Foundation Capital Opportunity for New Ventures integrated with SCET’s Collider Projects which allow the experience to be part of UC Berkeley’s Curriculum.
Twelve companies pitched their products to four judges and a crowd of investors and entrepreneurs on the launching day of Founder’s Program, a 3-6 month jumpstart program for exclusively for UC Berkeley entrepreneurs, hosted by Foundation Capital—an early-stage venture capital firm—in partnership with TubeMogul, a public company founded by Berkeley alumni.
With the support of Berkeley’s Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology (SCET), the Founder’s Program offers a great package: $25K in Seed funding, 3-6 months with Foundation Capital, and your graduate or undergraduate certificate from the Sutardja Center at Berkeley.
“It is an opportunity find a way to work with young engineers who is coming up with pioneer and disruptive ideas. We want to get to know them early. ” said Ashu Garg, general partner of Foundation Capital.
“I think personally for me, as a student in Berkeley many years ago. I saw many of my friends became founders. And they don’t have a very good channel in terms early support resources. I think this is a way for us to help jumpstart companies and ideas from young entrepreneurs. “said Joanne Chen, associate of Foundation Capital who was a former SCET student when SCET just launched.
Winners:
WeTravel and Rynm won the big prize by earning $25K in Seed funding, access to Foundation Capital’s network, resources, office space in San Francisco, and start-up capital. (WeTravel is built to simplify large group trips, our website provides organizers a powerful platform to create itineraries, invite trip participants, process payments and collect information from participants).
Rynm is poised to be the first and only data-centered healthcare tool for patients in the vast Chinese healthcare market.
Foundation Capital has invested ~$3b in 150 companies, and taken 25 of those companies public, including Netflix, Lending Club, TubeMogul, Chegg, and MobileIron. Foundation Capital portfolio companies that are Berkeley-affiliated include TubeMogul, Conviva, Spoonrocket, Bolt Threads, AdRise, and BoardVantage.
Also supporting, Jogh Hughes from TubeMogul and Ion Stoica from Conviva, Data Bricks shared their founder stories. Hughes offered his suggestion to young entrepreneurs as “do you say and move fast”, work hard and execute on your plan.
For more details on SCET programs, please visit: https://scet.berkeley.edu/.