Entrepreneurship is more than a class at Rice Business — it’s a way of thinking that is central to all our teaching. Whether you’re starting a new enterprise or making something happen at the company where you work, the entrepreneurial mindset is a crucial part of your tool kit. We’ll help you sharpen it.
Graduate Entrepreneurship Program
Princeton Review & Entrepreneurship Magazine 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023
Years in the Top 10 for Entrepreneurship
of Entrepreneurship Faculty Members Have Started, Bought or Run a Business
Companies started by Rice Graduates Since 2015
Looking to turn your big idea into a successful business? Rice Business is one of the only MBA programs in the country with an entrepreneurship concentration. We’ll give you the guidance and support you need to launch your business and get it growing.
No matter what your career goals look like now, an entrepreneurial mindset is necessary for lifelong growth and career success. Rice Business and its community in Houston are here to help you build it and thrive.
What makes an entrepreneurial ecosystem? A collaborative culture, a safe space for talent and inspiration, a willing network and access to financing. Rice Business has built that environment, along with an array of vibrant events, workshops, courses and competitions offered to students, alumni and the broader Rice community no matter where you are in your entrepreneurial journey.
Let events and programs inspire you to explore entrepreneurship and discover how you can bring your personal experience and passion to creating a new product, service or business that makes a positive impact on industry and society.
| Description | Students | Alumni | Public |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ladies Who Launch: Monthly fireside chat with brilliant female founders sharing their entrepreneurial journeys and how they overcame the many unique challenges they've encountered | X | X | |
| FIESTA: Rice's festival of innovation, entrepreneurship, science, tech and art kicks off the school year with inspiration from leading entrepreneurs and innovators | X | ||
| Future Founders Summit: A weekend-long summit for incoming MBAs and other graduate students from around campus to catalyze your journey as entrepreneurs at Rice | X | ||
| Ignite Trek: An opportunity for entrepreneurial-minded students to meet successful entrepreneurs and investors in Silicon Valley. | X |
Entrepreneurship classes emphasize a combination of mindset and skillset to focus on multiple stages of the entrepreneurial process. Classes include The New Enterprise, Enterprise Acquisition, The Social Enterprise and more, tailored to a wide range of interests. We are one of the only MBA programs in the country with an entrepreneurship concentration. We’ll give you the guidance and support you need to launch your business and get it growing. Explore top electives and get to know our faculty here.
In addition, students can take advantage of our Rice Business Entrepreneurship Labs (e-Labs) where students put theory into practice through experiential learning opportunities. E-labs are similar to independent studies, designed for both individual students or small teams, where students can launch their entrepreneurial venture or work alongside industry professionals for credit. There are opportunities to explore venture creation, venture capital and acquisitions/mergers. The courses are directed by professors with founding experience themselves, as well as entrepreneurial alumni mentors. The exposure to Rice’s entrepreneurial alumni and the broader Houston entrepreneurial ecosystem is just one benefit from participation. Many of our students continue working on their venture or find funding with their venture post-graduation. Learn more here.
Before you can accelerate a venture, you need the right fuel for the fire by coming up with and testing a number of different ideas, technologies and strategies. The Ideate programming helps founders develop the frameworks, mindset and skill set to identify valuable problems in need of solutions and get started down the path of idea to real world impact.
| Description | Students | Alumni | Public |
|---|---|---|---|
Events |
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| First Pitch and Founder Finder: Your first chance to grab a mic, pitch your idea, hear from peers and connect with fellow students interested in launching a startup. | X | ||
| Future Founders Summit: A weekend-long summit for incoming MBAs and other graduate students from around campus to catalyze your journey as entrepreneurs at Rice. | X | ||
| Rice Business Plan Competition: The largest and richest intercollegiate graduate student startup competition with over $1 million in prizes and opportunities for mentorship and a platform to launch your startup. | X | X* | |
| Rice Business Plan Competition Qualifier: Rice University graduate students pitch their startups to judges for a chance to represent the school at RBPC and receive cash prizes. | X | ||
Workshops |
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| Venture Development Workshop: A series of workshops during the fall semester to help students ideate new venture ideas and begin building the foundational skill set to make real progress on their ventures. | X | X | |
| IdeaLaunch: This free virtual bootcamp helps startup teams examine their ideas, research and innovation for market fit. This program is part of the NSF I-Corps regional program. | X | X | X |
Programs or Co-Curriculars |
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| The Rice eXperiment Fund: This fund puts little checks behind your big ideas, providing no strings attached funding and mentorship to help you validate and launch new ventures. | X | ||
| Launchpad: A one-night-a-week bootcamp for six weeks to help students go from idea to validation on their venture idea, while receiving personalized mentorship from alumni founders. | X | ||
| The Napier Rice Launch Challenge (NRLC): The new venture competition just for the Rice campus provides student founders a chance to earn +$100,000 in equity-free funding. | X | X | |
| Ignite Trek: An opportunity for entrepreneurial-minded students to meet successful entrepreneurs and investors in Silicon Valley. | X | ||
*Other MBA students from other universities
Now that you've got an idea, it's time to get started running experiments and gathering data to help you understand if you're targeting the right problem, for the right customer and with the right solution.
| Programs and Co-Curriculars | Students | Alumni | Public |
|---|---|---|---|
| Liu Idea Lab Launchpad: A one-night-a-week bootcamp for six weeks to help students go from idea to validation on their venture idea, while receiving personalized mentorship from alumni founders. | X | ||
| Napier Rice Launch Challenge: The new venture competition just for the Rice campus provides student founders a chance to earn +$100,000 in equity-free funding. | X | X | |
| BlueLaunch Small Business Accelerator: A 12-week program offering business training, mentoring, and exposure to resources to help entrepreneurs with customer development, brand refinement, product expansion and business strategy. Participants earn a cash stipend upon completion | X | X | |
| OwlSpark Tech Startup Accelerator: A 12-week program providing hands-on entrepreneurship experiences and a roadmap from innovation to commercialization for students, faculty, staff, and recent alumni. | X | X | |
| Rice Alliance Clean Energy Accelerator: A 10-week accelerator program open to global early-stage ventures in the sustainable and energy transition space, helping startups achieve technical and commercial milestones and expand their reach for investment opportunities and network development. | X | X | X |
| NSF I-Corps: An immersive seven-week program and $50,000 grant opportunity for scientists and researchers (both graduate students and faculty)to evaluate the commercial potential of a technology-based startup using a structured hypothesis-driven methodology. | X |
Validating a business is only just the start -- now it's time to accelerate your venture to hit escape velocity while transitioning from campus to the community as you build the next generation of pillar companies for Houston.
| Programs and Co-Curriculars | Students | Alumni | Public |
|---|---|---|---|
| Summer Venture Studio: A full-time immersive summer accelerator program for the most promising high growth ventures from around the campus. | X | ||
| Napier Rice Launch Challenge: The new venture competition just for the Rice campus, providing student founders a chance to earn +$100,000 in equity-free funding. | X | X | |
| BlueLaunch Small Business Accelerator: A 12-week program offering business training, mentoring, and exposure to resources to help entrepreneurs with customer development, brand refinement, product expansion and business strategy. Participants earn a cash stipend upon completion | X | X | |
| OwlSpark Tech Startup Accelerator: A 12-week program providing hands-on entrepreneurship experiences and a roadmap from innovation to commercialization for students, faculty, staff, and recent alumni. | X | X | |
| Rice Alliance Clean Energy Accelerator: A 10-week accelerator program open to global early-stage ventures in the sustainable and energy transition space, helping startups achieve technical and commercial milestones and expand their reach for investment opportunities and network development. | X | X | X |
| Rice Business Plan Competition: The largest and richest intercollegiate graduate student startup competition with over $1 million in prizes and opportunities for mentorship and a platform to launch your startup. | X | X* |
*Other MBA students from other universities
Startups aren’t the only path to entrepreneurship. Below are just a few ways you can learn how to invest or acquire new ventures.
| Programs and Co-Curriculars | Students | Alumni | Public |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Rice Entrepreneurship Acquisitions Lab gives students the opportunity to assess existing business ventures, explore financing options and develop plans to scale the venture once you’re at the helm. By connecting you with mentors, investors and a sounding board of peers, the lab will help you jump-start the process while you’re enrolled and support you through acquisition and beyond. | X | ||
| Student Venture Fund: Evaluating Startup Investment Opportunities: Students will identify, screen and evaluate startups for investment by the Rice venture capital fund. Through this highly experiential course, students will learn tools for rigorously evaluating startup ventures for investment, valuing early-stage companies and structuring investments. | X | ||
| Global Venture Capital Investment Competition: students get to play the role of VCs who have around $100MM to invest in one of the startups presenting. It is the only place students get to be VCs for the day. You will participate in a highly interactive simulation of the VC process, real startups come to pitch to you and VC judges assess your performance. The selected Rice team will be coached by members of the previous VCIC team, the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship as well as our Liu Idea Lab for Innovation & Entrepreneurship | X | ||
| Rice Alliance Energy Venture Forum: The region’s largest energy and life science venture capital conference. The event brings together hundreds of active investors and 70+ startups to pitch their companies. | X | X | X |
World's Largest and Richest Business Plan Competition
Graduate and Undergraduate Courses and Labs Focused on Entrepreneurship
Annual Entrepreneurship Events
Skills Building, Networking and Competitions
Companies Have Participated in Our Programs
More than 40 teams compete for $1.5 million in prizes every year in the Rice Business Plan Competition, the world’s largest and richest graduate student startup competition that is hosted by Rice Alliance. Teams receive mentoring from investors and established entrepreneurs, along with hands-on experience in what it takes to successfully launch a new business.
Startups aren’t the only path to entrepreneurship. The Rice Entrepreneurship Acquisitions Lab gives you the opportunity to assess existing business ventures, explore financing options and develop plans to scale the venture once you’re at the helm. By connecting you with mentors, investors and a sounding board of peers, the lab will help you jump-start the learning process while you’re enrolled and support you through acquisition and beyond.
Houston — where 400 of every 100,000 residents start a business every month — is a hotbed of innovation. And Rice Business played a key role in the creation of Houston’s Innovation District. That collaboration, along with the development of The Ion, our midtown innovation hub, gave the entrepreneurial community a boost of rocket fuel to drive its growth.
As Houston becomes a global leader in the clean energy transition, Rice University attracts a range of entrepreneurial programs, groups and events that work toward a decarbonized economy. Among them, we host the region’s largest venture capital conference, the Rice Alliance Energy Venture Forum. We are committed to connecting investors and startups to fuel the future of energy.
Turner Hoff '13 pivoted from finance and real estate to food technology. He talks about how he created a company to solve his frustrations with food delivery, vertical integration and how the food tech space has developed over the years and through the pandemic.
Tune into the latest live recording of Owl Have You Know! Host Maya Pomroy was joined by Hesam Panahi, director of strategic initiatives and programs at the Liu Idea Lab, and two alumni entrepreneurs.
Jillian shares her story of pivoting from elementary education to co-founding and leading a medical device startup company. She talks about her unconventional path, her advice to those considering a pivot in entrepreneurship, and how she invests her time in giving back to the community.
The right idea at the right time might not occur during your MBA program. Rice Alumni Entrepreneurs & Innovators (RAEI) is the Liu Idea Lab's program supporting Rice alumni at every stage of their journey into entrepreneurship, including workshops and monthly peer mentor roundtables.
Academically and professionally, participating in entrepreneurship workshops, competitions and classes has been even more interesting and thrilling than I had anticipated.
Full-Time MBA '22
The Ignite Trek was truly eye opening as we were able to visit companies ranging from cutting edge technology start-ups to widely known brands such as Tesla and eBay.
Full-Time MBA
[I value] the entrepreneurial spirit of my classmates. I knew Rice is ranked #1 for its entrepreneurship program, but it was still so refreshing to meet people who share my spirit of creating and innovating in business.
Full-Time MBA
A flexible, modern learning center and workspace, the Liu Idea Lab for Innovation and Entrepreneurship is the university's on-campus hub where you, as a Rice Business student, prepare to become an innovator in whatever industry you choose.
The Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship is a catalyst for building successful tech ventures, linking the Rice Business community to Houston’s vibrant startup scene. Over the past 20 years, more than 3,100 companies have participated in over 220 Rice Alliance programs, raising more than $8.1 billion in early-stage capital.
Rice Business Entrepreneur in Residence Jay Steinfeld speaks with Modern Diplomacy: "Anyone can build a business and a life of consequence by following 4 principles. My 4 Es: 1. Evolve continuously 2. Experiment without fear of failure 3. Express yourself and 4. Enjoy the ride."
The Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University has added nine faculty members with expertise ranging from management to marketing. It’s a record number of new tenured and tenure-track professors for the school.
Nine energy startups from across the country were recognized as the most promising in a pitch competition during the Offshore Technology Conference earlier this month. The Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship staged its annual pitch competition at the Ion in Midtown.