What

Minimum 3 month, full commitment Winter 2026 founder residency

• Hyper selective: 10 startups only (< 1% acceptance, can be teams or solo founders)
• Hyper intense: Min 6 days / week in office for 3+ months, surrounded by amazing peers
• Fully in person: Miami relocation required for all co-founders, costs offset with investment

Why

Join a tight-knit community of relentless builders who raise each other's bar daily:

• Peers: Become part of a highly curated and elite cohort of exceptional builders
• Focus: Distraction-free, high output environment to do your best work
• Free office space: Residency hosted in partnership with The LAB Miami
• Funding: Investment from focal + access to our 200+ investor network (more below)
• Perks: > $1M in vendor perks (OpenAI, Anthropic, Stripe, Vercel, Vanta, Github, AWS, etc.)
• Mentorship: Close mentorship from focal + Miami based unicorn founders, incl. founders of Digital Ocean ($4B NYSE), Mural ($2B), Papa ($1.2B), vLex (sold for $1B), Quicknode ($1B), and many more that call this incredible place home
• Personal runway: With 0% state income tax and > 25% lower cost of living vs SF / NYC, your runway lasts significantly longer.

Who

There's no "too early" - apply with nothing more than the will to start a venture scale company, a list of ideas / scrappy demo, and:

• Strong technical chops on the founding team
• Ability to build exceptional products at breakneck speed
• Not raised yet and live within the world of AI + Software / are North America based

Programming

You’re here to talk to customers and build - programming is kept light but impactful:

• Weekly dinners with seasoned founders / investors (including $B founder mentors)
• Weekly office hours with focal, typically on Sundays
• The rest of the time is yours to build and learn alongside each other

Terms

Get all the benefits of a top accelerator without suffering the heavy dilution.

This is NOT an accelerator taking 7+% for a small check!

You can participate in the residency without giving up equity or focal can provide small upfront funding to offset the costs of the move - your choice.

Then, when you're ready for your first round, we can lead it with up to $1M at market terms.

Funding from focal:

1. Upfront: (Optional) $25K for solo founders / $50K for for teams on uncapped SAFE with MFN to offset cost of relocation to Miami
2. During residency: Potential pre-seed (up to $1M at market terms) via same process as our non-residency investments + potential additional funding from 200+ VCs / angels
3. After residency: Support raising additional funding from 200+ VC firms / angels / mentors (check out our open sourced VC database on findfunding.vc)

This funding structure best sets you up for success!

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Logistics

• Application deadline: Dec 14, 2025, acceptance on a rolling basis (apply asap)
• Acceptance confirmation: Rolling, by Dec 19, 2025 latest
• Start date: Flexible between Jan 18, 2026 - Feb 27, 2026
• Duration: Minimum 3 months, can be extended to up to 6 months (optional)
• Housing: We will help you get set up / find housing / get discounts / etc - month-to-month, furnished rentals available within walking distance from The LAB Miami. Same goes for gyms, restaurants, laundry service, etc.