We’re passionate about helping you grow and make an impact.
Meet Adrien
Adrien Harrison is the Founder & CEO of Echo Studio, a serial entrepreneur, startup advisor, and director of a global pre-accelerator. He specializes in developing and launching successful product activations and venture-backed tech startups in exciting fields like EdTech, HealthTech, Web 3, and Artificial Intelligence (AI).
One of my proudest accomplishments as the founder of Echo Studio, a Director of Programs at FoundersBoost, an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at StartEd, and a speaker for Y Combinator Startup School, the NYU Entrepreneurial Institue, and Hubspot Ventures is building a community of over 5,000 founders and helping 1000+ startups achieve Acceleration, Investment, and Revenue (AIR).
I personally run 4 businesses, and I’ve launched 50+ products, startups, and programs for my clients. Including Echo Studio, Smart Course, Better Societies, and co-founding KAJ Collective, raising over $300k in funding, and serving large corporate clients like:
Clients have said my skills in business development, digital marketing, and agile project management, along with my extensive network and experience advising and mentoring make me an ideal consultant to work with and I'd love the opportunity to get to know you and your business.
We can help.
Accelerate Your Startup Growth
Whether you’re at the pre-seed or seed stage, we can help you with everything you need from customer development, pitch and presentation skills, market sizing, and building products that matter, to the fundraising process, venture funding, and accelerators.
Launch Your Product Activation
Big companies can struggle with sustainably innovating in a bureaucracy. We can help you launch a product to market quickly and effectively so you’re staying relevant and innovating, while not wasting any time or money.
Expand Your Potential
We want to help you meet your maximum potential, whether it’s helping you launch, optimize your sales funnel, expand your business offerings, or getting you into the world-leading VCs and accelerators like: Y Combinator, 500 Startups, Techstars, Sequoia Capital, a16z, Kleiner Perkins, Plug And Play, or Mass Challenge.
What Happens at ES
Introduction
People often ask us what happens at Echo Studio. ES works intensively with companies for 1 to 6 months helping them get acceleration, investment, or revenue (AIR). Here is an overview of what happens during the ES program and the benefits you get as an ES founder.
The Goal
The overall goal of ES is to help companies get acceleration, investment, or revenue (AIR) while making a social impact. They arrive at ES at all different stages. Some haven’t even started working yet, others have been launched for a year or more, and some are large established companies looking to leverage disruptive technologies to innovate. But whatever stage a company is at when they arrive, our goal is to help them to be in dramatically better shape 1 to 6 months later.
For most companies, better shape translates into three things: to have a better product with more users, to accelerate their growth or product launch, or to have more options for raising money.
Companies at all stages benefit from the practicality of ES. That’s probably the best word to describe the atmosphere. For 1 to 6 months, we’re solving problems, all the time. Everyone around you—us, the other founders in our network, the alumni, the speakers, the investors—wants to help your company succeed. In that atmosphere, it’s hard not to be highly motivated. And that kind of extraordinary motivation is what one needs to do something as difficult as running a company.
Many founders describe the 1 to 6 months leading up to launch as the most productive period in their lives. Though ES continues after the intensive work cycle, and the alumni community is an increasingly valuable resource, those months are still the most important thing.
You can’t make people something they’re not, but the right conditions can bring out the best in them. And since most people have way more potential than they realize, they’re often surprised by what they’re capable of.
Office Hours
Much of what takes place at ES happens during office hours. Companies can have office hours with our team as often as founders want (with a max of 5 hours per week). What companies talk about at office hours depends on the stage of the company and where they are in the ES cycle.
Masterclasses
Whenever it would be valuable we invite an eminent person from the startup world to speak. Most speakers are successful startup founders, venture capitalists, or domain experts. Talks encourage candor and action because the inside story of most startups is more colorful than the one presented later to the public, and action because we want them to be valuable, not just more information.
Public Launches
Once a startup has something built that’s ready to launch, we help founders figure out how to present it to users and the press. We prepare founders for launches on community sites like Product Hunt and Hacker News, and for their first press pitches and interviews.
First Customers
B2B and consumer companies often get their first 10-20 paying customers from the ES community. With that, you not only get first customers, you get the smartest early product feedback possible.
Demo Day
On Demo Day, Echo Studio founders have the optional opportunity to present their companies to our team and an optional audience of whoever they’d like. We doubt there’s a better opportunity for founders to practice their pitching, and share their progress with us, accelerators, investors, and the press.
In the weeks following Demo Day we keep in close touch with our clients as they negotiate the fundraising maze, and help them decipher the real messages in investors’ sometimes deliberately ambiguous responses. Often we talk to the investors ourselves, to find out what they’re really thinking about a particular startup. Because ES startups are a known quantity to investors and get introduced to enough of them to create serious price competition, companies tend to get higher valuations than they might otherwise.
Advice
ES doesn’t stop after the 1-6 month program ends. Here are some of the resources available to ES alumni as their companies grow.
Ongoing Consulting Hours
Consulting hours don’t stop after the ES program. We have consulting hours year-round, and companies from all previous cycles can book time whenever they want.
Accelerators & Series A Program
Helps founders achieve the best possible outcome when applying to the world’s best accelerators (Y Combinator, 500 Startups, Gener8tor, Plug & Play, Techstars, etc.) and raising a Series A through one-to-one support, application reviews, investor pitch practice, fundraising guides and templates, and year-round workshops.
Community
Alumni Community
Today the ES alumni community is powerful not just because of its size, but also because its members have such a strong commitment to helping one another. A culture of helpfulness has been an important part of ES since the beginning, and founders know that if they ever come across a challenge they need help with, they not only have the partners at their disposal, they have 1,000+ founders and domain experts they can call on.
Alumni Reunion
Each year, ES hosts a formal gathering of alumni. Exciting things happen when you bring founders together — ideas are exchanged, deals get made, problem-solving happens amongst peers.
Founder Communities
Founders have access to WhatsApp groups and Slack channels that reach specific communities. There are lists for EdTech, HealthTech, Web 3, non-profits, international, women founders, Black founders, Hispanic and Latino founders, and more.
Alumni Demo Day
Active ES founders get an early look at the ES companies at Alumni Demo Day.
Deals
Each ES company receives access to discounts and free accounts for over 50 products. Some of these are highly significant, including hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of perks.
Brand
Credibility
When one company in ES does well, the whole community benefits. Because ES has such a strong track record, early adopters, accelerators, investors, and the press are often more willing to take a look at ES founders, even if they’re first-time founders.
Hiring
Work at a Startup
Work at a Startup helps YC founders build their team — from first employees to VPs of product and operations. Thousands of jobseekers across hundreds of YC companies have landed roles through the platform and extended YC community.
Content
ES hosts the Better Societies podcast and Echo Studio Blog where users can learn how the best founders in the world have achieved their success, discuss the latest disruptive technologies and its impact on societies, and submit content on anything that gratifies one’s intellectual curiosity. ES alumni also post engineering, product, design, research, and operations jobs on our blog.