SMART Certification for invited ESO teams
Build a stronger, more consistent way to support founders.
This certification gives Program Managers and Coaches a shared way to test a founder's ideas, record what they learn and decide what to do next.
The two courses are built around the people who shape program quality every day: the Program Manager coordinating delivery and the Coach working directly with founders.
The certification courses
Two roles. One shared way of working.
Program Managers focus on program delivery and evidence. Coaches focus on founder conversations, experiments and decisions.
Five modules
SMART Certification for Program Managers
For program leaders responsible for delivering founder support, keeping the team aligned and making progress visible.
- Institutional Onboarding & Certification Framework
- Methodological Mastery: Evidence-Based Company Building
- Pedagogy, Facilitation & Coaching Excellence
- MEL & Operational Excellence
- Financing Enablement, Data Infrastructure & Revenue Innovation
Three modules
SMART Certification for Coaches
For people working directly with founders, turning conversations into useful experiments and evidence.
- Foundations of Scientific Coaching for Founders
- Methodological Mastery: Evidence-Based Company Building
- Pedagogy, Facilitation & Coaching Excellence
The method and the platform
How SMART and SIGMA fit together.
SMART and SIGMA do different jobs. These courses teach SMART. SIGMA keeps the records together.
What is SMART?
SMART is the Seedstars Methodology for Applied Rigorous Testing. It helps a team name an idea about a founder's customers or business, test it, review the evidence and agree what to do next.
What is SIGMA?
SIGMA is the program platform. It can keep coaching records, milestones and evidence together so a team can see what is happening across a cohort.
SMART is what you learn here. SIGMA is where a program can keep the work.
SMART in practice
When an assumption is tested, the next decision gets clearer.
These teams used the same SMART loop you will practise in the course: test an assumption, examine the evidence and decide what to do next.
Ethiopia
SHIFT Africa
The fee model no one had tested
The testWould merchants pay a 2.75% transaction fee?
The evidence30% committedThree times the test target
The decisionThe evidence confirmed the fee model. LakiPay launched with transaction and bank data-referral revenue.
The customer that changed the model
The testWas the real customer the farmer or the insurer?
The evidence2 partnershipsInsurance companies signed
The decisionThe team repositioned from a direct-to-farmer product to a platform for insurers, then validated the pilot across three provinces.
India
Visa Foundation
Proof before the claim
The testHow would the product compare with competitors in a blind review?
The evidence+19.6%Against competitors in blind testing
The decisionThe result gave the team evidence to reposition the product. Revenue grew threefold after the change.
Validated founder case studies, Seedstars Programs, 2024 to 2026.
SIGMA in practice
See how teams put the method into practice.
SMART is the method taught in this course. In these stories, founders describe how they use SIGMA, the platform designed to help programs put that method into practice.
Karla BionicsHow SIGMA helped the team bring structure to real organisational challenges.Watch story
InclusHow SIGMA connected scattered ideas and opened new ways to look at an opportunity.Watch story
I-STEMHow SIGMA helped the team think through audiences, customers and value proposition.Watch story
Support
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