Are you ready to change your life forever?

Are you ready to quit & change your destiny?

Here at LAUNCH our mission is “to support founders & inspire innovation,” and today we’re thrilled to announce our “In Residence” program — a chance for you to change your destiny in this life!

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This Thursday we are starting the LAUNCH Incubator, as you may have read. We have seven (perhaps eight if they sign their contract today!) of the most promising startups I’ve ever seen in eight years of hosting the Launch Festival and across 80 investments (Uber and Thumbtack.com are in those 80, so that’s saying something).

Each of these startups represent another 30+ qualified applicants we didn’t take (so, they are the top 3% of the class).

We will be accepting a “Designer in Residence” and a “Developer in Residence” — DIRs for short — for the Incubator starting next Thursday.

The goal for the DIRs will be one of the following:

a) join one of the seven startups as a founder
b) start their own startup during the Incubator (which we will fund with $25,000)
c) learn a ton & get automatically accepted into the spring LAUNCH Incubator class

Here are some other particulars:

1. You don’t have to quit your job right now, you simply need to be able to get to the Thursday night incubator classes by 5PM.
2. The worst-case scenario is that you sit in on 12 of the most informative three-hour classes taking place in the Valley — for free!
3. You need to be world class, not up-and-coming. If you think you’ll be great only after coming out of this experience you’re not the right person. You need to be an elite developer or designer coming into the program — that’s why we’re giving you the slot!
4. Designers: we need to see exceptional work.
5. Developers: we need to see exceptional code.
6. Your participation will be kept 100% confidential — or I will tweet to 200k+ folks that you got the slot. Your choice!
7. You’ll give feedback to each team, each week. So, only free if you feel like helping out. The concept is for you to get a feel for the other teams and decide if you want to jump on their rocket ships.

If you think you have what it takes: apply!

Designer In Residence, LAUNCH Incubator 2015 Winter Session:https://launch.submittable.com/submit/37334

Developer In Residence, LAUNCH Incubator 2015 Winter Session:https://launch.submittable.com/submit/37250

In other LAUNCH Festival news:

Amazing speakers:
Jeff Weiner, LinkedIn
Joanne Wilson, Gotham Gal Ventures
Halle Tecco, Rock Health
Yancey Strickler, Kickstarter
Angela Benton, NewME Accelerator
Chris Sacca, Lowercase Capital
Gigi Brisson, Attractor Ventures
Gary Vaynerchuk, VaynerMedia
Cyan Banister, Banister Capital

Amazing partners:
Connect.com (http://connect.com); IceHouse (http://www.icehousecorp.com); Sequoia Capital (https://www.sequoiacap.com); InvisionApp (http://www.invisionapp.com); Javelin Venture Partners (http://www.javelinventurepartners.com); Macys (http://www.macys.com); Expedia (http://www.expedia.com); Nordstrom (www.nordstrom.com); .Me (http://domain.me); .CO (http://www.go.co); DFJ (http://dfj.com); Get Invited (https://getinvited.to); Modulus (https://modulus.io/); Message Bus (https://messagebus.com); Sinch (https://www.sinch.com); Firebase (https://www.firebase.com); FullContact (https://www.fullcontact.com)

Apply to LAUNCH on stage: https://launch.submittable.com/submit/36488

A complimentary ticket just for you & your best friend, register here:
http://goo.gl/M1Ev6x

all the best, @jason & the amazing LAUNCH Team

PS — I had Jimmy Chamberlin of Smashing Pumpkins fame on This Week in Startups: it’s one of my personal top five interviews of all time:http://goo.gl/Igs0n5. Thanks to our partners FreshBooks and Citrix Sharefile for sponsoring this episode.

PPS — We are looking for a contract- or full-time writer to do startup profiles for our new product “The LAUNCH Ticker Pro.” The LAUNCH Ticker Pro (LTP) is $1,000/year and publishes 150 in-depth profiles of emerging startups my team is considering for the Festival, investment, or the podcast. We are thinking this elite product will only have 100 subscribers and we’ve already signed up five of them in the first week. Apply at http://goo.gl/hzZVry & to signup for LTP visit:http://launchticker.com/plans

PPPS — The LAUNCH Festival costs us $1.4m to put on and we make $0.000 running it. We do it to help founders. As such, we rely on sponsors to help us break even. Everyone who buys a $14,000 sponsorship gets us 1% of the way there, and they help subsidize the 9,500 people who come to the event on scholarship (for free!). PLEASE BE A HERO AND HELP US! Email me personally jason@launch.co and let’s do it!