person sketching out a concept

Stanford Venture Studio

The Stanford Venture Studio is an entrepreneurship hub for graduate students exploring new venture ideas. It connects students to resources, entrepreneurial expertise, and an interdisciplinary community of like-minded peers and alumni.

Highlighted Offerings of Stanford Venture Studio

Two people sitting at a table.
Office Hours

Weekly opportunities to meet one-on-one with entrepreneurial advisers who have expertise in marketing, finance, design, team building, and more.

Student teams showcasing their ideas at Demo Day.
Demo Day

Venture Studio teams have the opportunity to showcase their ideas to experienced founders, industry leaders, and investors.

A student team meeting in the colab
The NGP CoLab

The CoLab is equipped with tools for ideation, prototyping, and experimenting.

The Stanford Venture Studio is self-directed and unstructured, offering students a trusted network of mentors, advisors, peers, and alumni to guide them in the process of developing a new business idea while exploring entrepreneurship as a career path.

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Network

An ecosystem of peers, alumni, investors, and industry partners.

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Expertise

Advice and mentoring at every stage of your venture.

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Resources

Free startup tools and services to get you started.

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Space

24/7 access to coworking space in the NGP CoLab.

Stanford Venture Studio is open to:

  • Graduate students from any Stanford school
  • Teams of any size (solo founders are welcome)
  • Venture ideas at any stage and from any sector

Eligible teams are welcome to join at any time, even during the summer!

Meet Some Venture Studio Teams

Over a hundred teams work in the venture studio each year. Get to know a few!

Stanford graduate students Tania Abedian and Kevin Hsu bonded over shared work experience, and mutual concerns about taking care of their aging grandparents. Feeling that commercially available health monitoring products for elder care were lackluster and that wearables were inconvenient to charge, often uncomfortable, and sometimes needed to be taken off, Tania and Kevin set out to build a hassle-free solution to provide the elderly population with critical health metrics. Through thoughtful design and iteration on the Venture Studio 3D printer, Tania and Kevin created a product that is simple, hands-free, and plug-and-play.

As Stanford master’s degree students, Jamie Stark and Kevin Madrigal brainstormed ways to provide a bridge out of homelessness. They were intrigued with the idea of flipping the soup kitchen on its head by enabling homeless people to grow and cook meals for others. They joined the Venture Studio, frequently using its coworking space to refine their idea. Near the end of their second year, they presented their concept, Farming Hope, at Venture Studio Demo Day, where they connected with both funders and donors who provided early support. Today, Farming Hope employs homeless people to grow and serve farm-to-table pop-up dinners in the Bay Area.

Jetpack is a peer-to-peer platform that allows college students to get the last-minute, “emergency” products they need in less than 15 minutes. By using GPS, a user-friendly platform, and student employees, Jetpack makes it easier to source a couple of aspirins, cold medicine, and other items students need right away. Founder Fatima Dicko, MBA ‘18, reached new heights as an entrepreneur by working in the Stanford Venture Studio and exchanging ideas with fellow entrepreneurs. Jetpack was accepted into StartX’s accelerator program in 2018.

DataFox’s very first wireframes were drawn on the whiteboards in the Stanford Venture Studio. Founders Mike, Alden, Ben, and Bastiaan had previously worked in finance and computer science. They set out to combine data science with human research to generate insights into millions of companies around the world and help sales, marketing, and finance professionals source relevant opportunities. They used the Stanford Venture Studio as a creative space to plant early seeds and Stanford Venture Studio’s community as potential customers, investors, and advisors to help guide them in the right direction early on.