As we are beginning a new semester, I’m excited to share an update on the Wharton Venture Initiation Program (VIP), our educational incubator that supports Penn students. We accept applications three times a year and, this past December, received 42 applications in Philadelphia and six in San Francisco.
Following the multiround selection process, eight new ventures in Philadelphia and two in San Francisco were accepted and started this January. There are some very novel concepts in the new batch that include:
• The ability to talk to your nurse, anywhere, anytime.
• A B2B distributor of spare machine parts that are printed onsite using 3-D printers.
• Frozen smoothie bites.
These also give you an idea of the diversity of the ventures that students are building. Below is information about the new ventures joining VIP, while you can link to the full list of new and continuing participants in the Wharton Venture Initiation Program. With our new crew, VIP is supporting 35 ventures and more than 50 students in Philadelphia and San Francisco.
Editor’s note: This post first appeared on Wharton’s Entrepreneurship Blog on Jan. 17, 2012.
