Opportunity Deadline: 2025-02-24 TEST track members validate ideas and learn powerful strategy techniques. Designed for students with an idea to validate, the TEST track introduces iterative, evidence-based entrepreneurship. Using tools like the Business Model Canvas as an entrepreneurship scorecard, participants will run tests to validate their concepts, refine their models, and gather essential customer feedback. Facilitators will introduce multiple methods for testing solutions, followed by guided practice in structuring the test. TEST meetings are 50 minutes each, and homework assignments are expected to take another 30 minutes each week. Members interested in generating actionable results need to invest more time in running and interpreting tests.

Opportunity Deadline: 2025-02-24 SEARCH track members search for problems to solve + solutions to test. Ideal for students in the exploration phase, the SEARCH track focuses on defining and identifying compelling problems aligned with individual passions. Facilitators lead participants in brainstorming, identifying what makes a problem worth solving, centering the people who experience this problem, seeking evidence the problem exists, and, finally, ranking ideas to identify the solution to test first. SEARCH meetings are 50 minutes each week, and homework assignments are expected to take another 30 minutes each week.

Cleantech to Market (C2M), in its 17th year of accelerating climate tech commercialization, is now accepting applications for promising climate tech startups and their innovations in low-carbon energy, green chemistry, food, and water technologies (covering both mitigation and adaptation) for its fall 2025 cohort.  For the startups selected, most in the DOE TRL 3-6 range (prototype to pilot), C2M will hand-pick and manage interdisciplinary teams—each with 5-6 UC Berkeley graduate students—to identify the most viable initial markets, prospective customers and partners, business models, funding sources, and related strategies, perform techno-economic analyses, assess the competitive landscape, and much more over 16 weeks (from late August through early December 2025). Join An Upcoming Info Sessions:Zoom Link for All Sessions:https://berkeley.zoom.us/j/97990365352 Questions?Please reach out to c2m@berkeley.edu

The 2025 Housing Venture Lab application is open now through February 24! Each year, we select a cohort of ventures with bold ideas for affordable, sustainable, and equitable housing. Cohort members receive a $75,000 seed grant, six months of coaching, and other resources to help scale their ventures.

NSF I-Corps is a free remote two week course based on Steve Blank’s Lean LaunchPad. The three evening class sessions teach you to identify your top customer segment and value propositions, and accelerate finding product market fit. Outside of class, you’ll do at least 20 interviews with potential customers as part of the customer discovery process. You can expect to spend 30-35 hours outside of class on interviews. In March, Berkeley NSF I-Corps is offering a second class happening at the same time: I-Corps @ LSEC, a collaborative course with the UC Berkeley Life Sciences Entrepreneurship Center that offers an I-Corps curriculum tailored to early stage life science startups. Eligible teams that complete either course with instructor endorsement might also qualify for the National NSF I-Corps program, which includes a $50,000 National Science Foundation customer discovery grant. Through the AWS Activate @ Berkeley program, teams who successfully complete either course are eligible for $5,000 in…

Up to six emerging social entrepreneurs who use mobile-first wireless technologies to enhance American communities will receive unrestricted grants, with a first-place award of $100,000. To learn more, here is the full call for submissions. You can also visit the Catalyst Website and the Catalyst Alumni page for more incredible stories of impact from our past winners. All interested organizations that meet the Catalyst eligibility requirements must complete the Phase 1 application via the Catalyst Portal by March 4, 2025, at 11:59 pm ET.

The Bakar Fellows Awards and AIC-Bakar Award are designed to accelerate faculty-led research to tangible, positive societal impact through commercialization. For UC Berkeley Faculty the program will award up to eight Spark Awards of $100,000/year or collaborative proposals between two PIs for $200,000/year, for three years. For UC Berkeley and UCSF Faculty the program will award up to three Spark Awards for three years for collaborative research projects.  The AIC-Bakar Awards will provide faculty with $300,000 over three years for climate-related projects. Learn more on the Bakar Fellows website and reach out to us with questions at bakarfellows@berkeley.edu. The application is due here by March 7 at midnight: https://bakarfellows.berkeley.edu/spark-award/