LaunchPad: New Venture Incubator

NC State Innovation and Entrepreneurship has developed an incubator program to support early-stage startups! During the incubator, students will work on furthering their concepts through a variety of fundamental practices like doing customer discovery, exploring business modeling and thinking through commercialization strategy. This friendly, low-stakes and informal cohort is the perfect place to bounce ideas off one another as well as hold one another accountable for tangible next steps for your new venture.

The incubator occurs over a rolling 10-week period, with entrepreneurs joining on a drop-in basis. Student entrepreneurs are also eligible for micro funding. Funding can range from roughly $200 to $800 per student (up to $1,000 per team), depending on your venture and it’s needs.

While the cohort will meet for two hours every other week, the program gives students access to an asynchronous library of resources and lets them navigate them at their own pace. Throughout the incubator period, participants will also be connected to mentorship and other forms of support. Every other week’s session will kick off with founder updates including what’s working, road blocks, and goals for the week.

For more information about Launchpad and to apply, please visit the Launchpad web page here.

Spring 2026 LaunchPad schedule (subject to change):

• Jan 29 – Intros and expectations
• Feb 12 – Pivoting and deployment of your product/service in the face of extreme challenges
• Feb 26 – Customer discovery/market fit
• March 12 – Short form video content marketing
• March 26 – Product scaling, production and crowdfunding
• April 9 – TBD
• April 23 – TBD