Take the next step to transform your invention into impact through Venture Founder
Venture Founder is a 16-week program that supports UBC’s community of UBC students, faculty, staff and researchers who want to build transformative ventures based on their innovative solutions to critical (and often global) problems. The program offers experiential workshops to define and validate your venture opportunity, support from our experienced mentors, and covers foundational and operational topics to establish a viable startup company and build your team’s capacity in leadership, management and business skills.

In Venture Founder, we'll guide you to define and validate your venture opportunity and to begin to build traction in your venture’s industry.
Program Highlights:
- Mentorship and support: Access to over 250 mentors in our Mentor Network who will encourage you to push the boundaries of your thinking and help ensure you have the necessary building blocks of your venture opportunity.
- Session Topics: Define and validate your venture opportunity covering fundamental and operational topics such as:
- 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
- Duration: 16 weeks
- Format: Weekly virtual workshops for 3.5 hours, with in-person sessions during session 5, 10, 15 and 16.
- Commitment: Teams can expect to spend 25-35 hours on your venture with hands-on support from multiple mentors and Innovation UBC support staff.
The Application Journey