Supercharge Student Interest in Entrepreneurship
Summer Spark helps universities find their most entrepreneurial students, inspire them to build startups, and empower them through a fully managed, virtual summer accelerator.
Program Dates
Student Benefits
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Feedback from Silicon Valley Founders & Investors
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Experiential, Action-Focused Curriculum
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Diverse, International Cohort of Participants
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Fully Integrated AI Tools & Resources
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Flexible Structure mixing Live and Self-Paced Work
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Global Pitching Opportunities for Top Performers
Summer Spark 2025 Cohort
Designed to Meet Your Challenges
Summer Spark is designed to help universities:
- Increase student body interest in their entrepreneurship initiatives and competitions
- Build IP value by exposing student ventures to a global network of investors and advisors
- Identify and empower their most entrepreneurial students using proven methodologies
A Multi-Step Process
Summer Spark isn't just a course: it is a multi-step process to help universities identify their most entrepreneurial students and inspire them to participate in university startup initiatives.
Inspire Your Students to Build
Through engaging action plans and practical business-building sprints, we take the guesswork away and guide students through the challenging first steps of entrepreneurship.
Find Your Most Entrepreneurial Students
Leverage the Founder Institute's proprietary, social science-based "Entrepreneur DNA Assessment" to engage your students and find your entrepreneurial outliers.
Empower Your Students through Connections
Summer Spark brings together students from different countries and backgrounds, and provides access to experienced entrepreneurs and investors across our global startup network.
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As a new Incubator program at SJSU, we needed a way to help founders get up to speed quickly, and FI was a perfect fit. The flexibility to learn at their own pace is critical in supporting all founders from all backgrounds, and the pre-built content was easy to deploy.
Michael AshleySpartUp Incubator Director, San Jose State University -
So many of the entrepreneurs are, right from the beginning, trying to figure out how to give back to the community. That’s just a wonderful thing to experience.
Peter SchuermanAssociate Vice Chancellor, UC Merced -
The biggest challenge I had during fundraising was explaining our value proposition. It was complicated. The advice I got around everything from FI was spot on!
Ernest ChanPredictNow ($500K+ funding)
Program Schedule
Summer Spark combines live sessions, interactive “AMAs”, and group work with self-paced business-building sprints and assignments.
Dates
Entrepreneur Mindset
Summer Spark kicks off with an inspirational deep-dive on the characteristics, mindset, and strategies employed by the world’s top entrepreneurs.
- Meet your mentors & cohort
- How to analyze startup ideas
- Market and customer research
Validation
Week two covers all of the strategies and tactics experienced entrepreneurs use to test, challenge, iterate, and improve their initial startup ideas.
- Getting expert feedback on ideas
- Validation strategies and tactics
- Designing tests to derisk a startup
Customer Development
This week is all about talking to customers, getting feedback, building personas, and developing a full understanding of customer problems.
- Creating and conducting interviews
- Outreach methodologies and tactics
- Removing bias from customer research
Go-To-Market
Week 4 provides a deep-drive on the strategies and methodologies top startups use to get their first customers, identify marketing channels, and scale their growth.
- Unit economics
- Evaluating marketing channels
- Scrappy growth tactics
Team-Building
This week focuses on the components of great startup teams, skills audits, and strategies for finding and evaluating potential team members.
- Co-Founder dynamics and relationships
- Recruiting strategies and tactics
- Finding Mentors and Advisors
Pitch Mastery
In preparation for the upcoming Pitch & Networking Day, this week provides students with a strong understanding and suite of proven frameworks for building a great startup pitch.
- One sentence, elevator, and long pitch formats
- Pitching strategies and dynamics
- Pitch deck construction
Investors & Venture Capital
This week provides a crash course on the startup funding lifecycle and how startup investment and venture capital works.
- How investors value startup investments
- Terms, cap tables, and equity math
- Requirements for venture investment
Pitch & Networking Day
Summer Spark concludes with a fun, energy-filled pitch session where all participants have the opportunity to give a final startup pitch to experienced investors and founders for feedback.
- International and Silicon Valley-based startup investors
- Experienced startup founders and advisors
Perks for Top Performers
Top performing students from Pitch Day receive:
- Invitations to Pitch on a “Founder Showcase” Online Pitch Event with 1000+ people in attendance
- Invitations to Attend the Founder Institute’s exclusive “FounderX Conference”
- Continued Access to FI Events and Platform
Delivered via World Class Tools
Students participate in Summer Spark using the Founder Institute’s powerful suite of learning management tools, custom built to provide:
- Experiential learning and structured, action-oriented sprints
- Embedded videos, templates, and resources to help with every step of the business-building process
- State of the art AI tools to help students augment their capabilities and speed up progress
Powered by the Founder Institute
Based in Silicon Valley, the Founder Institute is the world's largest pre-seed startup accelerator. Since 2009, FI's accelerators have helped new and early-stage entrepreneurs raise funding across nearly every geography, industry, and sector. The company's mission is to empower communities of talented and motivated people to build impactful technology companies worldwide.
7,500+
Portfolio Companies
$1.85BN+
Portfolio Company Funding
200+
Chapter Cities
100+
Chapter Countries
6
Continents
35,000+
Global Mentors & Advisors
Frequently Asked Questions
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Summer Spark is a 8-week online program that helps students learn about entrepreneurship and rapidly test and validate startup ideas through structured assignments, expert guidance, and actionable feedback.
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All program sessions and mentor interactions are online. The sessions are live and recordings will be available, but we highly recommend attendance to get the most out of Summer Spark and meet like-minded students.
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Expect to spend 5–10 hours per week on weekly deliverables, customer interviews and attending weekly mentor sessions.
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Yes! Participants who complete all the deliverables and successfully complete the program will receive a certificate of completion.
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Yes, the Founder Institute can run a fully dedicated or a white-labled program in partnership with one organization.
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Yes. Please indicate interest by May 30, 2025 by filling in the form or emailing partners@fi.co
The Founder Institute is the world’s most proven network to turn ideas into fundable startups, and startups into global businesses. Since 2009, our structured accelerator programs have helped over 7,500 entrepreneurs raise over $1.85BN in funding. Based in Silicon Valley and with chapters across 100 countries, our mission is to empower communities of talented and motivated people to build impactful technology companies worldwide.
