Dirigo Labs

Dirigo Labs is a startup accelerator in Waterville, Maine, founded in 2020 and operating under the Central Maine Growth Council. It supports visionary founders who disrupt the status quo in Maine. Its accelerator pairs each cohort startup with a temporary board of advisors drawn from its mentor pool and runs a 16-week curriculum on customer discovery, revenue models, sales, employment law, fundraising and pitching. Startups get capital investment, coworking space, guaranteed investor pitch opportunities and a Demo Day cash prize. It also runs the Dirigo Launch Incubator, Dirigo Model, the Back of the Napkin Challenge, a cleantech track, an SBIR Resource Center and an entrepreneur-in-residence program, and connects founders to angel and venture capital firms, grants and capital interested in Maine businesses. Dirigo looks for coachability, feasibility and scalability, favoring startups with revenue, customers or users, funded R&D, business grants, investor interest or prior startup success. Founders should be building innovation-based companies in Maine.