Prepare to chart your own course through our Entrepreneurship and Innovation Program. As a student, you have the opportunity to utilize and build upon your liberal arts education while learning the fundamentals of starting a venture and keeping a company relevant in this fast-changing world.
Student Incubator
HC Launch, the student-run incubator, fosters the development of entrepreneurial skills and ventures in the Holy Cross community. The incubator takes a holistic approach to support individuals through skills training, mentorship, funding opportunities, and in-kind resources.
Students can register for the student incubator and receive support developing a business from concept to launch and growth or join an extended team that will help current venture ideas.
For those students working with the Ignite Fund, the incubator provides skills training, support, and mentorship to those students who are still formulating their ideas, as well as those who have a project that is ready for additional resources.
Entrepreneurship & Innovation Programs
Engage in entrepreneurial activity while connecting to potential collaborators, mentors, and the resources needed to take an idea to the next level.
Innovation Challenge
Teams of students will race against the clock and each other to solve a problem given to them the day of. Teams will only have six hours to work, and the team with the best solution platform will take home the 1st place prize. This event brings together students from all class years and majors. Judges will comprise of alumni who are looking for workable prototypes. The best prototypes will walk away with cash prizes, in-kind services (totaling $5,000) and a chance to pitch at Shark Tank!
- Sunday, March 19 from 12-2pm in the Prior Performing Arts Center, Booth Media Lab
- Register for the 2023 Innovation Challenge.
Pitch Night!
Whether students have a project or just an idea they are working on, these events are an opportunity to run that idea by a group of peers to receive feedback on it. Blocked on your next steps? Not sure how to stress test an idea? Want to find peers to help you build out the idea? Pitch night is designed to help. No slides. No suits. Two-three minute pitch. Just you and your idea. That’s it!
- Registration currently closed.
Shark Tank Competition
As part of Entrepreneurship Week, the annual Shark Tank Competition is an opportunity for students to receive funding to take their ideas and turn them into ventures, as well as scale existing ventures. Individuals will pitch their ideas or ventures to a board of Holy Cross Sharks, who come from our vast network of alumni, in front of an audience of their peers. The best pitches will walk away with cash prizes, mentoring opportunities, in-kind services and much more, totaling over $50,000 in combined prizes.
Startup Weeks
What does it take to launch a startup and keep it running? Students have the opportunity to participate in various Startup Weeks to visit cities with vibrant startups for a firsthand look at fledgling businesses as well as innovative campuses within corporations.