Program Objective
This program is designed to foster growth of new ideas and individual participants into early stages of new ventures, including technology and social impact ventures.
The four-week sequence is open to any and all CCNY students, who may also bring friends and potential colleagues with them. Participants may come with ideas for new ventures - or not! These workshops are all about exploration, discovery and team-building.
At the end of these four weeks, participants will be very well prepared to apply for the Zahn Innovation Center’s Venture Competition Program that takes place in the Spring semester. That program culminates in a Demo Week where new ventures will be awarded funding to help develop their startups.
Fall Startup Minicamp Program Logistics
In-person workshops will be held on Thursdays, from 12:15-1:45pm, in NAC 1-103 (Flex Space), from October 16, 2025 through November 6, 2025.
RSVP link will be available here in the Fall semester
Additional Open Innovation Office Hours will be provided during the minicamp. Participants may meet each other, Zahn Innovation Center staff, alumni and mentors in the co-working space for more personalized interactions.
Optional workshops on topics including prototyping, branding, networking and pitching will also be offered, schedules TBC.
Spring 2026 Venture Competition applications will be due after the last session. The application will draw heavily on content discussed in the minicamp, so attending the sessions in the fall will increase your chances of being accepted in the 2025 Venture Competition!
Minicamp Program Schedule (Tentative)
10/16 - Introducing Startups and Entrepreneurial Problem Solving, and Value Propositions
You have a “great” idea, now what? You want to help solve an interesting problem, how can entrepreneurship do that? What value will you provide?
10/23 - Customer/ User Discovery and Insights
Who are your customers? What do they want? Learn how to find your target customers and stakeholders to interview, how to conduct truly productive interviews, as well as how to listen for insights and trends.
10/30 - Market Sizing and Competitive Analysis
Some of the first questions an investor will ask are "How big is the market opportunity?" and “Who are your competitors?”. Learn what this means and how to set a strategy to capture your target market.
11/6 - Minimum Viable Product/Prototype (MVP) Development
You started with assumptions on how your product would fill a need with your customers. Now how do you proceed in building and iterating on a solution that offers them the greatest value without investing a lot of your time, effort and expense on development?
Last Updated: 05/15/2025 15:10