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Startup Sprint: What Is It Like?

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Trying to decide if the NYU Startup Sprint is for you? Unsure of what you can expect from the program?

The Sprint is a transformative, award winning 2-week intensive accelerator. But don't just take our word for it, hear directly from the most recent Sprint participants!

Read below to find out what the most recent Summer Startup Sprint cohort had to say about the program:

Before [the Sprint], I did not know how to fly and soar in the world of entrepreneurship. The Startup Sprint gave me wings. They fed me with the vocabulary of entrepreneurship, empowering me to know that scaling up a successful business is possible.
- Jumoke Opeyemi (CAS '18), Aflingo

The Startup Sprint challenges you to test your riskiest assumptions about your business and that's really scary at first but it's a game-changer of a process to build a product that customers actually want.
- Prateek Mahindra (Courant '22), Anaplex

The Sprint offers unparalleled coaching, teaching, and mentorship all while giving you the freedom to explore your ideas and collaborate with exciting companies run by your peers.
- Caroline Huber (Stern '23), Cozier

The Startup Sprint challenged me to consider GOALS from the perspective of my core customer in ways I never had before. Because of that, I'm more confident than ever that GOALS will succeed, as long as we continue to take an evidence-based and customer-centric approach to our work.
- Caroline Fitzgerald (SPS '22), GOALS

The Startup Sprint taught me the importance of communication, both with my co-founder and my customers, which helped us focus our idea and set us on a path to success.
- James Austin (Stern '24), Gigly

Despite being a lifelong startup junkie and studying business as a core part of my concentration, the Sprint was my first true initiation into the world of entrepreneurship. The coaches at the Leslie sugarcoat nothing. They will parse assumptions out of you that you didn't even know you had, and you will inevitably discover that many of them cannot stand up to scrutiny. At some point or another, you'll probably start to wonder whether your idea is even as great as you once thought. But if you keep an open mind and continue asking the right questions, you'll discover that the philosophy of applying scientific thinking to business is far more valuable than any one idea.
- Milo Schindler (Gallatin '22), LikeHome

The sprint really helped us consolidate all our previous learnings about startups and customer discovery; it's left us in a much better position as a company.
- Moye Ponnie (Stern '23), Morbid Electronics

Participating in the NYU Startup Sprint made pivoting far less scary than it sounds because we learned that solutions are guaranteed to be created as long as we commit to listening to and learning from the people we're trying to serve.
- Anastasia Vlasova (Gallatin '25), Mellow

The Sprint is literally a SPRINT - you'll confirm and invalidate a lot about what you're building or dreaming about (quickly). This isn't for the faint of heart because it is difficult but very rewarding! The people and their experiences are what make this an INVALUABLE experience to reach even further heights.
- Karrel May Sinfuego (Shanghai '23), Tildenn

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