Rolling admissions · Rolling admissions
The Garage is Northwestern University’s student startup incubator, opened in 2015 in an 11,000-square-foot space carved out of a North Campus parking structure in Evanston, Illinois. Its core is a two-step incubation path: the self-paced Tinker program, then the quarterly Residency, which gives selected teams 24/7 access, a desk, weekly Family Dinners and a dedicated mentor. Its flagship accelerator is Jumpstart, a 10-week summer pre-accelerator that gives each team a $10,000 award. Around that core sit programs for first-generation and lower-income founders, sophomore fellows and leadership development, grants for prototyping and manufacturing, the VentureCat pitch competition, an Ignite accelerator for San Francisco alumni, and NUseeds, a $4 million equity fund for recent graduates. Student programs take no equity or fee. The Garage has incubated more than 1,500 startups that have raised over $1.6 billion, including 17 acquisitions. It ranks 5th overall and 1st among university incubators on the 2026 TIME and Statista list of America’s Best Incubators and Accelerators.
Frequency
Varies by program — most run quarterly or annually
Duration
Varies by program — single day to 2 years
Investment
$1,000–$100,000 — mostly non-dilutive; NUseeds equity
Equity
None — except NUseeds alumni fund
Program fees
None — free to Northwestern students
Where
USA
Sectors
Sector Agnostic
Stages
Idea/Pre-Team, Pre-Seed, Seed
Eligibility
• Tinker: any enrolled student with an innovation project, usually at the ideation stage; sign-up is open year-round and is the required first step for new team leads before Residency
• Residency: the team lead has spent at least one quarter on the current venture in Tinker or Residency and the team has at least two members; teams are chosen on team, traction beyond ideation (for example customer interviews or a prototype) and a recommendation, and Residents reapply each quarter
• Jumpstart: a team of at least two including a co-founder, working full time (40 hours a week) for 10 weeks with no other jobs, internships or travel; suited to early-stage ventures, not teams already fundraising or at a later stage
• Narrower programs: Luminate and the Opportunity Fund for first-generation or lower-income students, Little Joe Ventures for nominated sophomores, the Manufacturing Fund for physical-product teams that finished Jumpstart or two consecutive Resident quarters
• VentureCat: a currently enrolled degree-seeking student as team lead and co-founder, under $250,000 in equity raised, and a company started within the past four years
• Alumni programs: Ignite for San Francisco-based alumni founders at pre-seed or seed stage with revenue who are fundraising; NUseeds for founders who graduated within the past two years and joined a Garage program or VentureCat as students
Selection process
• Jumpstart runs one annual summer selection cycle; the Little Joe Ventures Fellowship chooses five sophomores each winter quarter after committee nomination and interviews
• VentureCat applicants submit a 10-slide deck and a 60-second video, compete in one of five industry tracks, and semifinalists complete a four-week pitch prep program before the finals
• Manufacturing Fund requests go by email with the next milestone and vendor quotes, followed by a staff interview; the fund is open year-round
• Ignite selects 15 to 20 San Francisco alumni founders per cohort; NUseeds applicants are vetted by an external investment committee of Northwestern alumni founders and investors
Benefits
• Tinker: self-paced entry with staffed-hours access to The Garage and the Makerspace, at least two Family Dinners and two Tinkerer meet-ups per quarter, and a pitch slot at the quarterly Startup Matchmaking event
• Jumpstart: a $10,000 award per team (half at the start, half earned through the summer) plus a $10,000 Demo Day prize pool, workshops, one-on-one coaching and mentor check-ins over 10 weeks
• Prototyping Lab, Makerspace and AR/VR Media Lab for Residents building physical products, plus a Manufacturing Fund of $10,000 to $25,000 for teams ready to tool or manufacture
• Opportunity Fund: up to $1,000 for lower-income undergraduates in Tinker or Residency, with Garage staff buying approved business expenses on the student’s behalf and peer mentors from similar backgrounds; Conference Support Fund: up to $250 for Resident team leads
• Other programs: Luminate (up to $1,000, a mentor and weekly workshops for first-generation and lower-income students), Little Joe Ventures Fellowship (up to $5,000, coaching and travel for five sophomores over two years), X-Factor leadership program, Summer Startup Internship ($5,000 stipend), Northwestern Problem Summit
• VentureCat: a non-dilutive prize pool of $175,000+ (Garage co-organized), plus up to $100,000 through Alumni VentureCat
• For alumni: NUseeds invests $100,000 for equity in recent-graduate startups; Ignite and The Garage SF connect San Francisco alumni founders with peers and investors
Network
Mike Raab, Executive Director (also co-author of ‘Founded: The No B.S. Guide for Student Entrepreneurs’ with founding Executive Director Melissa Kaufman); Elisa Mitchell, Associate Director of Operations & Finance; Ashton Keys, Associate Director. NUseeds is vetted by an external investment committee of Sarah Ahmad (Stable), Blair Pircon (Romar Capital) and Akshat Thirani (Amper Technologies). VentureCat is co-organized with the Donald Pritzker Entrepreneurship Law Center, the Farley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and the Kellogg School of Management. The Garage SF and Ignite operate out of Third Coast Foundry, a shared workspace partnership between Northwestern and seven other Midwest universities. The Garage is funded by private donors and the Office of the Provost; program donors include Tony and Monique Owen (Little Joe Ventures), Mark and Tricia Rothschild (Luminate) and Valerie and Mark Friedman (Manufacturing Fund, X-Factor).
Portfolio
1,500+ startups incubated since 2015, including 17 that have been acquired; about 40 resident teams each quarter and 2,000+ students engaged each academic year
Funds raised
$1.6B+ raised collectively by Garage-incubated startups since 2015
🕐 Sep 2026
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