VANDERBILT University expressed pride in its statement this fall about having 10 unicorn founders among its alumni and the university has made clear its goal of becoming "a top entrepreneurship school by 2030," as reflected in Vanderbilt Business Fall 2025.
Anyone inclined to discount VU's 'tops-in-entrepreneurship' ambition might first review thoroughly the "explainer" produced by C4E Director Baxter Webb, available here (pdf).
This story focuses on the fact that four days ago the VU Owen Graduate School of Management's Center for Entrepreneurship (C4E) fielded 10 teams of student founders competing for the second cycle of nondilutive "Chancellor's Launch Grants."
Launch Grants are meant to bolster and accelerate growth of businesses conceived by VU alumni. The program is supported each year by $250K in university funding (details). Many complementary initiatives are also underway in other quarters, e.g., within the Center for Technology Transfer and Commercialization (CTTC) on the Vanderbilt Campus.
The 10 semi-finalist teams were the survivors among more than 40 teams that had applied for admission to the program.
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| Baxter Webb |
On the morning of Nov. 7, the 10 Cycle 2 teams and a panel of semi-final judges gathered on C4E turf within VU's Owen Graduate School of Management.
By morning's end, the preordained limit of 6 of the 10 presenters had each won a $10K Launch Grant and admission to the final round of this cycle, which concludes next spring.
The favored six teams are being paired with mentors with relevant expertise drawn from among VU alumni.
During the next 90 days, each inducted founder is required to focus on a specific key performance indicator (a KPI related to either revenue or users).
Then, all hands will reconvene next semester (Spring 2026) for individual reports on their progress, with judges and C4E determining how best to award some or all the $65K remaining for this, the second Launch Grants cycle.
Current Cycle finalists ranked (2025-26):
- Merchant (Nosa Agbonghae, Ryan Touchton) An AI live-event discovery tool.
- iTELL (Wes Morris, Amara Zulfiquar) AI-enhanced workforce training.
- Anchor Title (Adele Shen) AI native title insurance agency.
- Nanofold (Connor Gilmore) AI compression platform.
- Serenity AI (Luke Wu, Adyanth Ganesh) Wellness app addressing student burnout.
- American Dream Index (Georgia Shepherd, Grace Thompson) Consumer tech for optimizing quality of life.
We're told three of the above-listed startups--iTELL, Anchor Title and Nanofold--already plan to keep their principal office in Nashville.
Other entrants not proceeding in Cycle 2:
- ByStudents (Frederik Schutz) Student-led college entrance consulting.
- CoffeeChatter AI (Pranav Narayanan, Avyay Parmeswaran) Agentic AI for student internship networking.
- Lexify AI (Saafwan Shadab) Neural reasoning engine for legal summaries.
- Lingua AI (Amanda Zu, Kevin Chen) LLMs for college entrance essay guidance.
The six judges in Friday's semi-final sorting were:
- Serena Ainslee - Girl Math Capital
- Michael Berolzheimer - Bee Partners
- Payton Dobbs - Hoxton Ventures
- Bob Paulson - Sonex Health
- Trenton Piepergedes - Flagship Pioneering
- Bill Snyder - Cylinder
Note: VU announced Launch Grants Cycle 1 winners in earlier this year, during the inaugural VU Convoy Conference. Related.
Those Cycle 1 winners were Will Burkhart (Alumni Tutors); Ishan Mahajan (Horus Health); Ferhan Jemal (Motus Drive); Vraj Shah and John Bettinger (Atlog); Lane Burgett and Ahmed Zeeshan (Deaflingo); Benedict Ballman and Theodore Perl (Tomorrow In Focus). More detail on them.
NOTE: Rankings of universities by Nth combinations of variables are plentiful, with sometimes disputed. For global perspective, we've often turned to PitchBook's Top 100 universities rankings. Related coverage. More on Vanderbilt. VNC
. last edited 1615 10 November 2025
