2000 College graduate and 2005 Wharton MBA graduate Caroline Strzalka recently appeared on ABC’s Shark Tank to pitch a gaming app she co-founded.

Strzalka, and co-founder Dan Projansky, landed a $500,000 deal from billionaire Mark Cuban in exchange for 4% equity of their app Overplay, which allows users to create their own interactive games based on short video clips.

Artificial intelligence has been popping up everywhere lately, including business degrees. The University of Pennsylvania made several AI education announcements this year, and the latest comes from its business school.

At the end of last school year, Wharton announced a new AI-focused strategy to prepare students in all fields to interact with and use AI, according to Eric Bradlow, vice dean for AI and analytics at Wharton

A new study by Wharton professors Valentina Assenova and Raphael (Raffi) Amit brings fresh insight into the performance of accelerated startups. The paper shows that participating in accelerators generally leads to positive outcomes in terms of startup business success rates. In examining data from 8,580 fledgling companies that made it past the initial screening stage at 408 accelerators in 176 countries between 2013 and 2019, the professors found that accelerated startups grew more, on average, than their peers.

Application For Fall 2024 Cohort is Now Open.
Application Closes on Monday, August 19, 2024 @ 11:59p ET

VIP-X in San Francisco is an accelerator open to Penn alumni and student entrepreneurs in the Bay Area who are founders or leaders of early-stage ventures. This four-month program runs twice per year, in the fall and in the spring. The company must have traction, and the team must be based in the San Francisco Bay Area during their time in the program.

Introducing Our Philadelphia and San Francisco Cohorts

Check out the latest student and alumni ventures to join our accelerator program! VIP-X is an intense, 3-month accelerator program for the most dedicated student and alumni entrepreneurs and the most advanced startups.

The Visiting Experts Program is a Venture Lab program that provides students with the opportunity to meet alumni founders, entrepreneurs, subject matter experts, and industry experts in one-on-one or small group AMA (Ask Me Anything) sessions. The program aims to provide insights into the practical, conceptual, and personal challenges of launching, acquiring, or growing a venture.

Our flagship program, the Venture Initiation Program is a joint incubator-accelerator that introduces students to the key aspects of entrepreneurship such as ideation, validation, market-product fit, fundraising, networking, scaling, business planning, development, launching and more.

Get $500, $2,500, or $5,000 towards your venture 

The Penn Wharton Innovation Fund exists to fund creative and meaningfully innovative ventures from the Penn student community. Alberto Vitale WG’59, who endowed the Innovation Fund, hopes that it will be “a catalyst to stimulate innovation at the School and to surface the brainpower of its students.”

The Innovation Fund awards are for early-stage ventures founded and led by one or more Penn students. The venture should be a new venture founded while the team lead and/or team members are current Penn students.

Our Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition (ETA) program provides training, funding, and guidance to help interested students buy an established small to medium-sized company and operate, optimize, and grow it. Our workshops and events are open to all Penn Students.