structured, hands-on support—including 15 hours minimum of one-on-one Managing Director time and 40+ investor introductions per showcase—perform.
Revenue during the program is the real traction benchmark. The Forum model, focused on go-to-market, customer traction, and fundraise readiness from week one, is designed to produce this outcome regardless of what traction a founder had when they joined. Michael Cardamone, CEO & Managing Partner of Forum Ventures, stated, Most accelerators are subconsciously filtering out the founders who need them most. Solo founders, first-timers, founders without a product yet—those are exactly the people we built Forum for. The data shows they can deliver.
Forum's accelerator is a 16-week program investing $100K for 7.5% equity via post-money SAFE. Each company receives a dedicated Managing Director who works with them one-on-one weekly, focusing on go-to-market, customer traction, and fundraise readiness. The program is best suited for founders who have raised less than $500K and are pre- or post-MVP. Forum Ventures has backed 550+ portfolio companies since 2014, with $1B+ in follow-on funding raised across the portfolio. More information is available at forumvc.com.
