The Texas Convergent Incubator: Entrepreneurship in Action
Are you a student interested in entrepreneurship? Do you have a student startup? Are you looking to apply your engineering, design, or product management skills?
If you answered yes to any of those questions, you’re in the right place. :)
The Texas Convergent Incubator Program is the first of its kind on the UT Austin campus to provide tech, business, and design support to student startups.
The program was launched to address two unmet needs on campus:
- Student founders needed some combination of tech, business, and design help but didn’t know how to go about finding the right people.
- Aspiring PMs/engineers/designers wanted impactful and collaborative projects to gain unique experiences and emulate internship settings.
Our program brings these two groups together.
Why Us
Texas Convergent is UT’s first interdisciplinary entrepreneurship organization, and it is centered on the intersection of technology, business, and design. With our Build Team Program, we are able to attract some of the strongest tech, business, and design talent at UT; with the Incubator Program, we are able to give those students the opportunity to turn their own ideas (which might be previous Build Team projects) into fully-fledged companies or leverage their skills to help out student startups on our campus.
What We Do
We do our best to match student startups with student product managers (Texas Convergent Officers), engineers, and designers that can help fill in roles that the founding team may be lacking and help the startup achieve a set of deliverables over the course of the semester.
“Being part of the Texas Convergent Incubator is one of the most fulfilling and worthwhile experiences you can get out of a student org at UT. This program strives to equip entrepreneurs, engineers, and designers with the support and resources needed to propel their business forward or develop their technical skills for industry-level use. If you’re looking for an experience that is both challenging and exhilarating and you want to meet like-minded people interested in the world of fast-growing tech and entrepreneurship, Incubator is the place to be.”
— Samantha Tuapen, CS ’22, Former PM for Pocket Punch and V2Admissions, and Current Partnerships Director for Convergent
How We Do It
Caveat: PMs, engineers, and designers are a part of Convergent. They are not a part of any startup’s long-term team unless an agreement is made at the end of the semester to bring them on full-time. Those agreements are not handled by the Convergent Incubator.
“The students involved are committed, brilliant, and dedicated to learning and doing anything needed to push the company forward. My company made tremendous progress and went from an idea to an MVP in a few weeks.”
— Will Cray, CS Grad Student, Founder of ReView
What We Look For
All of our founders, PMs, engineers, and designers must be current undergraduate or graduate students at UT Austin. In general, we look for good communication skills, problem-solving abilities, and a genuine interest in entrepreneurship.
💡Founders
- Know what they want to accomplish in the Incubator
- Can explain the rationale behind their actions
🚀Product Managers
- Previous project management experience (can come from class projects, side projects, volunteer experience, etc.)
- Previous leadership experience or Convergent involvement (strongly recommended but not required)
💻Engineers
- Experience with web and/or mobile app development
- Proficiency with one or more of the following: React, React Native, Java, Python, Firebase, AWS / Azure / GCP
📝Designers
- At least one complete project to showcase (a portfolio is even better)
- Proficiency with Figma
- Experience with User Research
“I would highly encourage anyone thinking about joining Incubator to take the step — whether as a PM, founder, or engineer/designer. We have a really strong network of current students and alumni, as well as relationships with many organizations across the UT and greater Austin entrepreneurship space. I think there’s a lot to learn from the process and it’s a great experience.”
— Harsh Choudhary, CS ’21, Engineer for Picko, and Technical PM for ReView
Interested in joining the Texas Convergent Incubator?
Founders
Apply @ http://txconvergent.org/incubatorcompanyapp
PMs
Apps are released via our mailing list after Demo Day each semester. You can subscribe to it here: https://www.txconvergent.org/contactus
Engineers & Designers
Apply @ http://txconvergent.org/build
Still unsure? Check out what some of our amazing founders, PMs, engineers, and designers have to say in the post below.
As I sign off on both this post and my role as Incubator Director, I am so proud of how far we’ve come — from ideas on a Google doc to a fully-functioning program. I am confident that each semester from here on out, the program will only get better and better.
We would love to be a part of your college journey. We hope you’ll come and join us soon!
