Venture Catalyst Program

Converging to catalyze startups: Innovators collaborating with students for entrepreneurship

Apply to become a Venture Catalyst fellow

Are you a UNC-Chapel Hill graduate student or postdoc with a passion for expanding your business development skills and making a real-world impact by supporting startups?

We are not currently recruiting fellows. Recruitment will begin for our next cohort of fellows in March of 2025, for the 2025-2026 Venture Catalyst Program.

---

How the program works

The Venture Catalyst Program identifies faculty-founded startups or innovations from UNC-Chapel Hill that can benefit from business development support. The program then matches each startup or innovator with:

• Entrepreneurial mentors. Subject matter experts who have expertise in the company’s technology or field of work and provide direct advice, connections and coaching.
  
• Venture Catalyst fellows. A select number of doctoral and MBA candidates as well as postdocs who have a passion for new venture creation and support.

The program revolves around three pillars of activity and engagement:

Experiential learning. Fellows carry out specialized scopes of work that address the business development milestones of their assigned startups. Focus areas include primary market research, development plan creation, grant application preparation, company valuation and other critical functions. Fellows must commit five hours per week from August 2023 through April 2024 toward completing their scopes of work with their companies.

Educational foundation. Fellows are required to attend the CareerWell courses listed below in preparation for the Venture Catalyst Program.

• GRAD 755* – Technology Commercialization Fundamentals
• GRAD 756* – Research-to-Revenue – University Startups
• I-Corps – Customer Discovery Workshops

*GRAD 755 and GRAD 756 will be offered in Fall of 2024. Fellows must register for these courses to qualify for the program.

The result is an innovative skill-building, business-building hybrid that gives Venture Catalyst Fellows the chance to learn while collaborating with founders to explore new markets, uncover potential funding, engage in customer discovery and carry out other business essentials. This is an excellent opportunity to gain real-world experiences and develop critical professional skills beyond academic training.

Ecosystem networking. Mentors meet with Venture Catalyst Fellows bi-weekly to help guide each fellow’s scope of work throughout the course of the program. Each month, the founders, mentors and fellows meet to review company milestones, discuss deliverables and define next steps. Fellows, mentors and faculty members also have the opportunity to participate in virtual and hybrid networking events with individuals who are leaders of our regional entrepreneurial community centered around the Research Triangle Park.

Program partners

The Venture Catalyst Program is built on a partnership between organizations that work together to provide a variety of resources, learning experiences and business support for participating fellows and faculty founders.

Timeline

As part of the program, you can expect the following timeline for experiential learning during 2024-2025:

• March – May: Fellows and Innovators apply to the program.
• June: 2024-2025 Cohort accepted.
• August – December: Fellows take GRAD 755 and GRAD 756.
• Early October: Fellows and Innovators meet during the partnering process.
• Mid-October: Fellows matched with Innovators and the proposed scope of work is discussed.
• November: Innovators present at Venture Catalyst Pitch Day; Bi-weekly meetings with mentors begin; Fellows begin scopes of work
• December – January: Fellows participate in the I-Corps customer discovery workshops.
• January – April: Fellows continue scopes of work.
• April: Fellows complete scopes of work and present final deliverables at Venture Catalyst Finals (April 24, 2025).

Venture Catalyst Finals

To explore the progress and outcomes achieved during 2020-2021 cohort and presented during the Venture Catalyst Finals, read the story Venture Catalysts: The New Startup Problem Solvers.

• I&E Education,
• Startups & Ventures

Venture catalysts: The new startup problem solvers

An ambitious group of faculty startup founders at UNC-Chapel Hill have set out to use their research and discoveries to…

---

2024-2025 Fellows

2023-2024 Fellows

2022-2023 Fellows

2021-2022 Fellows

2020-2021 Fellows

Looking for more information?

KickStart Venture Services is always interested in talking with founders who are interested in becoming paired with fellows as well as graduate students and postdocs who are interested in participating in the Venture Catalyst Program.

For more information, please contact Judy Prasad, the Venture Catalyst Program Lead; or Rachel Mintel, the Venture Catalyst Program Coordinator; with KickStart Venture Services.

Related Events

If you’re a startup founder or student interested in the Venture Catalyst Program, you may also want to explore the KickStart Presents series. These webinars cover a variety of topics that can be useful to entrepreneurs involved in building their ventures.