You back other people’s businesses. Can you say how they’re all doing?
Applications on a form. The cohort in a spreadsheet. Demo day on a ticketing site. Dues in a bank statement. And the number your board asks for, rebuilt by hand every quarter by whoever has the time. It isn't that your programme is disorganised — it's that nothing you use knows about anything else you use.
- Applications you can actually track
- Cohorts and programmes
- A list of everyone you've backed
- Demo days that don't evaporate
- Syndicates, commitments and the lead's carry
- Dues and fees in one place
If you run a cohort, a network or a membership
Different words for it, the same four problems: getting people in, knowing where they are, filling the room, and the money.
Accelerators and incubators
You open applications, pick a cohort, run a programme, and report back to whoever funds you — across four different tools that know nothing about each other.
Angel groups and syndicates
You circulate a deal, collect soft commitments, close the round and keep track of carry — and right now that lives in a WhatsApp group and a spreadsheet you'd rather nobody saw.
Startup missions and campus programmes
You're answerable for a number — founders supported, jobs created, money raised — and you rebuild it by hand every reporting cycle from sources nobody fully trusts.
Chambers, associations and corporate programmes
You have members, dues, events and a directory. Three of those are somebody's spreadsheet and the fourth is a page on your website nobody has updated since last year.
What actually changes
On the left, how running a programme goes now. On the right, how it goes instead. Everything on the right works today — what doesn't, we've listed separately below.
How it goes now
Applications come in through a form, shortlisting happens in a spreadsheet, and by week three nobody on your team agrees on which founder is at what stage or who was meant to call them back.
How it goes instead
One list everyone trusts, showing exactly where each application is and whose job it is to move it.
How it goes now
Your list of everyone you've backed was accurate three months ago. When your board asks what happened to last year's cohort, you lose a week rebuilding the answer out of old email.
How it goes instead
The answer is already there, because it's the same list your team works in every day.
How it goes now
Demo day runs on a separate ticketing site. The investors who turned up exist only as a spreadsheet of names, so every introduction you created disappears the moment the room empties.
How it goes instead
Everyone who came is on your list the next morning, with someone's name against them.
How it goes now
A round comes together across a chat group — who's in, for how much, on what terms. Then the person who ran it moves on, and the only record of it goes with them.
How it goes instead
Who committed what, and the lead's carry, written down where it outlives whoever ran the round. The terms themselves still live in your paperwork — we don't hold those yet.
How it goes now
Membership dues, programme fees and sponsorship money arrive in four different places and get reconciled by one exhausted person who is also the only one who knows which sponsor has actually paid.
How it goes instead
Who has committed what, and who still owes it — in one place your treasurer isn't the only person who can read.
How it goes now
Every founder you back needs the same basic setup, so you either tell them to work it out themselves or you quietly become their IT department.
How it goes instead
You hand each of them a working setup on day one, and they keep it when they graduate.
Three things we'd rather you heard from us
Everyone in this category claims to do everything. Here is where we don't, so you can decide with the real picture instead of finding out in week one.
Ask us about any of it- There's no social side yet. Members can't message each other, there's no feed, and we don't suggest introductions. What's here runs your programme; it doesn't yet run your community's conversations.
- We haven't priced this. You can't sign up and pay for it today, and we'd rather tell you that than put a made-up number on a page.
- No outside organisation is running on it yet. We run our own venture studio on it, which tells you the thing works — not that it fits how you work.
Run one real cohort on it, with us
Two or three programmes, not two hundred. The point is depth: your actual intake, your actual demo day, your actual reporting.
Set up around how you already work
Your stages, your cohort shape, the fields you report on — set up with you rather than you bending to fit us. What you need that isn’t there yet gets built, because at this point you decide what gets built next.
One real cohort, and the truth about it
Not a trial in a corner — one programme actually run on it, and honest answers about what your team worked around. “We went back to the spreadsheet for this bit” is the single most useful sentence you can give us.
Questions, answered
Is any of this real, or is it a pitch?
Real and running today: applications with a proper view of where each one is, cohorts, the list of everyone you've backed, syndicates with who committed what and the lead's carry, a public board of opportunities across the network, a starter setup for each new founder, courses you can build and schedule with a register of who's enrolled, events with invitations and check-in at the door, and one list of everyone who's asked about you. Signing someone up to a course we still do for you — there's no enrolment button yet. Cap tables and a per-venture set of books are built underneath but have no screen yet, so nobody can open them. Roles decide what each person can change. Reading is more open than that today: your portfolio, its applications, cohorts and syndicates can be opened by anyone on your team, so treat a teammate's login as access to the list. What isn't built is listed further down this page.
Why should we believe Ojas knows this world?
Because Ojas is a venture studio, and this is the software we run ourselves. Ojas Events, Ojas Legal and Ojas Loans are our own businesses, run on exactly this. That's the strongest honest thing we can say — it proves the machinery works. It doesn't prove it fits your programme, and finding that out is the point of talking.
Do the founders we back get their own space, or do they live inside ours?
Both, on purpose. Each one gets their own private space with their own selling, events and enquiries. You see across all of them — and on your own team, reading the portfolio is open rather than role-gated. And when someone graduates, they keep their space — you're not holding their business hostage.
What happens to the records we already have?
They come across. Your past cohorts, the people you've backed and your application history can be brought in, and we do that with you rather than handing you an import screen. If you'd rather not move everything, run one intake on it and leave the archive where it is.
How long before we could run an intake on it?
Weeks, not months — and the time goes on decisions rather than setup: what your stages really are, who is allowed to reject an application, what your funder actually wants counted. Those conversations are the work. The configuring is the easy part.
What if we start and it doesn't fit?
You take your data and go — and today that means we run the extract for you, the same way we bring your records in. There's no self-serve export button for applications, cohorts or the people you've backed yet. Given nobody outside Ojas is running on this yet, you should assume that possibility is real — we do, which is why we're saying it here rather than in a contract.
What does it cost?
We haven't priced it, and we're not going to guess in public. What we want first is two or three programmes willing to run a real cohort on it and tell us where it falls over. A price that comes out of that will be a real one.
We're a chamber or an association, not an accelerator. Does this still apply?
Mostly yes. Members, dues, events, a directory and a committee are the same shapes as a cohort, fees, demo days, a portfolio and roles — the words differ, the work doesn't. Tell us which parts don't map to how you run things; that's a genuinely useful conversation for both of us.
Tell us how your intake actually works.
Even if this turns out not to fit, you'll get a clear read on what we've built and we'll get a clear read on what programmes like yours really need. That trade is worth an hour.
Tell us how your programme runsSee the opportunities board