This is the year of the founder.
The Foundry supports student founders across the whole UVA ecosystem — every school, every stage, and every half-formed idea you haven't said out loud yet. Including yours.
What are you working on?
Business advice any hour, that learns your venture as you talk and hands an advisor your context before you meet. It is being rebuilt — here is what it will do, and how to reach a person today.
The Guide is being rebuilt. You do not have to wait for it — the advisors it would have booked you are taking meetings now.
A community you join — not an incubator you apply to.
Most places make you pitch your way in. The Foundry doesn't. Bring a company, a prototype, or a problem that won't leave you alone — you belong here either way. Membership is free, undergraduate through PhD, open to every school at UVA and to UVA Wise, and yours the moment you start. The ecosystem around you is the point: faculty whose research fits your problem, alumni who have built before, mentors matched to your wedge. The person who unblocks you is rarely in your own department.
Every school, every stage — from a 2 a.m. idea to an incorporated company. Undergrad to PhD.
200+ operators, investors, and alumni, matched to your wedge — never assigned at random.
Programs that meet you exactly where you are and move you a real step forward.
A building off the Corner open weekdays until 10pm, warm introductions to funding, and a community that roots for you out loud.
See the Clubhouse →Wherever the idea is, there's a door.
Entrepreneurship Cup
Concept in the fall for any idea. Launch in the spring for ventures with a working product. Every UVA and UVA Wise student can enter.
Mentor program
Matched to the stage you are actually at. You ask for the conversation; nobody is assigned at random.
Pre-Launch cohort
Eight weekly meetings — speakers, guests, and a roundtable — to get ready for Launch and summer 2027 incubators. Admission is not guaranteed.
From first idea to $100k on the line.
The Foundry's annual competition arc: Concept kicks off in the fall as a campus-wide celebration of ideas, and Launch closes out the spring with real cash on the table for the ventures ready to compete for it.
Concept Competition
No prototype required — just a problem worth solving and what you've noticed about it. Twenty finalists share the stage in November — and every entrant gets Foundry Perks, win or lose.
Launch Competition
The culmination of a year of building: teams with a working product and customer evidence pitch to a room of investors and operators. Concept participation is not required.
