You came here to start something. Start it.
Ignite gives students with ordinary experience and extraordinary potential a guided first experience of entrepreneurship, so they leave with proof they can build.
Almost everyone arrives wanting to. Most of us never do.
Babson is the entrepreneurship school. Most of us come here to start something. Most of us never start. Fear of failing holds us back from the leap of faith it takes to bet on ourselves.
Number one in undergraduate entrepreneurship, 29 years running. About one graduate in ten pursues it. U.S. News · President Spinelli
this is real.
Ignite is not a class and not a simulation. You are responsible for a venture that exists, with users who are not your friends. That responsibility is where proof comes from.
the founder comes first.
We invest in you as a person, not in your idea. Ideas change. What you carry out of here is judgment, and that stays.
you are not alone.
Building by yourself is the reason most people stop. You get a cohort, a mentor, and three facilitators who pick up when you call.
A Babson where wanting it is enough to start.
A Babson where the students who want to build actually do. Founders leave with the confidence, competence, and clarity to go after what they want.
Babson’s AI lab, and the room Ignite lives in.
The Generator is Babson College’s interdisciplinary AI lab. Faculty run research labs and AI education. Students run the events, the weekly Generator Cafe, the Buildathon, and the teams behind them. Ignite is its incubator.
Ignite shares The Generator’s vision and runs as its own program with its own identity, systems, and space.
Before the accelerators. After FME.
FME, Generator Cafe, the Buildathon
Where you learn the tools and find out you want to build something of your own.
Zero to one
Eight weeks, one venture, a mentor, and a cohort. Drive is the only prerequisite.
Accelerators and competitions
The rooms that screen for traction. What you build here is what gets you in.