From first idea to $100k on the line.
UVA’s flagship student venture competition, running the length of the academic year. Concept opens in the fall for any idea, in any field. Launch closes the spring with real cash on the table. Every UVA and UVA Wise student is eligible, and your venture does not have to be an app.
Two competitions. One season.
Concept Competition
No prototype required — start with a problem worth solving and what you have noticed about it. Reviewers score insight, evidence, originality, and why you. Scale, technical complexity, and polish earn nothing.
- · 20 finalists share the stage at the Concept Final
- · Finalists get pro bono legal help, coworking, and more
- · Anyone can apply for a Jefferson Trust Flash Grant of up to $10,000 (not guaranteed)
- · Foundry Perks for everyone who enters
- · Solo founders and teams; a current UVA student must lead
Launch Competition
The season continues in the spring for teams that have moved from an idea to a real venture: a working product and demonstrated customer evidence.
- · Details, dates, and awards will be announced in November
- · Over $100,000 in cash prizes
- · A working product and demonstrated customer evidence
- · Concept participation is not required
- · Open to all UVA students, undergraduate and graduate
You would be in good company.
Older than the students who enter it
The Cup has run every year for more than two decades. Generations of UVA founders have stood on this stage first — before the company, before the funding, back when it was just an idea they could not stop thinking about.
ventures entered last season
173 in Concept and 48 in Launch, from every school at UVA and from UVA Wise. Twenty-four Launch teams reached the semi-finals; five split $100,000 at Tom Tom Festival. The winner, Cambrient AI, took $40,000.
counts as a venture here
Recent fields have included an AI research tool, a peer-to-peer marketplace, a bakery trailer, a pub, a coffeehouse, a motorcycle shop, a mowing company, a tiny-homes builder, a 3D-printing shop, and an EV repair trade school. If you are building something people pay for, you are in the right competition.