THE ANNUAL 2022
CBE
VENTURES COMPETITION
Each fall, CBE hosts the largest startup competition at Harvard, providing non-dilutive funding to student startups as part of CBE Ventures. This fall, CBE is partnering with Harvard Undergraduate Capital Partners (HUCP) to host Innovation Fund X CBE Ventures, awarding over $25,000 combined in equity-free funding to Harvard’s most thoughtful entrepreneurs. In the spirit of CBE’s mission of promoting sustainable innovation, CBE will also be offering a separate prize for startups in the sustainability innovation space.
Application Deadline: Friday, October 28th at 11:59pm EST
Any companies with a Harvard-affiliated founder may apply. This includes, but is not limited to, current students at any Harvard school, graduate students, postdocs, faculty, etc. Please contact info@harvardcbe.com with any questions.
The initial application should take less than 20 minutes to fill out
Application Deadline
Round 1 Interviews
15-20 min, held at Smith Center or virtually (TBD)
Round 2 Interviews
30 min, held at
Smith Center
Winners Announced
finalists should plan on attending DEMO DAY on Sunday at noon
Past Winners
ShelfLife
For craft food and beverage producers, ShelfLife’s ordering platform and vendor network provide volume discounts on common packaging materials and services. Since our competition in 2019, ShelfLife has raised $325K in pre-seed funding from NextView Ventures, MBA Fund, Rough Draft Ventures, Dorm Room Fund, Switch Ventures, and HBS Rock Center.
Congregate
Congregate is a platform for online platforms, with an emphasis on dynamic features that allow users to interact more naturally. Congregate lets you hold engaging online events for business networking, classroom education, and casual socializing. Since participating in CBE Ventures, Congregate has amassed a user base of over 30,000 individuals, including several Harvard classrooms.
Troav
Troav is a delivery platform that delivers anything in just 5 minutes and for half the cost of traditional delivery. It offers a monthly subscription membership, allowing users to access a large inventory of physical goods quickly and easily. Since participating in CBE Ventures, Troav has been acquired by JOKR - a New-York based grocery delivery startup that raised on a $1.2B valuation.
Metric
Metric is an HBS software startup that helps private market investors measure and manage their portfolio’s environmental and social performance. The solution enables users to select material ESG KPIs and provides analytics on performance trends, peer benchmarks, financial impact, and improvement strategies.
Debate Spaces
Debate Spaces is an education non-profit that uses debate to foster activism and connect middle school students from around the Greater Boston area. Since CBE Ventures, Debate Spaces has won the Harvard College Innovation Challenge and raised tens of thousands of additional funding. It has offered world-class debate training to 400+ students.
Vehicle2Grid
Vehicle2Grid uses proprietary technology to optimize the charging of electric vehicles. Rapid EV adoption has led to unsustainable strains on the power grid, and Vehicle2Grid aims to offer an optimized solution to keep our planet greener.
