NGEN’s story began with the three of us meeting in a group chat for student entrepreneurship leaders across top universities. As we led our respective campus ecosystems, with Will leading the Brown Medical Entrepreneurship Society and the Brown Entrepreneurship Program, Harsha leading the Wharton Undergraduate Entrepreneurship Club at UPenn, and Jackson leading the Princeton Entrepreneurship Club, we kept seeing the same gap. Ambitious students were building incredible things, but our communities were isolated by school boundaries, leaving innovative students with no real way to meet peers with complementary skills or shared interests across campuses.
We decided to host a trial run: our first conference, in NYC. We wanted to test if student founders actually cared about collaborating across campus lines. Over 100 students from Ivy+ universities attended, and the momentum in that room made our next step clear.
We incorporated NGEN as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit to create the cross-university ecosystem we wished had existed when we started. A core goal for us is long-term sustainability, ensuring these intercollegiate programs and events endure as permanent infrastructure rather than one-off gatherings or spotty collaborations.
Our focus goes beyond supporting existing student startups. We build spaces for entrepreneurial students to meet through in-person programming, test out new projects, find co-founders, and experiment with ideas well before they even consider themselves a founder. From these gatherings, an entire ecosystem of ongoing support and resources has naturally grown, connecting builders through flagship conferences, investor office visits, pitch competitions, and skillbuilding workshops. We hope you’ll join us and find your place in the NGEN community!
Warmly,
Harsha, Jackson & Will
