Over the fall, you take an idea and turn it into a working product. It happens in four stages. You register a team, submit your idea, then build it across five Fridays until you can demo something that actually runs. Each stage raises the bar.
Everyone starts in the same spot: a team and an idea. Mentors are with you the whole way. Let's walk through them.
Sign up online with your team roster, a named team lead, and contact info. Registration is just record-keeping. It isn't judged, but it's required, and it's what unlocks your entry submission. Register by the deadline or you can't submit.
Teams can be solo or a group. And the roster isn't locked in. Teams are allowed to merge as ideas take shape, so you can change your lineup later.
Nothing is built yet. This stage is about the idea and the team. You submit two short pieces that work together: a one-page PDF that carries the idea, and a two-minute video that shows the people behind it.
A single branded page, a “pitch before the pitch.” Cover:
Layout and polish aren't scored. Visuals are welcome but never required, with an optional second page if you want to add one.
Your origin story, in your own voice: how you arrived at the idea (an internship, a family situation, a class, a problem you saw firsthand).
Production quality isn't scored.
Download the one-page template Word or Google Docs. Fill it in, then export to a PDF to submit.
One coherent ask, not two: the PDF proves the idea, the video proves your team genuinely holds it. Reviewers read both and advance 15–20 semi-finalist teams. See how teams are judged.
Entering a Sponsored Project? Same deadline, one addition: the signed sponsorship agreement goes in with your entry.
Semi-finalists build together in one room, five Fridays, 11:30–2:00, lunch included. Mentors rotate in every week: finance faculty, startup coaches, industry builders. Some weeks they circulate table to table; other weeks they staff stations by expertise, finance/domain, AI & build, UX, and product & pitch.
You keep a short project log as you go: what you decided, built, and tested. Two things come out of that. It becomes an interview-ready record of your work, and it's what the sprint judges read to pick the top 10 teams. Early feedback is shared openly across the room. Final work stays private. And yes, teams can still merge here.
The top 10 demo their working builds live, in person, on a concentrated demo day, Thursday, Nov 19. This is the closest look of the whole fall, and it's on real evidence, not promises. An external panel of finance and fintech judges runs the demos and picks the 4–6 finalists. We announce them the first week of December.
Each finalist team receives $1,500 and advances toward the spring phase.
Most of you will bring your own idea. That is the typical path, and nothing about it changes. You spot a finance problem you care about, and you build the tool.
But some of the best problems show up at work. So there is now a second path: the Sponsored Project.
Here's the situation it is built for. You're at your internship and you notice a real problem inside the firm. Maybe the analysts rekey the same data every Monday morning. Maybe a report that should take an hour takes a week. The idea did not come from a brainstorm. It came from watching a business run. Often, building it well means working with data or processes the firm considers proprietary.
That's where sponsorship comes in. Your employer backs the project. They give you the data and other inputs you need to build it. They give you a person who meets with you and reacts to what you're building. And if the product turns out well, they may put it to work. Think about that payoff for a second. You could graduate with a project a real firm actually uses. That is a different kind of line on a resume.
A Sponsored Project runs on the same timeline as every other project. What changes is the setup: what your firm commits to, how the agreement works, and how you demo proprietary work. It's all on one page.
The best teams don't stop in December. Finalists carry their build into the spring, sharpen it into a real product, and make the venture case for it. It all points toward Launch Day. Spring dates and format are still being finalized.
Registration for the fall build phase is open. Bring a finance problem worth solving, and we'll help you build the rest.
Register your team