Two Stanford students announced Monday that they had raised $2 million for a accelerator program called Breakthrough Ventureswhich aims to fund businesses founded by students and recent graduates across the country.
Roman Scott and Itbaan Nafi began building the accelerator program after hosting a series of popular demo days at Stanford starting in 2024 and decided to expand it once students were successful.
“This fundraising takes Breakthrough from just a seasonal accelerator to a lifelong partnership with our founders,” Nafi, who is still a master’s candidate at Stanford, told TechCrunch.
Scott completed his undergraduate degree at Stanford in 2024 and earned a master’s degree there the following year.
Early last year, the duo brought on Raihan Ahmed to lead the accelerator, then got to work, formally raising money from the likes of Mayfield and Collide Capital (as well as a slew of Stanford alumni founders) to support the next generation of AI, health, consumer, deep tech, and sustainability companies. Scott said what makes their accelerator different is that it is specifically built “for student founders by student founders.”
Student programs like this are nothing new. UC Berkeley offers a similar program called Free Ventures for students looking for pre-seed funding, and MIT has its own Sandbox Innovation Fund. Even Stanford has accelerator programs, run by or affiliated with the school, such as StartX, LaunchPad, and Cardinal Ventures.
“The students appreciated how we brought together so many other students from different American universities,” Nafi said of his program, comparing it to Stanford’s Treehacks hackathon.
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“Breakthrough’s goal is to close the funding and opportunity gap that exists in many of these ecosystems, as students have historically lacked access to the capital and networks needed to launch their entrepreneurial activities,” Scott added.
Breakthrough will have a hybrid model, with in-person meetings at local venture capital firms, culminating in a demo day at Stanford. Program participants have access to grants (up to $10,000), compute credits (through Microsoft and the Nvidia Inception program), legal support, mentoring, “as well as the opportunity to receive a $50,000 follow-on investment upon completion of the program,” Nafi said.
“We passed the student-founder experience to a T,” Nafi said. “That’s why we offer the resources that we do and structured the program that way. The students really feel like we’re getting them, and that’s because we’re students.”
The duo hopes to roll out the fund over three years, with the aim of incubating at least 100 companies. Overall, Nafi hopes this fund will help make Breakthrough “the hub of Gen Z entrepreneurship and thought leadership,” especially given the anxiety many young people feel about their economic futures.
Applications for the latest cohort open today.
“We hope that by supporting young entrepreneurs, we will be able to tell as many stories as possible to then inspire many more around the world to use the tools and knowledge around them to pursue entrepreneurship to not only change their communities, but also gain economic stability for themselves and their families,” Nafi said.
This article has been updated to correct the name of one of the investment companies.
Dominic-Madori Davis is a senior venture capital and startup reporter at TechCrunch. She is based in New York.
You can contact or check Dominic’s outreach by sending an email dominic.davis@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at +1 646 831-7565 on Signal.