New Ideas

Experience Overview

The New Ideas experience is our new fall cohort experience for students at the earliest stage of venture development, before they realize solutions. This experience provides structured support to those with an early understanding of a real problem or observed opportunity, to determine the scale, scope, and story of what they’ve identified.

Key Commitments

What do students get by participating in New Ideas?

A structured weekly session curriculum, accompanied by a $250 participant grant for customer research and validation expenses. All standard student resources remain available, including our alum advising network and triage infrastructure.

What do students commit to do for New Ideas?

• Participants must attend all cohort sessions, or notify in advance of a conflict or unavailability. They should meaningfully and genuinely engage in sessions to contribute to the best cohort experience possible.
• Participants must attend and present at the end-of-semester symposium their findings.
• Participants must complete at least ten (10) customer discovery interviews.
• Participants must submit any deliverables on time.

Eligibility

All current Vassar students of all majors or class years are eligible and encouraged to register for New Ideas. No prior entrepreneurial, program, venture development, or innovation experience is required.

Students who have participated in New Ventures may participate in New Ideas. Students may participate in both New Ideas and New Ventures in the same academic year.

Symposium

The New Ideas Symposium is the capstone to the New Ideas experience where participants showcase their learnings, research, and roadmap for their validated market opportunity. This signature event fosters engagement between our participants’ burgeoning ideas with the campus community for a meaningful, interactive conclusion to their semester’s work.