Fellows-to-Founders Venture Studio Program
Innovation Fellows
Fellows-to-Founders Venture Studio Program
Innovation Fellows are highly motivated people with a passion for entrepreneurship — a desire to own and drive something meaningful, and to build a business with confidence rather than against the usual roadblocks.
By partnering with DIAL Ventures, Fellows get direct access to the industry: its thought leaders, established supply chains, and potential customers. Alongside that, a monthly stipend and customized training built around what it takes to succeed.
What DIAL provides is personal development, business support, and a condensed path from idea to funding to launch through a repeatable, turn-key process. The end goal is for Fellows to become co-founders of the companies they develop through the DIAL Ventures studio process.
One of the defining advantages of the DIAL model is that we do not begin with ideas — we begin with industry-defined problems. Throughout the discovery phase, Fellows work directly with our partners, alongside producers, agribusiness leaders, researchers, and other industry experts to understand the challenges and opportunities shaping the future of agriculture. Validating opportunities with industry before building companies reduces technical, market, and commercial risk, and increases the likelihood of creating ventures the market is ready to adopt.
By partnering with DIAL Ventures, Fellows get direct access to the industry: its thought leaders, established supply chains, and potential customers. Alongside that, a monthly stipend and customized training built around what it takes to succeed.
What DIAL provides is personal development, business support, and a condensed path from idea to funding to launch through a repeatable, turn-key process. The end goal is for Fellows to become co-founders of the companies they develop through the DIAL Ventures studio process.
One of the defining advantages of the DIAL model is that we do not begin with ideas — we begin with industry-defined problems. Throughout the discovery phase, Fellows work directly with our partners, alongside producers, agribusiness leaders, researchers, and other industry experts to understand the challenges and opportunities shaping the future of agriculture. Validating opportunities with industry before building companies reduces technical, market, and commercial risk, and increases the likelihood of creating ventures the market is ready to adopt.
What a Fellow gets
- Direct access to industry leaders, established supply chains, and potential customers across the agrifood value chain
- A monthly stipend and customized training
- Purdue research support to define markets and understand customer needs
- Connections to investors, program offices, policy specialists, and other entrepreneurs
- Help building the narrative, the pipeline, and the pitch
- Support assembling the team and advisory board, and access to sources of capital
- A condensed, repeatable path from idea to funding to launch
- Co-founder role in the company that comes out of it
How the program runs
Phase One ideation to concept. Just under six months. Fellows work with experts in the food and agriculture industry to identify and validate the industry's most important unsolved problems, then develop concepts against them.
Phase TWObusiness buildCoincident with pre-seed funding. DIAL adds critical functional resources — software engineering, product design, marketing, along with legal and human resources as needed — to move the company to product and revenue quickly.