Cal Build
An exclusive network of Cal students & alumni working together to start and build companies.
Foundation Capital has proudly backed these Cal alumni companies
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THE PROGRAM
What's Cal Build?
We want to help more Cal students and alumni start, build, and scale companies.
We select 8 folks per cohort and work closely with them to achieve this. No fees, no cost.
Part of a small, hand-selected 8-company cohort.
Investor Introductions & Pitch Practice Sessions
Access to Foundation Capital investment team for ideating and brainstorming.
Monthly educational events
Vendor discounts (AWS, Azure, OpenAI, Anthropic, +dozens more)
Free office space (SF & Palo Alto)
Online community
Kick-off dinner with Joanne Chen and our investment team.
WHO ARE WE LOOKING FOR?
Requirements to join
We will expand this program over time. Stay tuned for details. For now, we’re looking for:
Current Cal student or Cal grad
Located in the Bay Area
We will offer additional locations in the future!
Building a B2B company
Company founder
Ready to build.
It’s free to join! We’re not investing and you’re not giving up equity. We want to help you build!
Deadline to apply for the December cohort:
December 13th, 2024
If you have questions about the program, please email calbuild@foundationcap.com.
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FAQ
6 months.
For this initial cohort, we’re only accepting folks based in the Bay Area. We’ll widen this in the future.
The kickoff event and kickoff dinner are in-person. Additional events are hybrid.
We’ll ask for ~2 hours of your time per week. We expect that you are spending a majority (or all) of your time outside of the program building.
The core of Cal Build is accountability sessions where we tackle our biggest challenges and hold each other accountable for making process every single week. Additionally, we have monthly founder Q&A events, office hours with the investment team, demo day pitch practice sessions, and more.
Yes! Cofounders are welcome to attend all events.
Yes, we will schedule periodic demo days with our broader investor network and offer you an opportunity to pitch at it.
Every two weeks, you will provide an update. The update will include progress on the goals you previously set and setting goals for the next two weeks. We also want you to bring your biggest challenge and obstacle to the group so we can tackle it together and then we ask you to help the others in the group do the same thing.
Yes! We are accepting undergrad and grad students currently enrolled at Cal. Please note that this program is intense and will require you to make significant progress on your company every single week.