I-Corps Regional Course for Startups 

hosted by the University of Rochester 

August 2025

Course Overview In this ~month long virtual course (July 28 - August 27), early-stage technology startup teams will learn how to conduct customer discovery interviews with potential customers, partners, and industry stakeholders. The course goal is to gather evidence that your product or service could meet an important, unmet need for your customers and make a large impact in your target market.  You may apply with a team of 1-3 people. Teams may not split attendance between members. Please only include the members of your team that will be fully participating in the course. All team members are required to attend and participate fully in every course session and complete all coursework. This is important for two reasons: 1) Course learning is cumulative 2) Only team members who personally complete the full course can be considered for NSF lineage and a nomination for national I-Corps Teams

Application Closes: Wednesday, July 2

Course Dates

Course opens for pre-course work: Monday, July 28 Session 1: Monday, August 4 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM Session 2a: Wednesday, August 6 TBD (1:1 meetings) Session 2b: Friday, August 8 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM Session 3: Monday, August 11 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM Session 4: Wednesday, August 13 TBD (1:1 meetings) Session 5a: Wednesday, August 20 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM Session 5b: Monday, August 25 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM Session 6: Wednesday, August 27 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM *There will be scheduled office hours meetings with teams and instructors between sessions 1 & 2b and between sessions 3 & 5a. Meeting times will depend on the availability of the teams and the instructors.
Application Questions



Please address the following: What does your technology do? How does it work? Why do you believe it is innovative? What have you built so far? 

Describe the customer need that you believe will be met by the proposed innovation.






Who needs your solution and is willing to pay for it?




Entrepreneurial Lead Information
The Entrepreneurial Lead could be a Post-Doctoral scholar, graduate or other student, or other personnel with relevant knowledge of the technology, who might like to lead the team in the I-Corps Teams national program. See here for more information.





N/A if no members of your team are students, faculty, staff, or researchers at a university.


N/A if your team is not affiliated with an incubator/accelerator.
Team Member Information
Please only include the members of your team that will be fully participating in the course in this section. 










Advisors and Other Colleagues





Research Study
If you are accepted into the I-Corps Regional Course, you will be invited to take part in a novel research project examining the effectiveness of the NSF Interior Northeast I-Corps' regional I-Corps courses.Participation in this study will involve completing online surveys. Each survey will take approximately 15 minutes. Your responses to the surveys will be anonymized and analyzed in aggregate format, and will be treated confidentially. Your participation in this study is voluntary. You may choose not to participate or to withdraw from the study at any time without penalty. There is no secondary use of your information.Disclaimer: Whenever one works with email or the internet there is always the risk of compromising privacy, confidentiality, and/or anonymity. Your confidentiality will be maintained to the degree permitted by the technology being used. It is important for you to understand that no guarantees can be made regarding the interception of data sent via the internet by third parties.If you have any questions or concerns about this study, please contact the researcher - Cristiano Bellavitis, at icorps@cornell.edu. 


By selecting "Yes," you are agreeing to provide the National Science Foundation (NSF) and IN I-Corps Hub with data about your team, business activities, and agreeing to meet all regional course requirements below. We promise to use this data to fulfill our reporting requirements to our funders; any public reporting will be at an aggregated level that does not identify individual companies’ data or information. 1. All team members listed above will attend and participate fully in every course session. 2. All team members will complete the required coursework.                3. All team members can expect to spend ~30 hours on the course, including course sessions, assignments, and customer discovery interviews. 4. All team members will complete pre and post surveys from the Hub and NSF related to course assessment, demographic information and economic impact. While each team member is required to complete these surveys, there is always an option to answer with “I prefer not to answer”.

Contact Information