Thinking of going back to school? Seraphim Space is taking applications.
The space-focused venture capital firm today announced the launch of the Seraphim Academy, a new program for early-stage space startups offering courses in fundraising, scaling, and operations. The program comes with up to a year of support, and $150,000 of investment for each company that takes part.
The syllabus: The Seraphim Academy is designed to succeed Seraphim’s startup accelerator, which ran between 2018 and 2025.
- The academy will offer similar support to the accelerator—mentorship, help tightening pitches for other investors, business development support etc.
- Unlike the accelerator, the academy will offer fresh funds to get off the ground, and access to its partnership with Space Florida, which started after the accelerator selected its last cohort.
- The academy also does away with the cohort model. It runs admissions on a rolling basis, and expects to take on up to 15 companies annually over the next decade.
For Seraphim, the academy will operate as the new front door to the venture capital firm, which has taken dozens of companies through early-stage financing to growth-stage investments.
“You’ve got more companies and more investors looking [at the space industry],” Seraphim Managing Director Alexander Holt told Payload. “That means your proposition to start off needs to be more compelling, and so one of the bits that was missing from our accelerator proposition was the cash.”
But the cash is just the starting point. Seraphim envisions its academy as laying the groundwork for companies to scale far beyond six figures. The program includes mentorship for early-stage companies to tighten their pitches, and continued support as these companies craft their business models. Academy participants also gain access to Seraphim’s network of investors, corporate partners, and international organizations to streamline early stage growth.
Graduation day: Seraphim’s new academy aims to usher in a new wave of space startups to compound the VC firm’s meteoric growth to date. Over the past decade, Seraphim has invested in 150+ companies, including 11 unicorns and six IPOs.
For the next wave, Seraphim is looking for more of the same.
“In many ways, our criteria of company selection hasn’t changed,” Holt said. “Is there a billion-dollar market?…Do we think the team is one that’s got experience? Do they have what it takes to take the company through the stages of scaling and growth that would match what our portfolio is doing? And then thirdly, is the tech good?”
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