The Venture
Builder

Proven methods. One Path. Unlimited Potential.

The Venture Builder Program Design

The new Venture Builder is designed around a standardized, repeatable methodology that spans ideation, incubation, acceleration, and scaling — ensuring consistency across every stage of the venture journey.

Full-time founding teams are supported with aligned incentives, enabling focused execution and long-term commitment. Ventures are launched through a series of experiments and pilots, guided by deep customer empathy to ensure solutions are rooted in real-world needs.

A rigorous stage-gate funding model, governed by new venture boards, ensures disciplined resource allocation and sharp accountability at every step.

What Sets The Venture Builder Program Apart

A Structured Incubation and Acceleration Methodology

Our design-focused process focuses on finding customer pain, determining the right product or service to solve it, designing the business, and prototype testing.

All Venture Builder teams will be guided through the same methodologies to validate your hypotheses, with milestones agreed on with a venture board. The outcome of the incubation is a fundable business with a detailed execution plan that is attractive to investors. Acceleration will focus on in-market testing to build the MVP, secure paying customers, and operationalize the startup.

Dedicated Hands-On
Expertise

Each team will receive a dedicated Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) who will be fully committed to your team throughout the journey. Every EIR has had personal experience transforming ideas into scalable businesses and will customize their sprint approach based on the needs of your team.

In addition, every team will have access to a group of experts including designers and business and technology advisors to support the needs of your team’s incubation and acceleration.

Full-Time Startup-Like
Environment

The Venture Builder Program is designed for teams to work at the speed of a startup in a very different kind of environment. All team members must be dedicated full-time for the duration of the program. Daily stand-ups will support rapid iteration and ensure continuous alignment with your team members.

You will also have access to a cutting-edge tech stack with AI tools that accelerate the speed and agility of day-to-day operations. These specialized resources help with work flows, simulate scenarios, glean customer insights, and optimize other crucial aspects of building a startup.

The Growth Engine team receives ideas from a variety of sources and regularly green-lights the most promising for entry into the Venture Builder. The Incubate stage concludes with a board pitch, where the team must demonstrate sufficient progress and validation to advance to the Accelerate stage. Ventures that successfully complete Accelerate will exit the program and launch as independent businesses inside or outside of the organization. 

Stages of The Venture Builder

Development

Interested?

Get involved as a team member if you have the right skills or earn your spot through the Venture Challenge.

Have an idea you want to build?

The Venture Challenge is open to submissions now.

Submissions close:
October 24, 2025

Submit an Idea

Don't have an idea but want to get involved?

Submit your talent profile to be considered for future venture teams.

Submit Your Profile

About The Venture Builder Program

FAQs

  • The Venture Builder Program is an immersive cohort-based program that requires full-time participation of the founding team members for a minimum of three months. Most activities may be conducted virtually though some will require in-person participation. The methodology will include validating the customer pain, determining the best solution, and designing the right business model. Teams will have access to a dedicated Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) for the full length of the program, as well as a group of experts including designers and business and technology advisors.

  • Teams who enter the Venture Builder (“New Venture Teams” or NVT) will transition their contracts from their originating organization into TOD so they can participate full-time in the Growth Engine during Incubation and subsequent Accelerate phases. 

    For ventures that successfully meet the Accelerate objectives and proceed to spin out of the Growth Engine, a new legal entity will be created for the venture company, and NVT members will become co-founding employees of the new company. 

    For ventures that spin-in to an existing business unit within the group, the NVT members will transition to the sponsoring unit

  • Your team's participation in the Venture Builder program will be funded for the duration of participation in the program. For ventures that spin-out of the Growth Engine, founding team members will split a substantial majority of the venture's founding equity, with a minority position held by the Growth Engine.

  • There are no set criteria regarding team size. However, we typically expect that ventures have between 2-5 team members, each with a critical skill or expertise (e.g., go-to-market, engineering, business/finance, product, etc.).

  • New Venture Teams are expected to explore a topic area in an open ended way to identify the most promising venture opportunities. When there is existing IP developed within the OCP / UM6P ecosystem that can be leveraged in a potential solution, the Growth Engine will work with the UM6P Tech Transfer Office to establish a suitable exclusive use license that will be assigned to the venture following their typical procedures.

  • There is no upfront investment made upon entry into the Venture Builder Program. However the Growth Engine provides a budget to fund the venture team's activities during the initial three months of incubation, and successful ventures will be supported with additional funding and resources during Acceleration.

  • Please reach out to Kenza Bennani with any additional questions.