Note for international students

Source: https://careerservices.fas.harvard.edu/blog/2026/02/06/how-to-explore-entrepreneurship-at-harvard-2/ Parent: https://careerservices.fas.harvard.edu/channels/international-students/

• Share This:
• Copy Link

How to Explore Entrepreneurship at Harvard

Entrepreneurship is one of the most exciting fields to be involved in at Harvard but with so many resources it can be tough to figure out what’s best for you! Luckily, our former MCS PAF Matthew Andrews ’25 gathered resources to share how to engage with the innovation community at Harvard, especially for aspiring student founders!

As Credit

• The Lemann Program on Creativity and Entrepreneurship offers two courses CE10 in the Fall (formerly LPCE 101) – a studio lab teaching creativity and entrepreneurship basics and CE11 in the Spring (formerly LPCE 102) designed for students with existing ventures in the early stages of development with the goal of launching the venture by term’s end. Sign up here to receive emails and get involved
• COMPSCI 1060: Software Engineering with Generative AIThis course requires either a) two or more of CS 61 and 1000- or 2000-level systems courses with significant programming assignments, e.g., CS 1070, 1610, 1780; or (b) industry software development experience (internships OK). Note: This course has an enrollment cap of 50. Due to high demand, enrollment is likely to be limited to college seniors and MS+MBA students.
• EC 1021: Using Markets to Solve Social Problems is taught in the spring and demonstrates how one can use the power of the free market to address some of the most vexing social and economic problems of our time, with a particular emphasis on issues that plague minority communities and women.
• Engineering Sciences 139/239: Innovation in Science and Engineering in the fall allows students to explore factors and conditions contributing to innovation in science and engineering; how important problems are found, defined and solved; roles of teamwork and creativity; and applications of these methods to other endeavors.
• Engineering Sciences 94: Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Practical and Academic Insights is taught in the spring. This course aims to provide undergraduates with an introduction to entrepreneurship and its implications for innovation and is taught mainly through Case studies
• ENG-SCI 30: Startups: From Idea to Exit— This course explores the stages of a startup business, from idea generation through its scaling stage through its eventual exit. Classes will draw from Professor Rascoff’s extensive startup experience (Zillow, Hotwire, Pacaso, Match Group).
• LIFESCI 132: The Business of Biotech: Fundamentals of Entrepreneurship covers topics essential for students interested in starting a new venture, joining an existing company, or working on the investing side of the biotech or pharmaceutical industries. (Taught in Fall 2025)
• MCB 102: Creativity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship in the Life Sciences teaches students to identify life sciences problems, develop essential skills in innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurship, and apply them to life science challenges of your choice. The course emphasizes the development of actionable proposals by students that address current challenges and create social and economic value for society. (Taught in Spring 2026)

As Part of a Club

• College:
• Harvard Undergraduate Capital Partners works with VC companies to provide actionable insights for VC diligence and source deals for investors across the country.
  • HUCP alongside Harvard Undergraduate Consulting for Business and the Environment (CBE) Ventures houses the Innovation Fund which aims to support early-stage entrepreneurs from diverse backgrounds by providing equity-free grants to any Harvard-affiliated founder with a vision and the drive to make that vision a reality.
• Harvard Undergraduate Venture Capital Group works with VC companies to source deals and hosts a speaker series, an annual entrepreneurship summit, and founders happy hour.
• Harvard Ventures helps to educate and work with founders and those interested in the world of venture capital through a semester long comp.
• Harvard Undergraduate Women in Entrepreneurship (WE) is a community for women who are interested in entrepreneurship and want to learn more, develop skills, start their own venture, or get involved in start-up opportunities.
• Harvard Computer Society regularly put on events including entrepreneurship specific ones. They have a number of initiatives including Startups@Harvard which runs an annual Startup Trek to visit innovative companies in different cities. Their spring 2024 trip was to NYC.
• Harvard Women in Computer Science (WICS)  regularly put on events including entrepreneurship specific ones and run the annual WeCode conference which has 180+ colleges represented!
• Harvard Business School:
• Venture Capital & Private Equity Club (HBS) provides its members with career and educational opportunities in the venture capital and private equity sectors with speaker series, and conferences.
• Harvard Entrepreneurship Club (HBS) aims to provide a conduit by which students can access entrepreneurial resources, network with community entrepreneurs, and share ideas. The club is dedicated to furthering understanding about new and small businesses.
• Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition Club (HBS) educates the HBS community about Entrepreneurship through Acquisition, and provide potential searchers with the network and resources needed to succeed.

Innovation Spaces on Campus

• Harvard Innovation Labs: Harvard’s university-wide space for entrepreneurship. They offer a variety of really cool spaces to work on your project, mingle with other ventures and gain mentorship/advice from experts in the field. They have expert office hours and advising. They also administer a number of grants and fundraising opportunities – see below in fundraising. Be sure to subscribe to their newsletter and see their upcoming events. They have three man labs:
• The i-lab, a dynamic, full-service space for current Harvard students interested in actively pursuing innovation and entrepreneurship.
• Launch Lab X GEO, a groundbreaking virtual accelerator for eligible Harvard alumni leading promising early-stage startup ventures based anywhere across the globe.
• The Pagliuca Harvard Life Lab for Harvard students, faculty, and alumni working on high-potential life sciences and biotech startups.
• Makerspaces are a resource for ventures of all kinds, especially those in need of prototyping and manufacturing tools. The i-lab hosts their own makerspace as well as the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Note that both spaces require training before being allowed access.
• Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship at HBS is the center for entrepreneurship at HBS that houses faculty, classes, resources and programs which help students navigate the multitude of programs and resources available to students and alumni in the HBS and Harvard Ecosystem and in locations around the globe.
• The Rock Center also houses the Rock Summer Fellows program, which provides a chance for students during the summer between their RC (first-year) and EC (second-year) year to focus on their new venture, working for a startup or learning about venture capital.
• The Rock Center also has opportunities for undergraduate students with the Roberts Family Undergraduate Technology Innovation Fellows Program which enables a group of 10-15 outstanding Harvard College sophomores and juniors (from any College concentration) to build knowledge, skills, and a community, putting them on a path to launch and lead innovative endeavors. The 2026 application is open now and is due on February 27. Being a fellow gives students access to a number of HBS resources including a startup bootcamp, 2 HBS Electives and the HBS CORe online course material.
• Harvard Office of Technology Development promotes the public good by advancing science, fostering innovation, and translating new inventions made at Harvard University into useful products that are available and beneficial to society.
• Some of the key programs include advancing your research, protect your intellectual property, and execute your business strategy.
• They also provide access to experts and entrepreneurs in residence.
• Lastly, they house two accelerators the Blavatnik Biomedical Accelerator (for biomedical discoveries and technologies) and Harvard Grid Accelerator for innovations in the fields of science and engineering.
• Harvard Health Lab Accelerator: Each year they accept 10 multidisciplinary teams from across Harvard University’s undergraduate and graduate schools, many of which blend students from traditional entrepreneurial spaces (the sciences, engineering, business) with those from liberal arts, public health, and law. The common denominator: A determination to tackle pressing issues in public and planetary health.
• Prod: a non-profit organization that helps MIT, Harvard, & Stanford students prepare for their startup journey. PROD has helped over 70 students and 37 startups get started in the past few years.
• C House: a hacker house for Cambridge student founders. Every single Harvard and MIT founder who has lived in it has raised over $1m. C House has helped over 60 students and 30 startups get started in the past year.
• Harvard Law Entrepreneurship Project (HLEP) – HLEP provides legal advice to entrepreneurs at Harvard and MIT, free of charge, by matching entrepreneurs with teams of Harvard Law School students and attorney advisors from top startup-focused law firms in the U.S.
• NSF I-Corps Program – I-Corps program participants learn, through customer discovery, how to identify valuable opportunities that can emerge from academic research.
• HMS HealthTech Fellowship at the Center for Primary Care – 10-month immersion that will leave fellows equipped to use Biodesign innovation framework to reimagine the healthcare. The program runs August – May.
• Social Innovation Change Initiative (SICI) – Accelerator program for positive social change. SICI supports visionary social innovators and strengthens the ecosystems they need to thrive.

Hackathons and Competitions

What is a hackathon?

• It’s a collaborative event where people work together to solve a problem or create a product in a short amount of time. It’s about coming together to solve a problem that could but doesn’t have to involve coding at all.
• Often themed around solving problems in a specific area and can range from slides, to basic programs to pitching ideas.
• Include monetary prizes for top teams/ideas
• While some are open invitation, the annual ones listed below (Harvard, MIT and Stanford) usually have an application since they bring so many students, VCs and lots of people in the startup world together. Make sure to go to the website and get added to their email list so you don’t miss the deadline.
• For open hackathons it’s okay to go alone but for the larger hackathons applying with a team is preferable
• The ones listed below usually bring together around 1,000 students from across the world and last around between 24-36 hours

What a hackathon is not:

• It’s not just coding and you can even go without coding experience
• You don’t need an idea to go (in fact you go to find and think of an idea)
• You can go even if you think you won’t win – the learning, people you meet, and ideas you see are why you should go.

Below are a few examples of Hackathons that Harvard students participate in:

• HackHarvard hosts an annual collegiate hackathon that brings together students from around the world to collaborate and create innovative projects related to hardware, software, computer coding, and more. Occurs in the fall.
• HackMIT hosts an annual collegiate hackathon usually in the fall.
• TreeHacks is Stanford’s annual collegiate hackathon. It usually happens in February.
• MakeHarvardhosts an annual collegiate make-athon which is very similar to a hackathon except the focus is more on building physical solutions
• Major League Hacking – hosts weekly online and in-person hackathons around the world. See their 2026 hackathons here.
• MIT Hacking Medicine– Participate in hackathon events focused on enhancing global healthcare with collaborative research and innovative solutions. This year’s grand hack takes place in Boston, March 13-15.
• Pear VC hosts a number of fantastic opportunities for students across universities (current at Stanford, Berkeley, Harvard and MIT):
• Pear Garage provides 20 students $10k in investment alongside workshops, dinners, credits, talks, and a community of world-class peers.
• Pear Fellows which provides apprenticeship for students in early-stage venture capital. Pear Fellows work directly with Pear’s Partners to learn how we find, pick, and help the best founders.
• Pear Competition (spring) where startups can apply and receive actionable feedback alongside the opportunity to win up to $100K and work closely with the Pear team.

Fundraising

Harvard Funding Sources

• President’s Innovation Challenge (Harvard i-lab), an invitation to Harvard students and select alumni to propel their ideas forward — with the chance to win a share of $515,000 in non-dilutive funding, gifted from the Bertarelli Foundation.
• The Allston Venture Fund (Harvard i-lab) is an investment collaborative focused on providing both pre-seed funding and equity-free grants to ventures led by Harvard students.
• Spark Grant (Harvard i-lab)– Non-dilutive grants for ventures in our Student i-lab membership to conduct demand validation experiments. Award amount: Up to $750 first round. Up to $2,000 in subsequent rounds. Application opens in the spring.
• Social Impact Fellowship Fund (Harvard i-lab)– Non-dilutive grants for ventures led by Harvard students with a focus on social impact. Ventures may be for-profit or nonprofit. Typical award amount: $4,000-$15,000. Application opens in the Fall.
• HBS New Venture Competition – They have two tracks – business (requires at least one team member to be at HBS) and social enterprise (at least one team member enrolled in any of Harvard’s graduate degree programs) each with a grand prize of $75k in cash and in-kind service. You should apply early by December 6th or regular by January 26th.
• Climate and Sustainability Translational Fund – co-sponsored by Harvard’s Office of Technology Development and the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability at Harvard and will provide essential gap funding for Harvard innovations focused on climate and sustainability to develop towards startup formation. They will fund up to $100,000 per project. The 2025 Climate and Sustainability Translational Fund Accelerator Awards Request for Proposals will open in Spring 2025. Principal Investigators whose employer is Harvard University are eligible to apply, and projects are welcomed in any area of applied sciences, physical sciences, environmental sciences, computer sciences, or engineering with a focus on climate and sustainability solutions.
• XFund: Partner with all of Harvard’s premier entrepreneurial organizations, to run an annual competition to give out a minimum $100k investment (Xperiment Stake) to students who are serious about starting their companies full-time after graduation. They recently partnered with the startups@harvard student group to offer non-dilutive funding to member startups up to $10K in grants.

Non-Harvard Programs and Funding Sources

• Y Combinator (YC) – an American technology startup accelerator and venture capital firm. They have opportunities to apply to work in startups, free one week “startup school”, find a cofounder, and what they are best known for is “joining YC” which means joining the accelerator with your business idea. The deadline was November 12, but they are still accepting late applications for the Winter 2025 Batch funding cycle (which takes place from January to March in San Francisco). To make sure you don’t miss future deadlines, sign up for their reminders.
• Contrary Capital – University-focused venture fund investing up to $2M in emerging  startups launching from the university scene around the US.
• Dorm Room Fund – a fund built by students and backed by VC, they help student founders get all the help they need to take their companies to the next level.
• Rough Draft VC (RDV) – General Catalysts’ pre-seed investing branch
• Launchpad – A Network of active angel investors building individual portfolios with an emphasis on science and tech startups.
• Hub Angels – Provides investments to young tech and life science companies.
• Boston Harbor Angels – Business leaders investing within high-growth, early-stage companies.
• Nucleate – Nucleate is a student-led organization that represents the largest global community of bio-innovators.
• Activate – For two years, Activate supports fellows with a full-time living stipend, mentorship, an entrepreneurial education, access to funders and industry experts, and funding to access the facilities they need to turn their research into a first product.
• Greentown Labs – A climate-tech startup incubator, founded by entrepreneurs.
• MassChallenge – MassChallenge connects startups, experts, corporations, and communities to grow and transform businesses and economies. Accelerating high-impact startups with bold, disruptive ideas from non-traditional backgrounds.
• UMASS M2D2 – The Massachusetts Medical Device Development Center (M2D2) is a lifeline for the state’s smaller medical device companies, offering inventors and executives easy, affordable, and coordinated access to world-class researchers and resources.
• DRIVe – The Division of Research, Innovation, and Ventures (DRIVe) was established by the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to fund early stage companies for life saving innovation.
• MassVentures Acorn Innovation Grant – The Acorn Innovation Grant supports Principal Investigators at Massachusetts research universities who seek to demonstrate the viability of their technology. Awards could be used to: 1) further develop a prototype, 2) gather additional data or 3) obtain data to compare the technology.
• MIT The Engine Blueprint – Blueprint is a nonresident program for graduate students, postdocs, research scientists, faculty members, and their teams, to explore the commercial opportunities of their discovery.

Specific Funding Programs

• Pillar Moonshot – $1MM to seed-stage Harvard/MIT startups
• PearX – Pear VC’s program offering uncapped SAFE notes to student-led startups, along with mentorship and resources.
• NFX FAST – NFX’s Founder-friendly, Application-driven, Software-enabled, and Transparent funding program
• EntrepreneurFirst – A talent investor that helps individuals find co-founders, develop ideas, and fund pre-seed startups.
• NVIDIA Inception – A $100k credits program that nurtures AI startups

Grants

• OSV Grants – $100k grants to change the world
• Emergent Ventures – A grant program for moonshot ideas from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.
• Thiel Fellowship – A fellowship program offering $100,000 grants to young people who want to build new things instead of sitting in a classroom.

These resources were compiled with support of former C-House director, Lucas Chu AB ’25. Read more on the C-House notion page.

Note for international students

• To begin, as a reminder you should be incredibly careful about not losing your F-1 or J-1 student status by being employed outside of the university without prior approval. If you are ever concerned that you might do something to endanger your visa status please reach out to the Harvard International Office.
• That said, just because you might not be able to fully launch or incorporate your business does not mean it is not worth exploring. You can learn so much by being involved in any of the above without endangering your visa status. We encourage you to test out your ideas, map all your plans out, and meet regularly with advisors as you go along this exciting journey of entrepreneurship.

By Matthew Andrews '25

Matthew Andrews '25 Former MCS PAF

Send Email\