Competitions
Greif Center New Venture Seed Competition: a multi-round competition with supplementary instruction that allows students to build concepts, refine pitches, develop business models, and find customers. Finals judged by entrepreneurs, VCs, and angel investors. Total prizes: $150,000.
Athena Female Founders Pitch Competition: a competition focused on female founders, who pitch new and independent inventures before an expert panel of investors, faculty, and experienced entrepreneurs, with finalists presenting at our annual Athena Women's Entrepreneurship Summit. Total Prizes: >$10,000.
Min Family Challenge: a competition designed to encourage the use of innovative engineering and technology in developing sustainable, effective solutions to global problems. Total prizes; $50,000.
Maseeh Prize Competition: a competition with supplementary instruction designed to help engineering students develop business skills while solving global problems in energy, health, education, safety, and the environment. Total prizes: >$50,000.
Incubators
The USC Marshall Greif Incubator accelerates the development of the University of Southern California’s top student and alumni entrepreneurs through experiential education, mentorship and community. The Incubator, run the Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at USC’s Marshall School, takes founders from feasibility and development work, on to customers, a tested business model, distribution acquisition, team development, and funding (encompassing bootstrapping and investment preparation). Other supporting resources are also provided, including legal and financial assistance.
Located in the heart of Silicon Beach in Marina Del Rey, the Viterbi Startup Garage is a unique incubator for early-stage technology startups. They aim to stimulate the growth of technology-based ventures and support the USC innovation network. VSG residents are supported by the community at VSG, the USC alumni network, mentors, colleagues, investors and potential partners, and receive additional tactical assistance through VSG’s Innovator-in-Residence coaching, topical workshops, and events, all with the aim to accelerate to the next level of growth. All USC-affiliated (faculty, staff, student, alumni) teams with hard technologies are encouraged to apply.
In 2017, the USC Center for Engineering in Education (CEE) at the Rossier School of Education was founded, with the support of the Northrop Grumman Foundation, the Michelson 20M Foundation, Navitas Ventures, and Bisk Ventures. Rossier EdVentures, a part of CEE, offers a suite of entrepreneurship programs. These include an accelerator-like program for early-stage companies with a minimum viable product; a pitch event at USC’s Demo Day and at the Annual ASU-GSV summit; courses, workshops, speakers; and more.
USC Games Summer Bridge is an incubator program for the most promising student game projects. Selected game teams will spend time in a hands-on ten-week workshop with both industry experts and USC Games faculty to develop their student projects into publishable products. Topics covered include incorporation, marketing, finance and pitching to investors or publishers.