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This blog is for people applying to SouthParkCommons and it aims to help with 2 things - apply well, learn more about the experience from our journey
tl:dr; - Just go apply to SPC, they’re absolute amazing partners in your early stage journey.
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Mindset of applying: Don’t treat this as a “interview you have to crack” or “people you need to impress”.
Always think from a place of “wanting to solve a problem and build a big business” and how would you answer each question, if all you cared about was just that.
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SPC gives a shot to builders people who’ve shown they can execute. They have a standard funding deal - you can study about it here -
Process is simple - submit the form, you’ll have anywhere from 2-4 followup interviews of 30mins each. Takes about 3-4 weeks total to get to conclusion.
Advice for applying, not just to SPC, any accelerator:
Keep your answers direct and concise. Speak from customer insights and genuine care about the problem. If you don’t know something, admit it and give an estimation
Here’s our app for YC that we also used for SPC - link
Outside of this, we had an investment 1 pager that we had ready since we were anyways raising from angels - it was pretty straightforward as well - link
If it’s any consolation, we applied on a whim 15 mins before deadline but were simple and clear about what we wanted to solve for any why.
Particularly for SPC, they care about three questions as answers:
First one way: it's basically what are you building? In the simplest way, tell about the problem that you are solving. Like simplest way, what does it look like? Like what does the world look like a bit differently with you?
Second question is why should you exist? Here is when you talk about what are you doing so differently that you deserve to exist in the industry.
Third is what are interesting avenues that open up for you? Say for example you are solving this problem right now. What are interesting future avenues that your company can become?
For Riverline, it's simple. We provide AI agents that automate debt collection end-to-end. Today, it is done by human teams but banks struggle to give more loans because these human teams are not scalable.
Why do we exist? It's because we take a very different approach where we have AI agents that patiently and persistently follow up with these defaulters and are able to collect money back. This is very different from the current incentive-driven high-pressure situation in which a human agent has to just place calls for 8 hours a day and convince people to pay up.
What are interesting possibilities that we can become? Once we collect the collection data of so many customers across so many portfolios, we can either become like the largest collection agency or ARC. We can figure out something about these customers in terms of how they interact and how risky are they to become our own digital lender or bank. Or third we become an AI agents infra play for the industry.
Advice if you get an interview call:
Be genuine, be curious and open to feedback. SPC usually cares about founder journeys, learnings, cofounder history, product demos, early signs of customer success, next growth plans, what are risks in your business, how competitors are doing. It won’t be too technical of questions, unless your product is pure research.