Start100 is the University of Galway's only student incubator programme. The programme is competitive with only 10 student teams selected to participate each year. Individuals or teams work for 6 weeks on an early stage idea business idea and develop their skills and competences. Teams are matched with an expert mentor and take part in weekly workshops and meetings to develop their idea.
The Start100 graduate is one who has nurtured and developed an idea from concept to validation. They are passionate about their innovation. They have developed their communication and storytelling skills, their business and commercial acumen to understand their markets, funding opportunities and how to leverage the ecosystem to further support their ideas development. They are a confident, creative, resourceful, person centric and resilient student who navigates ambiguity, have an entrepreneurial mind-set and are ready for the future.
Start100 is co-curricular and focusses on idea validation and de-risking and skills and talent development. Start100 has been designed, delivered and evaluated using Entrecomp. EntreComp is a common reference framework that identifies 15 competences in three key areas that describe what it means to be entrepreneurial. Within Start100, Entrecomp has been used to support policy and practice, to develop entrepreneurial skills, to assess entrepreneurial skills, to design programmes and learning opportunities and to recognise and certify skills.