Two Stanford students have unveiled Breakthrough Ventures, a $2 million accelerator designed to fund and mentor college founders nationwide, pairing non-dilutive grants with technical and industry support to close the early-stage gap many student teams face.
Who Is Behind Breakthrough Ventures and How It Was Formed
Co-founders Roman Scott and Itbaan Nafi spun the accelerator out of a run of popular student Demo Days they organized at Stanford, where momentum from strong projects pushed them toward a formal fund. They recruited operator Raihan Ahmed to lead day-to-day programs and secured backing from investors including Mayfair and Collide Capital, alongside a roster of Stanford founder alumni. Their thesis is plainspoken: a program built by student founders tends to remove friction for student founders.
The accelerator’s scope is intentionally broad across AI, health, consumer, deep tech, and sustainability. That mirrors where student teams have been most active over the last two years, as generative AI tooling, accessible biotech platforms, and cheaper prototyping have lowered the barrier to building credible MVPs on campus.
What the Program Offers Student Founders Across the U.S.
Breakthrough will run a hybrid model: distributed, in-person meetups hosted at established venture firms around the country, culminating in a Demo Day at Stanford. The package includes:
- Grant funding of up to $100,000
- Cloud and GPU credits via Microsoft and the Nvidia Inception program
- Legal support
- Transportation benefits from Waymo
- Consideration for a $50,000 follow-on investment at the program’s conclusion
Mentorship is a centerpiece. The network includes senior operators such as Waymo CEO Tekedra Mawakana and veteran founders who have navigated high-growth phases. For student teams building AI products, the compute support is material: GPU costs can quickly eclipse a scrappy budget, and early credits often determine whether a model can be trained, evaluated, and shipped on a practical timeline.
Why Student Accelerators Matter for Early-Stage Founders
Early-stage student founders typically struggle with two things—capital and connections. Research from the Kauffman Foundation has long highlighted the role of networks in new-venture formation, and younger founders often have fewer industry ties and limited access to early believers. By combining grants, technical sandboxes, and introductions to investors and customers, Breakthrough aims to convert promising campus projects into fundable companies faster.
The timing aligns with a surge in university-born startups in AI and hard tech, where validation cycles compress once teams can run experiments at scale. Hybrid programming helps extend beyond the Bay Area to talent at public universities and regional schools that are historically under-networked but technically strong.
How Breakthrough Fits Within the Student Startup Ecosystem
Student-focused capital isn’t new. UC Berkeley’s Free Ventures, MIT’s Sandbox Innovation Fund, and Stanford-affiliated StartX, LaunchPad, and Cardinal Ventures have seeded hundreds of founders. National initiatives like Dorm Room Fund and Rough Draft Ventures have also proven that small checks plus strong peer communities can produce outsize outcomes.
Breakthrough’s angle is to knit together a multi-campus network while keeping students in the driver’s seat and leaning on grants where possible. The model sits neatly alongside the broader pipeline: PitchBook’s annual university rankings consistently place Stanford near the top for producing venture-backed founders, but the founders say the goal is to decentralize access so that a standout team at a state school receives similar lift.
Roadmap, Selection Criteria, and Application Timeline
The team plans to deploy capital over three years and incubate at least 100 companies. Selection will emphasize:
- Teams with early traction or strong technical depth
- Clear user obsession
- A path to repeatable distribution—through product-led growth on campus, emerging research commercialization, or partnerships that validate demand
Applications for the latest cohort are open now. The founders frame Breakthrough as both a funding vehicle and a community hub for Gen Z entrepreneurship—aimed at helping students turn credible prototypes into resilient companies, and doing so with a support stack that reflects how builders actually work today.
