Application Timeline:

Who We Are

StartX (formerly SSE Labs) is the Stanford student start-up accelerator designed and developed to provide a place for the best Stanford founders to quickly develop.

Our mission is to accelerate the development of the highest-potential Stanford founders through experiential education, enabling them to create serious impact. We represent and support all students at Stanford (from undergrads to PhDs and postdocs, in any discipline), and there is no charge (equity or otherwise) for participating in our program. We provide access to a community of the best Stanford founders, serial entrepreneur mentors, real time and individualized information, and resources that startup founders need to accelerate the growth of their companies.

We are a non-profit 501(c)(3) and there is no equity charge for participating in our program. In less than two years, our program has received applications from over 1,800 Stanford students comprising 600+ of Stanford’s top student companies. Out of these, we have had 170 founders and 60 companies go through the program.

Thus far our founders have made incredible progress and showed some great results. 90% of our founders are funded and still growing. They have released products, been acquired, are profitable. However, best of all, they have learned a tremendous amount about how to effectively operate in a team and how to found a company.

StartX is a partner of (Stanford Student Enterprises) (SSE). SSE is the financial arm of the Stanford student government (the Associated Students of Stanford University), which represents every student on campus, including all undergraduate and graduate students.

What We Do

The StartX approach is built on providing the following four values to our founders:

• A strong community of the most passionate, innovative, and talented Stanford entrepreneurs who learn from, motivate, and support one another
• An amazing network of mentors and alumni including VCs, angels and serial entrepreneurs that program participants can look to for guidance, support, and advice
• Tailored entrepreneurial educational resources including frequent workshops and office hours from Silicon Valley’s top experts
• Free business resources to lower the cost of entrepreneurship, including office space, free legal support, cloud computing resources, and more
• Access to a powerful and tightly connected StartX Alumni network for anything you need

How We Do It

StartX runs three sessions in the fall/winter, winter/spring, and summer of each year. Each session is a three month cycle. These sessions act as an entry point into our community as many founders go through 2 or 3 sessions.

To kick off each session, we hold a mixer to give our companies a chance to meet many of our mentors prior to matching them with one (or more) as a lead mentor. Once paired with a company, mentors are committed to meeting with their companies in person at least biweekly and to also field questions via email or phone calls.

We also schedule weekly check-ins, alternating between check-ins with the community and check-ins with the staff. These check-ins help our community stay in sync and make sure that our staff and founders are providing each company with the resources and programming that they need.

Within the community we also have Entrepreneurs in Residence. These are Stanford alumni founders who are working out of the same office on their own companies. They are there to mentor and support any of the founders in the program. Each of them has a unique experience with their startups (exits, funding, releasing products) and has been through many challenges already. They are in the office to provide these experiences to the participants of the program.

Throughout the program, we pull in information about the individual needs of each company and invite experts to give workshops on relevant topics or hold office hours to provide individualized help to our companies. We hold several milestone events where we pull in our mentors to give quality feedback to our companies and give them a chance to demo the progress they’ve made so far.

At the end of each session, we host a Demo Day and invite our network, including numerous top-tier investors, serial entrepreneurs, corporate representatives, press, and mentors, to hear our companies pitch. These events have 200+ investors and press from TechCrunch, Forbes, WSJ, and more. Prior to each Demo Day, our staff and mentors work with each company extensively to refine their pitches.

During the program, we want our founders focused on educating themselves to solve the problems immediately in front of them. StartX provides infrastructure resources such as: a $5000 stipend for housing and food per founder, $5000 of free legal support from the top lawyers in Silicon Valley, free banking, up to $20K of free web server space, free office space and tons of coffee!

The best part of StartX is the community of high quality founders. The founders in StartX are highly vetted PhDs, undergrads, medical students, engineering, business, humanities masters students, and more. Some of them are still in school, others have taken leaves of absence. They are working in industries from biotech, clean energy, and clean tech, to consumer internet, medical devices, non-profits and enterprise software. We have also historically had 25% women founders in our program. This eclectic group of founders helps each other see problems from different perspectives, which greatly enhances the understanding of any issue. These individuals will become your trusted peers and close friends. StartX founders will become more valuable to each other as they will be leveraging each others expertise, network, and friendship for the rest of their lives.

After Demo Day, you become a StartX Alumni and enjoy lifelong benefits. These include access to StartX's network of mentors and investors and a consistently growing community of Stanford's best founders.

Teams can continue through sessions if they exceed our expectations.

We are here to cultivate a community of the best founders at Stanford, and allow them to use their collective strength to grow as individuals and leverage each other for life.

What We Take

StartX is a nonprofit organization, and we take no equity. Our companies receive resources to work on their startups for zero cost. Any products developed or work done through StartX belongs completely to its originators. StartX does not take ownership of its participants' intellectual property, nor does Stanford. The Office of Technology and Licensing (OTL) at Stanford has no legal connection with StartX and therefore there is no risk of IP issues due to an affiliation with StartX

The bottom line is that StartX is focused on education — not profit.

Requirements

In order to be eligible to apply, at least one founder of the company must have been enrolled as a Stanford student, post doc, or professor, within the last six quarters of the application period. Additionally, the Stanford student(s) must hold a significant (equitable) percentage of the equity stake shared amongst the founders.

We accept applications from teams of typically between one and four founders, and we encourage companies with alumni co-founders to apply.