Founders Day 2023

Founders Day to Highlight Experiential Courses & Startups on May 14

Wednesday, January 15, 2025

Founders Day 2025 will return to Walter Library on Wednesday May 14 at 4:30 - 6:30 PM in the Toaster Innovation Hub.

Founders Day welcomes alumni, student and the business community to celebrate innovation and entrepreneurship across the University of Minnesota.  In addition to recognizing the student, teacher and alumni Entrepreneurs of the Year, the 13th annual event highlights the MVP Challenge - a semester long program that supports 25 teams with workshops, mentoring and grants to develop initial prototypes for customer discovery.  Student and faculty participants across the 25 teams represented 13 unique colleges, department and research labs.  

Congratulations to the prior MVP Challenge winners:
   Crowd Favorite: Telo
   Best Overall: Octo
   Best Undergraduate: Aspiration Containment System for Large Ovarian Cyst Removal
 

Thank you to our platinum sponsor Proto Labs for their incredible support for the student teams in the development of their prototypes.

"It was helpful working with the people at Proto Labs to learn how we could make our design more efficient"

MVP Student Interviews
Proto Labs