Student Venture Incubator

What the incubator provides

The Forge Student Venture Incubator is a physical and programmatic home for student ventures that have moved past the idea stage and are building product, acquiring users, or generating early revenue. Accepted teams receive:

• Dedicated workspace in the Forge Innovation Hub — desks, meeting rooms, a phone booth, and 24/7 keycard access for the duration of the cohort.
• Weekly coaching from a staff venture advisor who helps set milestones, reviews metrics, and makes introductions to mentors, alumni founders, and service providers.
• Curriculum sprints on pricing, go-to-market, hiring, fundraising, and founder mental health, delivered in short workshops rather than semester-long courses.
• Peer cohort of 8–12 teams who meet every Tuesday for a standup-style check-in and every other Friday for a deeper demo-and-feedback session.
• Perks and credits including cloud hosting credits, legal and accounting clinic hours, and preferred access to the Forge Prototyping Lab for hardware ventures.

Who can apply

Any currently enrolled UW–Porter Falls student (undergraduate or graduate) with a venture that has:

• A defined problem and a specific target user.
• Evidence of demand — interviews, a waitlist, a prototype with users, letters of intent, or early revenue.
• At least one founder who can commit 15+ hours per week to the venture during the cohort term.

You do not need to be a business major. Past cohorts have included nursing students building a patient-navigation app, engineering students commercializing a lab instrument, and art students launching a sustainable-goods brand. Nonprofit and campus-improvement ventures are eligible alongside for-profit startups.

The cohort experience

Cohorts run on a semester cycle (fall and spring) with a lighter summer track. Each term:

1. Weeks 1–2: Milestone-setting with your venture advisor; you leave with a 12-week roadmap and the three metrics you will report weekly.
2. Weeks 3–10: Weekly 30-minute advisor check-ins, Tuesday cohort standups, and biweekly Friday demo sessions. You also book office hours with the Entrepreneurship Legal Clinic, the industry mentor network, and the Prototyping Lab as needed.
3. Weeks 11–12: Final demo day — a low-stakes presentation to mentors, alumni, and the campus community. No judges, no winners, just feedback and next-step planning.

Teams that need more time can apply for a second semester; about 40% do.

How to apply

Applications open six weeks before each semester and close the Friday before classes start. The form asks for a one-page problem/solution summary, your demand evidence, a brief founder bio, and your 12-week milestone hypothesis. A selection committee of staff, faculty affiliates, and alumni founders reviews applications and invites finalists for a 20-minute conversation. Decisions go out within a week.

If you are not ready for the incubator, start with the discovery workshops and the validation micro-grant program — they are the typical feeder path.

After the incubator

Graduating teams keep their keycard access for one additional semester and stay in the mentor network. Many apply to the Student Venture Fund for a larger seed investment. Others join the Entrepreneurship minor capstone to earn credit while continuing the venture. The incubator alumni Slack channel stays active, and the annual Founders Homecoming brings past cohorts back to campus each fall.