The Center for Entertainment & Media Industries provides opportunities for innovators and entrepreneurs interested in the media and tech industries. Our focus is on facilitating access to these industries, mapping their presence in Austin, and researching their convergence to assess and improve labor conditions and equity issues. In addition to speaker series that hone entrepreneurial skills and build professional networks, we support and promote research, outreach, and innovation projects.

The KS WEL Institute empowers and spotlights female-owned startups monthly through their application-based Featured Female Founders program. The Featured Female Founders program provides resources and exposure to the Austin startup community for these founders. Come stop by the KS WEL Institute or apply online if you're interested in becoming a Featured Female Founder!

At the Herb Kelleher Entrepreneurship Center, our dedicated focus is on fostering the growth of entrepreneurial skills and empowering Longhorns to embrace this mindset in their careers, whether through starting their own businesses or driving innovation within established industries. UT founders can tap into the HKEC’s wealth of entrepreneurial resources through our networking and funding opportunities, interactive speaker events, one-on-one mentorship, pitch competitions, and our semester-long practicum, the Forty Acres Founders Program.

Resources for understanding how engaging with industry for your research works at UT Austin and tools to help find industry funding and support.

Texas Venture Labs works campus-wide across disciplines to transform graduate students into entrepreneurs and business leaders, take their innovations to market, and accelerate startups in our ecosystem. We do this through our Practicum course and Fellows program that provide experiential learning for grad students, our Investment Competition, and our Accelerator. Let us help you build your skills while launching your dreams.

The Kendra Scott Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership Institute (KS WELI) supports creatives, founders, leaders, and allies by redefining leadership and entrepreneurship. KS WELI equips and empowers students of all backgrounds through engaging programming and events, spotlighting women-led businesses through the FoundHER Program, and sponsoring interdisciplinary courses within the McCombs Entrepreneurship Minor. Since its founding, KS WELI has become a force on UT’s campus to grow and support the number of women-owned and women-led businesses.

The LaunchPad at UT Austin is a resource hub that helps all undergraduate and graduate students explore entrepreneurship at UT. We help students identify where they are in their entrepreneurial journey – Explore, Ideate, Create, or Scale – then educate and connect them to resources across campus and in Austin. LaunchPad resources include events, coworking space, funding, bootcamps, accelerators, and other programs. We are a proud member of the global Blackstone LaunchPad Network of 46+ campuses.

Longhorn Startup Lab is a joint program with Capital Factory that allows student entrepreneurs to work on their startup under the guidance of successful mentors and provides students with a vast network they can use to accelerate growth. The Longhorn Startup Seminar is a semester-long class that brings guest speakers in to introduce students to the world of entrepreneurship. It is designed as a beginner course and students do not need a startup idea to be involved.

March Economic Madness is an interscholastic competition, building on our internal student challenge, that provides university students an opportunity to form teams and compete across universities to develop fitted and beneficial solutions for real community problems. A two-tiered selection process is used, first at each university, then between universities for top teams. Presentations will be delivered online with no need for travel. Cash awards are provided to top teams.

The Corporate Relations team is uniquely suited to help connect UT's research and innovation with relevant and interested company partners. We seek to solicit and raise funding from companies to advance student programming, research and discovery. If UT students or faculty would like to explore developing/deepening ties with industry, we suggest that we first have an internal discussion to assess the opportunity so that we can make appropriate connections.