The University of St. Thomas announced this week that it will partner with Midwest startup accelerator gener8tor to launch two new accelerator programs for its students.
Funded by the Richard M. Schulze Family Foundation, the partnership will bring two programs to St. Thomas’ Schulze School of Entrepreneurship.
The first program, gALPHA, will be a four-week venture workshop to help students form startups. Five to eight teams of students will participate in this program. The second program, gBETA, will be a seven-week accelerator that assists early-stage St. Thomas-affiliated startups. gBETA will help startups connect with mentors, grow customer traction and pitch investors.
gALPHA and gBETA will both begin this summer. Both are free for students to join. Neither program takes equity in the participating companies.
Gener8tor has offices in Minneapolis, Madison and Milwaukee, and is best known for its 12-week, accelerator program. In this summer accelerator, gener8tor takes equity in participating startups and provides them with around $100,000 in capital.
The announcement of St. Thomas’ new partnership with gener8tor comes not long after the University of Minnesota said that it was launching a startup incubator to support companies spun out of university research.
Called Discovery Launchpad, the program was developed by the U’s Venture Center to support researchers who want to bring new technology to market.
The University of Minnesota has been turning its research into startups for more than a decade. Founded in 2006, the U’s Venture Center has launched more than 140 startups. In 2018, The U generated about $16 million in revenue from deals licensing its researchers’ inventions.
Discovery Launchpad plans to graduate eight startups from the program this fiscal year.
