Stanford Student Enterprises (SSE) announced Cardinal Ventures today, an incubator program which aims to educate students on developing entrepreneurial ideas and skills. The program will start this coming spring quarter.
Cardinal Ventures, created by Justine Moore ’16 and Olivia Moore ’16, is centered around a 10-week educational program on startup operations and creation. In addition to networking opportunities with a set of speakers and Stanford alumni in the tech industry, the program will culminate in students pitching their plan to SSE’s board of directors and a set of outside investors. Those pitching successfully will also have the option for their business to become a fully-funded division of SSE.  All teams accepted to the Cardinal Ventures incubator program will receive a grant of $1,000. Applicants for the program must be composed of between one and three Stanford students and have a life cycle of two years or more.
The program also stipulates that successful applicants must be able to be profitable within a year of operation and cannot offer a service already available to Stanford students, unless they are determined by SSE to have “strong competitive advantage” over their competition.
Like the well-known Stanford-affiliated incubator StartX, Cardinal Ventures does not take equity in companies involved in the program. StartX, Stanford University and Stanford Hospitals and Clinics operate the Stanford-StartX Fund, which has invested $31.4 million in StartX companies as of this January.
StartX, formerly named SSE Labs, was a division of SSE until it was spun off as an independent entity in 2009.
Also like the StartX program, Cardinal Ventures features a strong selection of mentors, including team members at SV Angel and August Capital. Teams in the program will partner with these mentors as well as SSE staff members.
Cardinal Ventures will host a speaker series that starts on April 1 with a talk by Ann Miura-Ko from Floodgate Ventures.
Partners of the program include General Catalyst Partners, GCV Capital, Floodgate Ventures, August Capital and Banneker Partners.
Applications for Cardinal Ventures’ spring 2014 class close Tuesday, March 24. Find out more at their website. StartX is announcing results for its spring 2015 class by Feb. 27.
This article has been updated.
Contact Nitish Kulkarni at [email protected].