Founder.org

Founder.org (written as FOUNDER.org by the organization) is a nonprofit foundation in San Francisco, California, USA. It describes itself as an investor and company building program for student entrepreneurs at major research institutes and universities. Founder.org is operated by a group of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs.

Programs

The organization offers a number of programs for student entrepreneurs, recent alumni and faculty from its partner schools.

• The 8D Company Building program is an education system of 8 dimensions and associated challenges in building a high impact company. A class of 50 student companies participate in each 8D Company Building Program. Members of the entering class receive $10K to $100K in seed grant money. An investment fund for student founders providing $250K - $2.5M in capital. Each team is provided a personalized 12 month engagement with their own mentor, and has access to a network of industry advisors across a broad range of B2C and B2B sectors.

• The "FOUNDER.org $100K" is an annual contest which provides $100,000 in funding to ten student companies.

Partner Schools

Founder.org partners with a number of colleges and universities which have innovation and entrepreneurship programs. Students who are enrolled in these schools and have founded companies are eligible to participate in the programs. In 2014 there are 24 partner schools in the United States and Europe including Carnegie Mellon University, CDTM – Center for Digital Technology Management, Drexel University, École Polytechnique, EDHEC, ESCP Europe, Harvard Business School, Imperial College London, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York University, Purdue University, Stanford University, Technische Universität Berlin, Technische Universität München, The University of Edinburgh, University College London, University of California at Berkeley, University of California San Diego, University of California San Francisco, University of Cambridge, University of Pennsylvania and University of Texas at Austin.

History

Founder.org was founded in 2012 by the CEO & Founder of Splunk, Michael Baum. It opened applications for the Class of 2014 in January 2013, and accepted its first ten companies in June 2013. The second Class of 2015 was increased in size to 50 companies and was accepted in June 2014.

Investments

Alongside seed grants, Founder.org invests additional capital into some of the startups in the program. As of September, 2014, the program has made 8 follow on investments. For example, the company participated in the round of energy intelligence startup, Verdigris Technologies. In some cases, the program will act as the lead investor in a round. Most recently, Founder.org led the seed round of a Stanford based influencer marketing startup, NeoReach.

See also

• Y Combinator (company)
• Business incubator