Skip to content

The Ivy League entrepreneurship network

Where students meet, build, and raise capital.

NGEN brings together the brightest student innovators and founders across universities and gives them new connections and opportunities.

Upcoming eventsPartner with us

Tap a summit

The center of gravity for student innovation.

NGEN builds the spaces where students meet in person, find co-founders and test ideas, long before they call themselves founders.

Our mission: connecting the next generation of founders across the Ivy League.

Our story
students reached across the network
20,000
put into students and programs by NGEN’s VC partners
$500K+
raised by NGEN founders
$25M+

From first idea to funded startup.

All programs
  1. ConferencesIvy League Entrepreneurship Conference. Connecting world-class student entrepreneurs with today’s most influential leaders.
  2. Lab-2-StartupExplore how to commercialize research, including IP and tech transfer, across a new field each time.
  3. Founder TreksSpend a day visiting four VCs and angels in their offices to pitch and connect while actively raising.
  4. Pitch CompetitionsPitch your company and compete against other founders for investment and prize funding.
  5. Capital NetworkWarm introductions to angels, operators and early capital, from micro-grants to $500K+ rounds.

How NGEN began

It started in a group chat for student entrepreneurship leaders across top universities.

  • HarshaWharton Undergraduate Entrepreneurship Club, Penn
  • JacksonPrinceton Entrepreneurship Club
  • WillBrown Entrepreneurship Program

Each ran a campus ecosystem, and each kept seeing the same gap: students everywhere were building, but school lines kept them apart, with no way to meet peers with complementary skills on other campuses.

So they hosted a trial run in New York: a first conference, to see whether student founders would actually build across campus lines. Students came from across the Ivy+, and the momentum in that room made the next step clear.

Harsha, Jackson & Will

Read the founders’ letter
Students in the audience at NGEN’s first conference in New York, one of them asking a question into a microphone
NGEN’s first conference, in New York.

From a trial run to a bigger stage.

  1. 01The trial run

    A panel on stage at NGEN’s first conference in New York

    100+ students at the first conference

    Founders from Ivy+ universities, in one room in New York.

  2. 022023

    A speaker on stage in front of NGEN’s slide: building the Ivy+ intercollegiate entrepreneurship ecosystem

    A 501(c)(3) nonprofit

    NGEN incorporated so the programs would outlast any one class.

  3. 03Three years

    A founder and investor panel on stage at an NGEN event

    20+ conferences, treks and pitch competitions

    The network grew event by event, from Lab-2-Startup to Founder Treks.

  4. 04April 2027

    Ivy League Entrepreneurship Conference

    The Ivy League Entrepreneurship Conference

    NGEN’s flagship, invite-only, in New York City on April 17, 2027.

What NGEN founders went on to raise.

The full record

Past speakers

At NGEN’s flagship conference in New York

All speakers

Meet the next generation of founders before anyone else does.

Put your brand in front of Ivy League student founders and the investors and operators who show up for them.

Partner with us

Companies that have supported NGEN events.

  • M31 Capital
  • Honors Fund
  • Blue & Gold Ventures

Past speakers and alumni backers from

Upcoming events

Every NGEN event is on the calendar. Follow it on Luma to hear about new ones, no account needed.

Follow the calendar on Luma (opens in a new tab)

Come to an event.

NGEN programs are for student founders and builders at partner universities. The next one is on the calendar.

Upcoming eventsPartner with us

Partners, investors and donors make NGEN’s programs possible. Write to info@ngennetwork.org.

Student founders at an NGEN event in New York.