Sponsored Alumni Startup Projects

A tremendous opportunity for alumni to engage with talented and passionate Trinity fourth-year students to evaluate potential startup concepts together

Building on our impressive alumni network, the Sponsored Alumni Startup Projects Program fields ideas from alumni who know their markets and needs, and who bring their startup ideas to campus to pitch to student teams to pursue.

This program is in development but is meant to be designed to encourage student teams to form around alumni ideas, and then tap their knowledge, networks and other resources to develop the idea to the point of a go/no go. If a go, the students can form a company, raise funds, hire talent, and proceed with the startup using Trinity’s startup support ecosystem.

This builds on the passion of students, the expertise of faculty and staff, and the extensive experience of alumni to craft startups with a better chance of being successful than undergraduate students’ home-grown ideas.

Student Benefits	Alumni Benefits
Gain hands-on startup experience Build real-world skills Meet academic requirements Expand professional network and relationships Possibly create a future job opportunity	Gain valuable research and input from students & faculty Contribute to student education Efficient use of research dollars If alumni, give back to Trinity Gain potential future benefit from successful implementations

This is a program predominantly designed for Senior Capstone Projects/Senior Projects but can be applied to other instances as well. This links alumni who have viable, commercializable ideas worth pursuing, with student(s) who would like to work on those ideas for their senior project coursework and potential future engagement post-graduation.

There is a $5,000 fee to the department overseeing the senior project, paid by the alumni.

2022-2023 Sponsor Feedback

The Trinity students have been very helpful and our team has enjoyed working with them. Going into the project, we knew the challenge of understanding part equivalency was so large that we wouldn’t solve the whole thing with two students in one academic year. That said, the Trinity team helped us move the ball down the field, and proved viability. In my eyes, they verified that it is possible to re-write to rules on how we understand and leverage our catalog data.

HOW IT WORKS

This is a school year-long experience and creates an environment where Trinity students and faculty are working with alumni to solve problems – and creating experiential learning and future potential employment opportunities in the process.

1. Alumni work with the Entrepreneurship Center and the involved department to refine a proposed concept into a final project.
2. Students review available projects from the Center and select projects they would like to work on, either as individuals or in teams.
3. Alumni meet with the department and students and confirm a go-ahead on the project.  An overseeing faculty member is assigned to the project.
4. Alumni remit the $5,000 project fee and the students begin working on the project with the alumni.
5. At the end of the school year, the students prepare a final deliverable for the alumni and complete their assessment of the project — presenting the results of the project at the Senior Project Poster Day and other presentations as required by the department.
6. Alumni and Entrepreneurship Center evaluate results and consider potential next steps, including possibly launching a company around the results of the project.

This program is governed by a legal licensing agreement with Trinity that is available on request.

For more information, contact [email protected].