Startup Yale brings together Yale’s biggest entrepreneurship awards in three days packed with pitches, prizes, and world-changing ideas.

During Startup Yale, InnovateHealth Yale, Dwight Hall, the Center for Business and the Environment at Yale (CBEY) and Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale (Tsai CITY) will be awarding $135,000+ for new ideas. If you plan to apply for this unique opportunity, we will do our best to match you with a mentor or industry expert who may work with you and help you prepare for this event.

To start this process, please complete and submit this Mentor Request Form: https://yalesurvey.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_eYbNKPRrobIzbZX

*The Early Startup Yale Mentor Request Form will be open from November 17th-December 1st, 2021. To learn more about each prize, join us for the Startup Yale info session on November 17th, 2021

The Manolo Sanchez Prize awards $25,000 to a for-profit or non-profit startup with the potential to help improve the financial health of the financially underserved.

The Yale Innovators’ Prize, part of Startup Yale, is a $15,000 cash prize awarded to the for-profit or non-profit startup that has the potential to produce the greatest impact (financially, socially, or otherwise). The Yale Innovators’ Prize is open to any project, campaign, solution, venture, or non-profit led by a current Yale student(s). 

The New Haven Civic Innovation Prize, part of Startup Yale, awards up to $10,000 to the best student- or community-led venture or project focused on benefiting the City of New Haven.

The Miller Prize, part of Startup Yale, awards $25,000 to a promising student-led venture working on innovative tech or tech-enabled solutions.

The Student Catalyst Fund is an opportunity for current Yale students to apply for up to $3,000 to take their business, project, or intervention to the next level.

The Innovator's Toolkit is a series of free workshops focused on key skills for innovation, from visual communication to fundraising.

Yale College is home to a wide range of student organizations, including many related to entrepreneurship and innovation.

Startup Yale brings together Yale’s biggest entrepreneurship awards in three days packed with pitches, prizes, and world-changing ideas. Here, Yale innovators join community leaders, investors, and practitioners to reimagine the future. Grounded in inclusivity and impact, Startup Yale is a crossroads for a new kind of innovation ecosystem.

The Tsai CITY Student Innovation Fund supports students looking to advance an early-stage idea or project. Individual students can apply to the Student Innovation Fund for up to $500; applications are reviewed weekly.

Yale offers four entrepreneurship prizes, ranging from $15,000 to $25,000, which share a single application and are open to all Yale students. These prizes are designed to generate world-changing ideas around health, education, environment, equality, sustainability, and technology.

The Yale Women Innovator Breakfast Series is a weekly event series that brings women entrepreneurs and innovators from around the country to share their stories and provide actionable skills training.

We believe hearing women’s stories and meeting role models is essential when building a community of support for women interested in entrepreneurship or innovation.The series is designed to foster community discussion, idea sharing, best practices, business fundamentals, networking, and team-building opportunities among Yale women students, alumni, faculty, and staff interested in entrepreneurship and innovation at any level.

The CITY Summer Fellowship is an eight-week intensive accelerator to incubate new companies, nonprofits, and initiatives. Teams can go from sketch to launch by summer’s end. Approximately 10 teams will be chosen in a highly competitive process. The fellowship includes $15,000 for each team, along with a rigorous sequence of workshops, sprints, mentorship, coaching, and pitch opportunities.

Tsai CITY’s Accelerator, which runs every fall and spring semester, guides students and teams with innovative ideas through the process of building effective organizations, projects, and ventures through workshops, mentorship, and funding. Applicable ideas include (but are not limited to!) for-profit businesses, social enterprises, non-profits, civic or arts start-ups, faith-based organizations, apps, tech platforms, community programs, and civic/social movements. Teams of all sizes are welcome, though each team must include at least one full-time Yale student. 

Intensives are multi-session, cohort-based experiential learning opportunities that go deep on a specific topic. These cross-disciplinary experiences have covered topics like fermentation, app design, public art and placemaking, and more.

CITY's expert staff, mentors, advisors, and coaches hold office hours on all things innovation. You can use office hours in many ways: to get one-on-one advice on ideas, talk through a challenge, or just chat with our team about how things work at CITY. Anyone can sign up for an appointment: our doors are open!