"StartX is an authentic community for founders, where we can help each other and get real support."
Charlie Gao
Co-Founder at Crafting, formerly Lime
StartX is the premier startup community, accelerator, and fellowship program for over 2,500 Stanford founders, offering support without requiring equity.
We are the strongest network of Stanford entrepreneurs, spanning fields such as AI, healthcare, sustainability, and more.
We offer community, mentorship, resources, peer-to-peer education, grant funding, and support without requiring equity.
At StartX we empower the best Stanford entrepreneurs to build a better future. We do this be cultivating one of the most talent dense and engaged founder communities in Silicon Valley.
To join our founder community, founders must first be admitted to our full-time accelerator or student fellowship program.
“StartX is more than just an accelerator” — it's a lifelong ecosystem built around shared learning, collaboration, and support.
No Equity/Fees: StartX is a non-profit that primarily serves the students, faculty and alumni founders of Stanford University. We are dilutive and free to founders!
Tailored Mentorship: Peer learning and support, 4+ mentors/advisors assigned per company, 1-1 regular meetings with StartX staff.
Tight Knit Founder Community: StartX hosts 150+ exclusive events/year for the community. e.g. seminars/talks, workshops, founder dinners, expert office hours, fundraising investor demo days, networking, etc.
Resources: $1.2M worth of perks and resources, office space, scholarship and online learning resources.
Our next application cycle will be for the Summer '25 StartX cohort. You can reserve your spot and sign up to be notified when applications open up below.
Reserve Application Spot
"StartX is an authentic community for founders, where we can help each other and get real support."
"If something like StartX had existed, I would have been a founder much earlier in my career."
"When we started Yahoo!, I wish StartX was around back then."
"Through StartX, I’ve recruited highly qualified talent, and found the management team to be very engaged, deeply devoted and genuinely interested in successful outcomes for its founders"
"In essence, the StartX Accelerator program not only fueled our growth but also instilled within us a profound sense of purpose and determination. (...) With the right support, innovation knows no bounds."
StartX has been a great partner for us over that time and some 30% of our grantees have had one or another (highly valued and immensely beneficial) affiliation with you"
"The differentiator for StartX relative to other accelerators and incubators has always been the tight knit community & mentorship."
Many students choose to build their company while also studying in school. These are our student founders.
Full time founders that have graduated from Stanford University for either an undergraduate or graduate degree are considered alumni founders.
We've had over 80 Stanford professors go through StartX programs and enter the community.
*Note at least one member of a company's founding team must be Stanford Affiliated in order to apply to StartX Programs
Stanford-affiliated founder is someone who was/is a Stanford alumni, undergraduate student, graduate student, faculty member, post doctoral scholar, academic staff member, or fellow in a recognized Stanford fellowship program.*
StartX offers a 2 different programs:
Accelerator - For Full-Time Founders & Professors
Fellowship - For Student Founders & Professors
Our programs run throughout the year and we typically have 3 cohorts per year; segmenting into a spring, summer, and fall cohort.
We believe that entrepreneurs can achieve more as a group, than we can as individuals. We help our companies hire elite talent, secure funding, and tap into one of the most powerful and innovative networks in the world: the Stanford University Alumni Network.
