Ecopreneurial Summer Innovation Sprint (Eco-Sprint)
The Ecopreneurial Summer Innovation Sprint (Eco-Sprint) program offers Stanford graduate students an experiential learning opportunity to evaluate a sustainability-focused venture idea over the summer.
Ecopreneurial knowledge and skills are best learned by doing. And we believe startup ideas are best evaluated through an immersive process of understanding customer needs, formulating and testing hypotheses about the product or service, value proposition, go-to-market strategy, and value creation model.
This program provides students who will be returning to Stanford after the summer the ability to evaluate their own venture ideas full-time for 8 weeks over the summer, with stipend, coaching, workshops, and a supportive community.
See the 2024 Eco-Sprint cohort here.
The Eco-Sprint program is administered by Stanford Ecopreneurship, a partnership between Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and the Doerr School of Sustainability.
- Evaluate your own eco-venture idea over the summer
- Build your ecopreneurial skills with a healthy stipend, weekly coaching, compelling workshops, and a supportive community
- See if ecopreneurship is something you enjoy
Applicant Requirements:
- Must be a current Stanford graduate student
- Up to two (2) students on the same team can apply for the stipend. Other non-stipended team members can still participate in all other elements of the program (e.g weekly coaching, workshops, etc.)
- Must be returning to enroll in classes in the Fall or Winter after the summer
- Must work full-time (a minimum of 40 hours/week) on your venture during the 8-week program
- Must be in good academic standing
- Must have appropriate personal legal status for the country in which they will be operating
Project Requirements:
- The venture’s impact metrics center around environmental sustainability
- Can be a for-profit or non-profit model
- Stage: We accept students across a wide range of stages, from early customer discovery to later-stage de-risking of a business model. At a minimum, you’ll need to demonstrate a nuanced understanding of the user and the pain-point you are trying to solve through user interviews. The ideal stage is that you’ve already have a rich understanding of the need, and that you’ve started to approach prototyping different solutions. If you’ll already be fundraising by the summer, this program is not right for you.
- Solution can’t be illegal in any U.S. state or any other country in which you’ll be operating.
