What is the Maryland New Venture Program?
The Maryland New Venture program provides entrepreneurs and technologists with an opportunity to determine whether big technology idea is commercially viable.
The program pairs a technologist/entrepreneur with UMBC graduate student “fellows” and an experienced business mentor to collaborate as a team on a technology solution that impacts society. The team works together to further develop their technology’s path forward toward commercialization and create a pitch that validates its market viability.
Only technology solutions that impact society’s need for secure information systems, utilities, infrastructure, and supply chains will be considered for this program.
The Maryland New Venture Program, presented by bwtech, is an intense four-month program that provides deeply valuable, real-world learning opportunities. It culminates in a Pitch Night competition, where the teams present their findings to a panel of experts for the chance to win funding and the opportunity to bring their great idea to the region’s most sought-after corporate partners and government agencies.
Applications are open
for Technologist/Entrepreneurs with great ideas!
Technologist/Entrepreneurs
Your role: To drive the technological direction of the project and advance the development of the technology as it relates to value proposition, customer identification, pricing, licensing, and identification of competition.
Who can apply: Any Maryland-based technology developer currently in the process of validating their technology solutions, including faculty and graduate students within the University System of Maryland and its incubators.
Benefits: Free entrepreneurial education, expert mentorship from renowned business leaders, and support from top-performing graduate students to further refine your idea and develop an award-winning pitch deck to support your idea and bring it to market.
What You Can Expect
Once the technology solution ideas are selected and the technologist/entrepreneurs are notified, they will be paired with appropriate Fellow Graduate Students and Mentors.
Teams will meet virtually on Monday evenings as well as participate in weekly working meetings with their teams using a systematic approach that includes weekly agendas, assignments, milestones, and deadlines.
Mentors will use their extensive networks to help advance the projects toward commercial success.
The Fellow Graduate Students will complete assignments from the technologists and mentors to support the validation of the idea and develop a pitch deck that includes customer discovery interviews, market research, pricing and licensing, building a budget, and implementation plans for the idea.
All team members will participate in educational presentations from leading experts in areas such as finance and marketing, and will have required reading.
Meet Cohort 3 of the program
About This Program
The Maryland New Venture program was created in partnership by bwtech, UMBC, and the University System of Maryland to assist entrepreneurs working on research of technologies which positively affect our lives. This year’s program is sponsored by UMBC, FounderTrac, TEDCO, RNM Productions, Startup Grind, and produced by bwtech.
Sponsored by:
Maryland New Venture Fellowship is made possible through the support of our sponsors and the strength of the bwtech@UMBC community.