Booth School of Business’ New Venture Challenge (NVC) was named as a top accelerator program in the country at South by Southwest, according to a press release on the business school’s website. Run by the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Chicago Booth, the program was ranked fourth in research released by the Seed Accelerator Rankings Program, which aims to begin a larger conversation about what makes seed accelerators successful and provide entrepreneurs with a tool to help them decide which seed accelerators are a good match for their startup.
“This ranking puts a spotlight on university accelerator programs,” said Steve Kaplan, faculty director of the Polsky Center and Neubauer Family Distinguished Service Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance at Booth. “For the past 19 years, our NVC program has pioneered many of the same elements found in most accelerator programs today.”
NVC has helped kick start several high profile entrepreneurial ventures, such as Braintree, which was acquired by PayPal in 2013 for $800 million; GrubHub, which completed an IPO in April 2014 and whose market cap exceeds $3.8 billion; Bump Technologies, which was acquired by Google in 2013; and Simple Mills, which raised a seed round from Hyde Park Angels in July 2014. More recently
“We are very proud of the work that goes into supporting our student entrepreneurs,” said Ellen Rudnick, ’73, executive director of the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. “In May 2016, we will mark a milestone as we celebrate 20 years of our NVC program.”