Typically, entrepreneur in residence or EIR is a temporary position at venture capital firms. Additionally, EIRs can be found e.g. in corporations, private equity firms, nonprofits, or universities.

An entrepreneur in residence is someone that works at the company providing expertise, whether it is investment advice or counseling for a new startup that the company has invested in. Entrepreneurs in residence can have different duties and scope of work but one thing is common for all of them: the transitional nature. The role can be transitional for the EIRs themself as they are often moving on from a previous venture to a new startup project and serve as EIRs in the meanwhile. Furthermore, EIR is a tool for the transition of knowledge from one entrepreneur to another one.

The journey that an entrepreneur embarks on when building a startup is unique and in many ways unfathomable for those that have not been on it. It is also often lonely and any support whatsoever is extremely valuable. People who work at VCs, universities, or as business coaches might be brilliant sources of advice but often lack first-hand experience about how tough it is to be a founder.

Founder-to-founder mentality, knowledge sharing, and peer-to-peer learning are at the heart of the Kiuas Accelerator program. We are keen to make sure that the learnings of a previous generation of founders transition to the newcomers. Hence, as a part of our fall 2022 Accelerator program, we have launched entrepreneur in residence - the Kiuas way.

Since we offer customized support for our founders, Kiuas EIRs are not traditional. Instead, our EIRs are founders that have experience in running a startup and have gone through a Kiuas program in recent years. Our EIR concept is simple: we host a bi-weekly mentoring session with selected founders from our alumni community that are hand-picked for our current batch of teams. The goal is to gain insights, networks, and receive help in building your startup towards success.

Best of all, this way we already have a bunch of future EIRs in the making!