Ukrainian entrepreneurs start studying in Silicon Valley under the Stanford and UCU program
The CfE accelerator of the Ukrainian Catholic University together with the Stanford Graduate School of Business has launched a new training program Stanford Ignite Ukraine for representatives of Ukrainian small and medium-sized businesses. 42 participants from Ukraine begin their studies on February 19, according to a press release from the CfE accelerator of UCU.
- The Stanford Ignite Ukraine program has a global goal of giving confidence to Ukrainian entrepreneurs and strengthening their businesses, said Ivan Petrenko, executive director of the UCU CfE accelerator.
- According to him, the experience and knowledge gained in the Silicon Valley environment will allow Ukrainian entrepreneurs to rethink their businesses and development goals. It is expected that entrepreneurs will receive practical management tools for implementing changes and a systematic approach to how to overcome the challenges that Ukrainian business is currently facing.
- The program consists of two parts – online and offline. In the online part, participants will work in teams to develop venture ideas, conduct interviews with the target audience, and prepare their first presentations.
- The second part is an offsite module at the Stanford Graduate School of Business: a faculty-led training on how to develop a successful enterprise. Several sessions from invited speakers are also planned; meetings with representatives of venture capital funds, investors and experts. In addition, throughout their time on campus, participants will have the opportunity to connect with people from the Stanford GSB community and Silicon Valley on a weekly basis.
- The Stanford Ignite Ukraine program is organized by CfE accelerator in cooperation with the Stanford Graduate School of Business, with the support of the Ministry of Economy, the USAID Competitive Economy of Ukraine Program, and the Ukrainian Catholic University.
The program itself lasts seven weeks. The first month is online learning. Afterward, the participants will travel to Stanford for three weeks to continue practical work on their projects. Finally, we plan to organize several meetings with the business community of both Ukrainians and Americans in California Participants will also have several meetings with Silicon Valley investors who may become potential investors or partners in their businesses in the future.
At the end of the CfE program, the UCU accelerator will continue to work with the participants in Ukraine, tracking their success, primarily quantitative indicators: the number of investments attracted, jobs created, foreign markets entered, and sales growth. This, according to Ivan Petrenko, will allow the organizers to understand how effective the program was and what should be improved in the next selection.
How the participants were selected. The organizers of the program decided to focus on small and medium-sized business owners who already have at least 3 years of entrepreneurial experience. It is important that the company is registered in Ukraine, has at least 8 hired and officially employed employees, and that the owners are fluent in English.
Following the announcement of the competition and a promotional campaign, the program received 977 applications from businesses from different regions of Ukraine – Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv, Odesa, Ivano-Frankivsk, Dnipro, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia. Those who passed the technical criteria sent letters describing their motivation and expectations.
