Columbia IDE

Innovation

Design and

Entrepreneurship

Mission

Our organization helps students learn about innovation, design, and entrepreneurship helping them build a community, form teams, and supporting promising ideas with funding through competitions. We also provide spaces and other resources for prototyping and testing.

Millard Chan ’99 Technology Challenge Finale on April 3

Photos by April Renae (April 3, 2024)

Startup Columbia is a series of campus-wide startup competitions offering non-dilutive cash prizes to the winning teams. The challenge recognizes startups for their solid foundation of applied, solution-focused, and technological innovation with the opportunity to win seed funding for their ventures. Columbia Engineering provided $50,000 in funding to the top three teams in the challenge and $10,000 for the Engineering for Humanity prize. Learn more.

🥇First Place | InstaLabel: Novel customizable data-annotator to train any AI-model.
Ayman Talkani, 2023 M.S. Electrical and Electronics Engineering; Aadil Mehdi Sanchawala, 2023 M.S. Computer Science

🥈Second Place | Dumpling AI: Automated, product-contextualized documentation for engineers.
Jessica Shi, Sarah Gu, Manasi Soman, Theodore Chow; 2024 Columbia Engineering and Columbia College

🥉Third Place | Brekland: Climate resilience solution for farmers combating frost. Philip Brudnicki, 2022, PhD, Columbia University, Biomedical Engineering; Eric Bellefroid, 2018, PhD, Yale University, Geochemistry

🏅Engineering for Humanity Award | CIPER: Automating IV push to reduce administration errors.
Sean Kim, Annabel Cho, Leonhard Heinrich; 2024 Columbia Engineering

Connecting Entrepreneurs on February 1

On Thursday, February 1, Columbia Engineering hosted Connecting Entrepreneurs and welcomed the Columbia Engineering Alumni Association, Dev Shrotri, founder of CloudLex®, Leonard Robinson, a Columbia alumnus who empowers diverse founders in technology. The event provided students an opportunity to connect with founders and expand their entrepreneurial network. Alumni shared their experience with guests and ways to leverage their Columbia experience for their ventures.

Fast Pitch on November 15

Thank you all for coming to the event! Wednesday, November 15th was Columbia’s annual Fast Pitch competition. Participants provide a one-minute pitch of their start-up to an esteemed panel of judges and alumni. Over 35 teams competed for a $5,000 prize pool to help directly fund their companies and scale their idea. There were three categories, an undergraduate and graduate category along with an audience choice award, and we are excited to share this year’s winners!

Tough Tech: The Kinnos Mission

Get to know infection prevention startup Kinnos, co-founded by Columbia alumni, and how it’s revolutionizing disinfectant solutions to protect patients and communities worldwide.

Watch video

Text IQ

Apoorv Agarwal PhD'16

Text IQ, a student startup co-founded in 2014 by Apoorv Agarwal, MS ‘08 and PhD ‘16 in computer science, is one of the few technology startups that became profitable in a year. The startup was acquired by Relativity, a global legal and compliance technology company, in 2021.

Learn more

How to Start a Startup

Daniela Duron Garcia BS’20, Erin McNulty BS’23, and Maya Joudi GS’22

Three women entrepreneurs discuss perseverance, funding, and honing your concept. Most entrepreneurs would agree that the most difficult stage for any startup venture is getting the idea off the ground. You might have a good product, you might even have a target market, but there are a million questions that come up on the way to turning a great concept into a solid company.

News and events

Stay up to date on the latest news and community announcements, explore the recent newsletters.

2023 – 2024 Calendar of Events

Fall 2023

Sep 21 Innovation Forum: Welcome Back Entrepreneurs
Oct 11 Innovation Forum: Perfect Your Pitch with Pete Slosberg
Oct 12 – Oct 27 Start Me Up Bootcamp
Oct 25 Ask Me Anything: Fast Pitch 2023
Oct 27 VC Negotiations workshop with Hugh Thomas
Oct 30 Fast Pitch 2023 application deadline
Nov 15 Fast Pitch 2023 competition

Spring 2024

Jan 19  NSF I-Corps Meetup
Jan 24 Innovation Forum: Immigration and Entrepreneurship
Jan 25 – Feb 9  Start Me Up Bootcamp
Feb 1 Innovation Forum: Connecting Entrepreneurs
Feb 9 Meet SEAS at the Columbia Startup Lab
Feb 9 Millard Chan ’99 Technology track deadline
Mar 20 Innovation Forum: Business Plans and the ‘Pitch’
Apr 3 Millard Chan ’99 Technology Challenge Finalé
Apr 5 Lunch and Learn at CUIMC
Apr 11 – 29  Start Me Up Bootcamp
Apr 24 Founder’s Journey: Navigating the Obstacles from Student to Startup
Apr 29  Ignition grant application deadline

View google calendar of events

Learning

Funding

Space

Columbia Startup Lab

Welcome the 2023-2024 cohort of the Columbia Startup Lab!

Entrepreneur

Jern Kunpittaya ’23, co-founder of crypto startup Edge Protocol, took an unexpected path into decentralized finance

Venture Competition Winners

Congratulations to the winners of the Technology Challenge

COI and IP Resources

Conflict of interest - Office of Research Compliance and Training

Start-up Companies and Conflicts of Interest (PDF)

More info can be found here:
https://research.columbia.edu/content/coi-policies-and-resources.

Columbia Technology Ventures (CTV)

Two Online Libraries of Commercialization Resources for Faculty & Students

Columbia Grant Clauses Library contains up-to-date clauses relating to entrepreneurship and technology commercialization for use in grant proposal preparation. The library is available here, with UNI logon.

Columbia Commercialization & Entrepreneurial Resources Database is a university-wide resource geared toward providing a comprehensive and searchable list of all entrepreneurially-related activity at Columbia. Available here.