Starting a cohort is easy. People sign up excited, the first session is full and the WhatsApp group is loud. Then week three arrives. Attendance drops, assignments go quiet and a few people disappear without saying why. Whether your programme succeeds depends on what you do in those middle weeks.
I have been on both sides of this. My career started as an ALX learner, first in software engineering and then on the virtual assistant programme. Later I gave my time back as a community volunteer and ran the community for virtual assistant cohort 14, walking with the cohort from the first week to graduation at ALX's Nation Centre hub in Nairobi. More than 160 learners from that cohort graduated. In 2025 I was the main contact for more than 70 founders in the first cohort of the Startup Garage Academy. Across my ALX roles I have supported more than 2,000 learners.
Here is what works.
1. Set the weekly rhythm in week one
People finish programmes that feel predictable. Before the first session, fix the rhythm for the whole programme:
- The same session day and time every week.
- Reminders the day before and an hour before.
- One weekly check-in where every participant shares progress.
- One weekly message from the team: what happened, what is next and who to ask for help.
At the Startup Garage Academy, my job was keeping that rhythm running: sessions on time, trainers with their materials ready and the Google Classroom in order. When the rhythm holds, founders plan their week around it.
2. Track three things per person
You cannot help people you cannot see. Keep one tracker with a row per participant and three columns that matter:
- Attendance: did they show up this week?
- Progress: did they submit the task or reach the milestone?
- Status: on track, at risk or missing.
Update it after every session. Anyone who misses two sessions in a row, or one task, moves to at risk.
3. Call the people who are slipping
This is the part most programmes skip, and it matters more than anything else on this list. When someone is at risk, a person reaches out to them that week. A call works best, and a direct message is the minimum.
The reasons people fall behind are usually simple: a family issue, a job that took over, no data bundles, confusion about a task or embarrassment about being behind. Most of these can be fixed with one conversation, a deadline extension or a pointer to the right resource. With cohort 14, many of the learners who graduated had a week where they nearly stopped.
4. Get complaints to the right person fast
Every cohort has problems: a platform that will not load, a certificate with the wrong name, a mark that looks wrong. If complaints sit unanswered, frustration spreads through the group. As a chatroom ambassador at ALX, a big part of my job was taking every complaint to the person who could fix it and going back to the learner once it was sorted. Log each one with a date and an owner, and close the loop.
5. Make the group do some of the work
Peers keep each other going. Pair people up as accountability partners, celebrate progress in the group and let people who finish tasks early help others. At Hackhouse Africa, the founders' circle I coordinate works the same way: each founder names one promise, and the group checks it at the next meetup.
6. Plan graduation from day one
Graduation is the goal people hold on to in week six. Announce the date early, show what finishing looks like and count down in the weekly message. Then make the day about the people who made it. Graduation also starts the next phase: alumni relations.
The tools
You do not need expensive software to run a cohort well. Google Classroom or a learning platform, one tracker, WhatsApp or Slack for the group, SMS for reminders and a shared inbox for questions will carry you a long way. When you run several cohorts at once, or funders want live numbers, a programme system saves the team hours every week.
A checklist for your next cohort
- Session schedule fixed for the whole programme.
- Reminders scheduled before week one.
- One tracker with attendance, progress and status.
- A rule for who calls at-risk participants, and when.
- A complaint log with an owner for every item.
- Accountability pairs or small groups.
- Graduation date announced in week one.
Questions programme leads ask me
What completion rate should we aim for?
It depends on the programme, the cost to participants and how you select them. Track it cohort by cohort and aim to improve on your last one. Your tracker will show you where people drop off, and that tells you where to put your effort.
How many people can one coordinator support?
With a good tracker and automated reminders, one coordinator can follow a large cohort, because the system points them to the few people who need a call each week. Without a tracker, they spend the week just trying to find out who is behind.
If you run a bootcamp, an accelerator or a training programme and want more of your people to finish, let's talk. This is the work I care about most.
