GET SUPPORT ON YOUR ENTREPRENEURIAL JOURNEY
At Duke, entrepreneurship isn’t a solo operation—our innovation ecosystem works collaboratively to support our community's transformative founders and ventures.
If you’re a Duke student, explore your venture idea in a course like New Ventures: Discovery or Field Testing Ideas. Already found a problem and validated your solution? Enroll in New Ventures: Develop and explore programs like Melissa & Doug Entrepreneurs to take your startup to the next level.
Duke I&E Summer Startup Sprint
Seize the Summer & Make Your Idea a Reality with the Duke I&E Summer Startup Sprint
Got a startup idea—and want to make it happen this summer? Get critical tools and support to launch your startup with the Duke I&E Summer Startup Sprint.
Based on a framework created by Duke I&E Director Jamie Jones together with Hesam Panahi of Rice University, the sprint will guide you to explore your potential customers’ needs, identify the problem you’re solving, analyze your competition, test your assumptions, build a team, and create an action plan. Alongside a supportive community of fellow founders, you’ll gain accountability, get valuable feedback, and talk through how you’re applying lessons to advance your startup. This program is free-of-charge and open to the entire Duke community, including incoming students, current students, and alumni.
The six-week sprint, to begin May 22, will be held via Zoom on Wednesdays from 11am-12:30pm EDT. Questions? Email Josh Cohen.
Spark Your Startup
Spark Your Startup is a framework developed by Duke I&E Director Jamie Jones together with Hesam Panahi of Rice University, designed to guide you to explore your potential customers’ needs, identify the problem you’re solving, analyze your competition, test your assumptions, build a team, and create a realistic action plan.
Duke Law Startup Ventures Clinic
Duke Law Startup Ventures Clinic represents entrepreneurs and early-stage businesses and social ventures on a variety of matters related to the start-up process, including formation, founder equity and vesting, shareholder agreements, intellectual property protection and licensing agreements, commercialization strategies, and other issues that new enterprises face in their start-up phases.
Become a First-Year Design Client
In Duke’s Engineering Design and Communication course, first-year engineering students work in multi-disciplinary teams to design and build solutions to real-world client problems. You get the opportunity to mentor a team of Duke students—and benefit from their ideas and prototype design.
Christensen Family Center for Innovation Product Lab
Want fellow students to build your v2? Pratt's Christensen Family Center for Innovation pays student builders (aspiring product managers, designers, and software engineers) to build software for real client projects. Students will apply a full software development life cycle in a 3-week product sprint.