On December 2023, the first startup incubation program of Fulbright University – Outbox 2023 – was successfully organized by the Fulbright Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation in collaboration with Reactor School, supported 10 projects and 30 founders in taking their initial steps in the entrepreneurial journey.
Fulbright’s first Startup incubation program
Outbox 2023: The First Incubation Program at Fulbright aimed to assist potential founders in developing innovative solutions based on real-world issues and bringing those products to reality. Throughout the program’s over 3-month duration, the carefully selected 10 projects underwent two phases:
- EntreSprint: Weekly in-depth training covering entrepreneurship fundamentals, understanding customer profiles, problem identification, assumption validation, solution development, and concluding with a Demo Day.
- Coaching: 10 teams participated in 1-1 meetings and group coaching weekly, addressing various project challenges and receiving advice and guidance from CEI experts.
Fulbrighter Founders: Enthusiastic individuals eager to change the world
Passionate founders joined Outbox with burning aspirations, a strong sense of responsibility, a thirst for learning, diverse expertise, and practical experience. They united to bring their dedicated projects to these programs.
Outbox set five selection criteria for projects/founders:
- Demonstrated commitment and seriousness in project execution, showing initiative and autonomy in completing independent tasks.
- Entrepreneurial ideas or target markets of interest planned for deployment in at least 3 months.
- Team members with relevant interests and experience that can be leveraged to develop the idea.
- Experience related to the idea or target market (founders’ ability to execute the idea).
- The idea could be a tech startup or a social enterprise.
The Info Session provided information to potential founders before registering for the program.
After overcoming numerous strong projects/competitors, 10 outstanding projects officially joined Outbox’s 3-month incubation journey.
EntreSprint: Breaking misconceptions, building a solid foundation
Immediately after selection, founders underwent training with Reactor School on essential steps for entrepreneurship. Throughout the training modules and practical mentoring activities, student founders were able to learn the process from identifying problems and target customers to building up their team, which helped them to transfer their startup idea into visible actions and results.
Outbox’s Team at a Networking Event with other startup founders
Startups received structured training from Reactor School experts – experienced startup founders in Vietnam and Singapore. They studied materials designed for easy reading, closely aligned with startup realities. In addition to each training session, the teams meet with mentors weekly to share and reflect on the topics and lessons from each project’s real-world experience during the implementation process.
Review Session with Instructor Arick Soo
Demo Day: Where ideas are presented to the audience
At the Demo Day, top 6 potential projects proceeded to showcase their learnings and results to investors, judges, students, and faculty with two main activities:
- Showcase: Each project had a booth to introduce its product or service
- Pitching: Presenting the project to the judging panel
Booth of Bright & Shine Coffee team
Booth of Learning Lab (Mở) team
Booth of Lost & Found team
From the top 6 talented teams, the judges selected the top 3 teams with the best product presentations:
- Learning Lab (Mở)
- Bright & Shine Coffee
- Chewfully
1st Place: Learning Lab (Mở)
2nd Place: Bright & Shine Coffee
3rd Place: Chewfully
Coaching – Bringing projects closer to reality
After Demo Day, Outbox continued supporting all 07 startups through individual coaching sessions with CEI. The teams received guidance on challenges, and difficulties, validating assumptions, and developing products. With continuous, personalized support for each team, CEI could help address specific issues faced by each group. Additionally, group coaching sessions for all teams were also held for all groups to share their learnings, and experiences and discuss common challenges during the incubation process.
Hybrid Group Coaching with CEI
The End of the first journey of future startups
After 3 months of intensive training and coaching, Outbox supported 10 startup projects, 30 founders refined their projects, accumulated experience, and connected with various partners, preparing for the future.
“Outbox is a chance to learn from the experts and was inspired by many other startups. From there, our team, we know where to start and what should be done the most”, shared Outbox’s participant.
