Summer Accelerator

The CIE Summer Accelerator is a program designed to give you everything you need to launch a real, scalable company.

Exclusively for Cal Poly students and recent alumni, the Accelerator provides participants with hands-on mentorship, weekly workshops, guest speakers from across the startup world and $10,000 in seed funding to start building their business.

Throughout the program, companies will develop their business model, learn how to operate a business and practice telling their story to pitch their company.

Team Qualifications

• All applicants must have AT LEAST two founders/co-founders. (If you are considering applying and do not have a co-founder, we strongly encourage you to reach out to Thomas Katona at tkatona@calpoly.edu in advance to discuss your particular situation). We have accepted solo founders in the past BUT it is only by exception and not common.
• Co-founders are full-time participants in the accelerator program (not consultants or contractors)
• Co-founders must be in SLO for all of the accelerator programming.
• Priority is given to upperclass students.

Interested in learning more about the Summer Accelerator? Come to our info session below:

Spring 2026 Info Session Date — Tuesday, April 14th at 6 p.m. in the Hatchery (Bldg 2, Room 206)

Application deadline: Sunday, April 26 by 11:59 p.m.

Click here to apply!

Timeline

• The Summer Accelerator will run from June 15, 2026 – August 21, 2026
• Summer Accelerator Finalists will be notified no later than May 2.  Finalists will need to come to the downtown SLO CIE HotHouse for a presentation and interview process.  The presentation will be ~7-8 minutes and the interview will be ~15 minutes of Q&A.  The interviews will be completed by the evening of May 7.
• Saturday, May 9 (by midnight): Accelerator teams will be notified of their acceptance no later than this date.

If you have any questions, please reach out to our director of student innovation programs, Thomas Katona at tkatona@calpoly.edu