Programs

UC Startup Weekend is an action-packed three day program in which participants learn to think, work, and build like a new venture. Students join us on Friday evening to present their business ideas, form teams, and spend the weekend developing their concept to pitch on Sunday afternoon. Mentors and judges from the StartupCincy ecosystem volunteer their time to guide the teams, offer feedback and select prizewinners of the $5,000 pot for an impactful weekend experience.

UC’s Venture Lab helps entrepreneurs from idea conception to startup launch. We connect the Bearcat community to knowledge, talent and resources to help launch scalable startups. Our team includes UC staff, Entrepreneurs-in-Residence, mentors, and technical experts.

 In the Innovation Challenge, you will start the beginning of the semester out either with no idea or a pre-exisiting idea, meet fellow students who can help you along the way, learn to create a pitch deck, refine your prototype, and finally pitch in the final competition for a chance to win cash prizes.

Bearcat Launchpad is a 5-week program designed to help students accelerate the early-stage business development and market discovery processes. Students will hear from professional mentors, learn best practices for lean startup ventures, and develop a roadmap for your new business or product idea. 

Lab2Market is a multi-phased entrepreneurial program for graduate-level UC STEM students to introduce graduate STEM students to entrepreneurship and the technology commercialization process.  We help students think about the market applications of their research so they can be stronger candidates for industry-related jobs.

Innovation Challenge 2, also known as the Innovation Challenge Bridge Program, is for later-stage students to participate in a variety of choose-your-own-adventure programming for their ideas, while simultaneously meeting with their cohort as a homebase to learn and collaborate in.

In addition to our programs, the Center for Entrepreneurship continuously features pop-up events which operate on an ad-hoc basis.  These events range in topic, spanning venture capital, small business, emerging technologies, AI, pitch workshops, and more.  Because these are ad-hoc, they do not operate on a fixed schedule.  The best way to ensure you know about these is to follow us on Instagram, and look out at our event calendar below: