The Center for Entrepreneurship and New Business Design provides funding opportunities and support for student founders preparing to raise pre-seed and seed stage funding. Along with the help of faculty members and industry professionals, we are dedicated to mentoring students as they startup, develop, and pitch their ventures to investors.
Venture
W. P. Carey Accelerator
The W. P. Carey School of Business Accelerator program provides a tailored experience for ASU-affiliated entrepreneurs and innovators. We support founders preparing to raise over $1 million in pre-seed and seed stage funding. Over the course of two semesters, you'll engage in a mid-program pitch practice and a culminating final pitch event.
New Venture Challenge
The New Venture Challenge is a course and competition designed for ASU graduate students, exceptional ventures and their co-founders who seek to advance a new venture concept to the next stage. The course gives participants across ASU the opportunity to further develop core aspects of their business model and fine-tune pitch messaging with feedback from experienced entrepreneur faculty and mentors.
New Venture Challenge is offered in session B of the spring semester and meets once per week on Monday evenings from 6 to 9 p.m. You will spend a significant amount of time pitching ideas and receiving tailored feedback and guidance to improve your business model, strategy, and approach, while learning effective ways to communicate.
This year's winner
Congratulations to the 2025 New Venture Challenge winners! Teams who joined the New Venture Challenge received access to dedicate industry expertise, curriculum, and elite mentorship opportunities. Top participants then competed for their share of $60k. This year's winner was Legion Platforms and EpiPrecision AI.
Venture Devils
Are you looking to commercialize a new product or service, or to grow your entrepreneurial enterprise? Venture Devils provides mentorship and optional, online training to all ASU student, faculty and staff entrepreneurs as well as community-based ventures. Participating in Venture Devils may also open up access to funding opportunities as well as venture development spaces.
Demo Day
Twice a year, ventures compete for funding at Demo Day, a showcase for top ASU-affiliated ventures in several categories to deliver investor-style pitches as they compete for over $250K in funding and support. All community members are invited to watch all the pitches and support their favorite idea.
Founders Lab
Founders Lab is a Barrett Honors thesis project that is designed for Honors students interested in launching a new business as a part of their academic experience. Throughout this intensive experience, teams are given an idea and focus on finding solution-market fit, and market traction. In teams of three, students are provided with a thesis committee, entrepreneurial resources, industry network, and access to additional resources to help them succeed.
The Founders Lab is an intensive, team-based Barrett Honors Thesis project that allows students to launch their own startup based on a pre-validated concept. This program is designed to help you understand the opportunity, engage your market and scale your impact.
The Founders Lab provides:
- Focused market access.
- Dedicated thesis committees.
- Industry stakeholder and technical expert networking.
