Venture Founder

Transform your invention into impact through Venture Founder.

Venture Founder supports UBC’s community of students, faculty and postdoctoral fellows who want to build transformative ventures, based on innovative solutions to critical and often global problems. Take your invention to the next level of global impact with an approach that recognizes that every venture-building journey is unique based on industry, team expertise and market opportunity. Venture Founder is here to help you validate the foundation of your startup and begin to build traction in your venture’s industry ecosystem.  

Our methodology embodies critical, user-centric thinking and time-tested creative problem solving techniques that help us meet venture teams where they are in their journey. At the heart of our venture-centric thinking is our made at UBC, for UBC ventures 4Ts Venture Playbook, which provides you, your venture team members, and our advisory community with an objective, goal-based framework, ensuring that accountability, equity, diversity and inclusion are at the heart of our engagement with you.

Interested?
Applications are now open. Check out our Application Journey page for more information.

APPLY NOW

How it works

In Venture Founder you will work directly with experienced startup entrepreneurs and experts from entrepreneurship@UBC’s Mentor Network of over 250 members. Mentors will encourage you to push the boundaries of your thinking and help ensure you have the necessary building blocks of your venture opportunity rooted in a strong foundation, preparing you for operationalizing your venture. Here, you will have the opportunity to build your team’s capacity in leadership, management and business skills. As part of a Venture Founder team, you will work, with support from your mentors, to define and validate your venture opportunity through 16 weeks of experiential workshops covering fundamental  and operational topics such as, but not limited to:  

• Defining your venture business model and crafting a compelling story
• Refining your value proposition(s), including defining initial market segments and the customer buying process)
• Estimating  the market potential by using top-down and bottom-up market sizing methodologies 
• Developing and practicing effective hypothesis testing techniques
• Building the core ingredients and fluency in financial literacy
• Learning the basics for team building, branding and marketing, and storytelling 

The 4 Ts Venture Playbook

The 4 Ts Venture Playbook is a made by UBC for UBC founders, that focuses on building and developing the critical elements of a successful startup: Team, Technology, Traction and Treasury. Recognizing that each venture journey is unique, the 4Ts Playbook is designed to help Venture Founders and entrepreneurship@UBC to map their unique venture journey, supporting founders with a wealth of knowledge, experts and networks. With the 4 Ts Playbook, entrepreneurship@UBC’s goal is to help venture founders evolve as entrepreneurial leaders and grow transformative, impactful and sustainable companies. 

Code of Conduct

Our Venture Code of Conduct illustrates the core expectations we have for ourselves and for every venture within our Venture Programs.

Venture Founder Eligibility 

1. entrepreneurship@UBC strongly recommends that a team of at least two participants apply to join Venture Founder to pursue a start-up opportunity, due to the intensity of the Venture Founder process.   Solo founders will be considered on a case-by-case basis. 
2. At a minimum, one member of the applicant team should have one of the following affiliations:
   1. A UBC Faculty member, whether research faculty, clinical faculty, teaching faculty or a visiting scholar
   2. A UBC Graduate Student (Masters or PhD) pursuing a thesis research project under the supervision of a UBC faculty member
   3. A UBC Postdoctoral Fellow
   4. A UBC Staff Member, whether research staff, lecturer, or administrative staff
   5. A member of the public collaborating with any one of (a) - (d).
   6. A UBC undergraduate or graduate student who will be the key applicant and one of the co-founders of the venture.
3. Your start-up opportunity should be based on a UBC Invention, unless you are a current undergraduate or graduate student (per above).

Not sure if your venture qualifies as a UBC Invention? Check out this resource to help you assess.   If you’re still uncertain, please submit your request to apply (per below) and we’ll meet with you to discuss it.

Interested?
Our application is now open. Check out our Application Journey page for more information.

APPLY NOW