Macquarie University, 2109
Explore your potential with MQ Incubator
Join the Incubator’s START Program and learn practical skills to validate an idea and market opportunity.
The START Program is a two-week initiative designed to help students validate business ideas and assess market opportunities. Guided by an expert-in-residence, participants engage in interactive sessions using lean startup methodologies and design thinking techniques.
Program modules
- Identifying your value proposition: Define the problem your idea solves through design thinking and user research.
- The power of customer discovery: Validate assumptions via interviews, surveys and feedback collection.
- Business model canvas: Develop a compelling value proposition and refine your business model.
- Prototyping: Create and test prototypes to refine your concept iteratively.
- Pitch development: Build and practice a persuasive pitch for investors and stakeholders.
Upon successful completion of the program, your participation will be recognised via digital credentials.
Our programs run once per semester. Subscribe to our newsletter to stay informed about upcoming program dates.
By the end of the program, you will be able to:
- advance your skills in customer discovery, validation and iteration while utilising design thinking and entrepreneurial tools to evaluate real-world problems and projects
- cultivate endurance by practising and developing skills that increase your awareness of self and team, confidence and agency, improve communication and problem-solving abilities, and identify self-purpose
- sell your ideas
- create value through presentations and business models that articulate and operationalise knowledge to identify entrepreneurial pathways
- mobilise people through leadership and enabling skills that help identify future team members, networks and research opportunities.
Seed funding to attract student founders
- $5000 prize pool: Awarded to three to five top startups selected from the top eight shortlisted entrants at a live pitch event judged by a multidisciplinary panel. Funding values will be decided based on budgets supplied by the startup, and perceived actual need at the discretion of the judging panel.
- $5000 follow-on funding (or wildcard funding): Reserved for startups that demonstrate dedication and progress or do not initially receive funding but demonstrate growth and determination throughout the year.
Startups seeking funding must submit:
- a pitch video
- a completed business model canvas
- a detailed budget for fund usage.
The top eight entries will pitch live for a share of the $5000 prize pool per cohort.
Follow-on-funding or wildcard funding will be allocated at the end of the calendar year – possibly as an add-on feature of our existing Pitch Final competition.
Acceptable uses for seed funding include:
- prototype development and testing
- business registration and legal fees
- marketing and customer acquisition
- equipment, software and industry events
- hiring specialised talent.
Unacceptable uses include:
- personal expenses (eg rent, food, entertainment)
- founders’ salaries
- investments in stocks, crypto or unrelated financial assets
- illegal or unethical activities.
By offering structured funding and a competitive pitch process, the START Program fosters a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem at Macquarie University.