Pitch. Build. Compete.

One of the nation’s premier new venture competitions held at the Beall Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship in partnership with UCI Beall Applied Innovation. 

To learn more, visit the New Venture Competition website.

A competition offered to encourage the creation of new technologies or solutions to current design problems that have the potential for commercialization. 

To compete in the Beall or Butterworth Competitions, please visit their website.

A product development competition designed to encourage the creation of new technologies with the potential for commercialization.

To compete in the Beall or Butterworth Competitions, please visit their website.

A tournament-style competition where teams of entrepreneurs compete head-to-head for prizes  in a series of challenges to test their entrepreneurship abilities.

An annual competition to generate innovative ideas, products, or services with the potential to alleviate an aspect of poverty.

A parallel track for teams participating in the Beall New Venture Competition that is focused on the translation of UCI-generated innovations.

A competition where students from the UCI School of Medicine and UCI Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences compete and design applications with healthcare utility.

A global community of empowered entrepreneurs who are interested in launching successful ventures.

Aspire is a five-week in-depth, hybrid program that prepares startups for investor engagement. Investor-mentors work one-on-one with startups to simulate due diligence conversations and integrate feedback into deal room materials in real time. This program aims to prepare startups to raise equity investment.

To learn more, visit the Aspire page.

The national BME-IDEA Competition offers university biomedical entrepreneurs the chance to win up to $10,000 and receive critical early-stage validation of their ideas.

To learn more about BME-Idea please visit their website.

Cleantech University Prize (Cleantech UP) business plan competitions provide aspiring student entrepreneurs with the mentorship, business development skills and training, and investor feedback to transform their clean energy ideas into impactful businesses. Launched in 2015, Cleantech UP builds upon its precursor, the DOE National Clean Energy Business Plan Competition. Since the competition started, participants have formed more than 200 ventures, created more than 115 jobs, and raised more than $120 million in follow-on funding.

To compete in the Beall or Butterworth Competitions, please visit their website.

With $190,000 in prizes for 2025, the DEBUT Challenge is open to undergraduate student teams working on innovative solutions to unmet health and clinical problems.

The National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) and VentureWell have come together to support and expand the Design by Biomedical Undergraduate Teams (DEBUT) Challenge, a competition that recognizes undergraduate excellence in biomedical design and innovation.

To learn more about DEBUT, visit the page here.

The E-Team Program, part of the VentureWell Accelerator, supports student ventures as you embark down the path you’re likely to take as an innovator and entrepreneur. We help you advance your invention through a powerful mix of up to $25,000 in grant funding, entrepreneurship training, mentorship by dedicated staff, national recognition, and networking with peers and industry experts.

Visit the E-Team page for more information.

VentureWell’s Inventing Green: A Toolkit for Sustainable Design helps early-stage inventors understand how the lifecycle of their products will affect the environment. The toolkit includes a video series and several resources that can be used together, a la carte, or within short workshops, multi-day accelerators, or as part of a university-level engineering or design course.

Read more on the page here.

I-Corps™  is a National Science Foundation (NSF) initiative launched in 2011 to increase the economic impact of the research it has funded by transitioning it from lab to market. Through a dynamic collaboration with VentureWell, NSF offers select participants from U.S. academic laboratories the opportunity to participate in an accelerated version of Stanford University’s Lean LaunchPad course. 

Teams are expected to complete at least 10 customer discovery interviews per week, engaging with at least 100 potential customers over the course of the 10-week program.

Learn more about I-Corps on their page here.

The ACC InVenture Prize is an innovation competition in which teams of undergraduates representing each ACC university pitch their inventions or businesses before a live audience and a panel of judges. Teams compete for $30,000 in prizes and a chance to be the next ACC InVenture Prize winner. 

To learn more, visit the InVenture page.

The Baylor New Venture Competition is underwritten by an anonymous gift to Baylor University and the Hankamer School of Business. The differentiator between this competition and others is the focus on encouraging student entrepreneurs worldwide to catalyze and grow their business.

Applicants will receive expert advice throughout the competition cycle:

• Executive Summary Feedback
• Business Plan Feedback
• One-on-One Mentorship
• Rounds of Pitch Coaching
• Feedback Sessions
• Final Presentation Feedback

The day of finals will include pitch presentations with judge Q&A, networking, a business showcase, audience participation and awards.

To learn more about the Baylor NVC, please visit their website.

To learn more about this competition, please visit their website.

The James Dyson Award is an international design award that celebrates, encourages and inspires the next generation of design engineers. It’s open to current and recent design engineering students, and is run by the James Dyson Foundation, James Dyson’s charitable trust, as part of its mission to get young people excited about design engineering.

To learn more about The James Dyson Award, visit the page here.

The MIT Climate & Energy Prize competition seeks to move the world closer to net zero carbon emissions by empowering ambitious entrepreneurs to solve the world’s most difficult climate-related challenges.

They are the largest and longest-running competition for student-led climate & energy startups in the world. Since its founding in 2007, the MIT Climate & Energy Prize has received more than 1000 applications, offered world-class mentoring to over 315 teams, and granted more than $3.4M in non-dilutive cash prizes. Teams compete for $100,000+ in prize money and have access to mentoring and other resources. Since 2008, CEP alumni have raised over $4.6 billion in capital invested (as defined by PitchBook based on 170 companies identified to date). 

Visit the MIT CEP page for more information.

The MIT Water, Food & Agriculture Innovation Prize brings together early-stage, student-led startups from across the US, awarding $50K+ in innovation grants annually to ventures driving the future of sustainable water, food, and agricultural solutions. Since its inception in 2015, the Prize has awarded $300K to 30 winning teams.

As the main innovation-focused event of MIT Water Club and MIT Food & Agriculture Club, we help emerging entrepreneurs translate research & ideas into businesses, access mentors & resources, and build networks in the water, food, and agriculture industries. All approaches to innovation are welcome, from engineering and product design to policy and data analytics.

Read more on the page here.

The Rice Business Plan Competition gives collegiate entrepreneurs real-world experience to pitch their startups, enhance their business strategy and learn what it takes to launch a successful company. 2026 marks our 26th year of the Rice Business Plan Competition (RBPC). To celebrate this milestone, we are proud to announce that Rice Business is our presenting sponsor. Rice Business, in its 51st year, is the home to the No. 1 Graduate Entrepreneurship Program and shares our mission to empower the next generation of entrepreneurial leaders. Hosted by the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship, the RBPC has grown to become the world’s largest and richest student start-up competition, with 42 teams competing for more than $1 million in cash, investments and prizes.

Learn more about the Rice Business Competition on their page here.

University Lab Partners (ULP) announces the 4th annual launch of Orange County’s pitch competition for life science startups, Pitch. Launch. Grow.

Applicants have the opportunity to apply for one of three tracks: life science, medical technologies and pediatric devices. The life science track includes companies developing technology in the fields of drug discovery, pharmaceuticals, and therapeutics. The medical technologies track includes companies developing medical devices, diagnostics, and digital health innovations.

Two (2) winners from the Medical Technologies and Life Science track will receive priority admission and/or renewal to ULP, 1-year sponsored lab space at ULP.

One (1) winner from the Pediatric track will receive priority admission and/or renewal to ULP, 1-year sponsored lab space at ULP, and a $2,500 cash prize.

Learn more on the University Lab Partners website.

We believe that small bets and a growth mindset lead to breakthrough innovations. Since 2012, we’ve awarded cash prizes to early-stage, young social innovators in California with novel solutions to community challenges. Click the “Apply Now” button to become the next Westly Prize winner. Prizes totaling up to $145,000 will be awarded to winning changemakers and social innovators. Three top prizes of $40,000 in unrestricted funding will be given.

To apply to be a 2026 Westly Prize finalist, submit your application between Tuesday, September 2 – Friday, October 17, 2025 at 11:59 PM PST.

Learn more about the Westly Prize on their page here.