Our Accelerators
Our programs are for bold entrepreneurs looking to move into the Uncharted, take on difficult problems, and create scalable impact.
Why Apply?
We zero in on a big, persistent problem, and put it at the center of our universe. Then we build coordinated movements of entrepreneurs (that’s you!) around the problem, giving you what you need to attack it from all sides and drive big impact on big issues.
Our #1 priority is to ensure you are getting the support and care you need to courageously find possible answers to seemingly impossible problems. Head over to results to see how we’ve helped our ventures scale revenue and impact.
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Curriculum
Our world-class curriculum has been used by ventures operating in 94 countries around the world
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Connections
Relationship-building is key to ensuring business success and scale. Get access to over 2,000 people in our network, including world-class mentors and curated investors
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Clarity
Rapid prototyping, financial modeling, and fundraising training are just a handful of skills you’ll gain to create a deeper understanding of how to scale your venture
Dive into our accelerator programs!
Explore our programs below and apply today.
Uncharted Mobile Tech
This program is supporting ten ventures who are using mobile technology to create meaningful impact in the United States.
Dates
Denver, July 2018-March 2019
Kosmos Innovation Center Business Booster
Developed by Kosmos Energy in partnership with Uncharted, this program works with Ghanaian agribusinesses—providing capacity building training to help them scale their business and achieve sustainability.
Dates
Ghana, November 2017 - May 2018
Uncharted Food Access
In partnership with the City of Denver, our goal is to increase access to affordable, healthy food in low-income neighborhoods across Denver.
Dates
Denver, August-December 2017
Future Cities Accelerator
In partnership with Rockefeller Foundation, this program is supporting ten ventures working to solve the biggest problems our U.S. cities face.
Dates
Denver, February-October 2017
Global Labs
We’ve selected and partnered with teams around the world to run 5-day accelerators called Labs. These programs support early-stage entrepreneurs locally, with the global support of Uncharted.
Early Childhood Accelerator
This accelerator supports entrepreneurs developing innovative, scalable solutions to improve the lives of low-income children ages 0 to 5 in the U.S.
Dates
Denver, June 2016
Our Mentors
Our world-class mentors are proven practitioners in specific issues. They play a critical part role in helping our entrepreneurs overcome major challenges when building their ventures.
Tom Chi
Former UX Lead at Google X
Tom Chi
Former UX Lead at Google X
Tom has worked in a wide range of disciplines from astrophysical research to F500 consulting to developing new hardware and software (web & client) products and services. He’s worked on large projects of global scale (Microsoft Outlook, Yahoo Search), and scaled new projects from conception to significance (Yahoo Answers from 0 to 90 million users).
Tom has pioneered and practiced a unique approach to rapid prototyping, visioning, and data-driven design that has allowed him to both get new things off the ground and move large organizations at unprecedented speeds. Tom describes this rapid innovation process to create the earliest iterations of Google Glass in this TEDx talkhere.
Paul Polak
Helped lift over 20M people out of poverty
Paul Polak
Helped lift over 20M people out of poverty
Nicole Glaros
Partner, Techstars
Nicole Glaros
Partner, Techstars
Nicole is an entrepreneur and has been mentoring, supporting, and investing in entrepreneurs for over 15 years. Nicole got her entrepreneurial start in the 4th grade, orchestrating cousins into theatrical plays and charging neighbors admission. While earning her masters degree at the University of Florida, Nicole co-founded a tech startup that retailed products to the property management industry. It was there she developed her lifelong passion for supporting tech entrepreneurs.
She took her learnings of how to scale and applied it to CTEK, an incubator in Colorado supporting tech startups in 2002, before accelerators existed. She helped grow CTEK from 1 to 5 offices across the state, and was an early catalyst in developing the startup ecosystem in Colorado. Most recently, she is a Partner at Techstars – a global network and investor in early-stage web software startups. She’s been with the company since it’s earliest days, helping build the company around her and rising through from a Managing Director to Chief Innovation Officer and most recently, partner. She has been instrumental in its growth from one office in Boulder, CO to a global powerhouse, featuring investment offices in 18 cities worldwide, events in over 500 cities globally, with $265M in capital under management and a market cap of over $5B. Through Techstars she’s invested in over 90 startups, most of which she still supports to this day.
In addition to her role at Techstars, she’s also on the board of Pana, Simple Energy, the Economic Advisory Council of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, and the Leeds Board of Alumni and Friends at the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado. Previously she’s been on the boards of Owlet, the Application Developer’s Alliance, and Pledge1Percent Colorado, She was named one of the Coolest People in New York Tech and an Extraordinary Woman in New York Tech by Business Insider, Marie Claire named her one of the NewGuard, and Entrepreneur Magazine named her One of the Most 7 Powerful Women to Watch and featured in the Denver Business Journal. She’s been featured on CNBC, Inc.com, and Huffington Post, and her talks have been featured at SXSW, TEDx, WebSummit, Pioneers Festival, Arctic festival, the University of Colorado, Real Leaders, @WomenatForbes Mentoring Moments, and many, many more.
Nicole blends the strategic with the tactical and loves pushing her own limits and the limits of those around her. She’s been a competitive swimmer, triathlete, and boxer. She’s summited Mt. Rainer, is a NOLS graduate, has guided adventure travel trips, and knows enough about backcountry medicine to make her dangerous, She loves traveling to places radically different than home and mourns the spread of the western culture across the globe. She lives the mantra #GiveFirst and does one philanthropic thing every year, and is always looking for new ways to learn, grow, and help others.
When not working with startups, you’ll find Nicole smothering her husband and two kids with kisses, or hiking, biking, skiing, reading, and lamenting how little time there is to do everything she loves.
Ime Archibong
VP Partnerships, Facebook
Ime Archibong
VP Partnerships, Facebook
Ime is focused on unlocking new business opportunities and driving Facebook’s product strategy through product/platform integrations and global programs. In this role, Ime has supported a variety of Facebook initiatives, including the Developer Platform, Music and Video products, Messenger, Internet.org, and Facebook’s K-12 and CS Education efforts. Prior to joining Facebook, Ime was an Advanced Technology Business Development Professional at IBM. He started his career at IBM as a software engineer in the Systems and Technology Group, before doing a stint on the corporate strategy team, and eventually settling in business development. Ime holds a Bachelor¹s of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Yale University and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Jane Miller
Former CEO of Rudi’s Organic Bakery
Jane Miller
Former CEO of Rudi’s Organic Bakery
Jane Miller is a 30-year food industry executive with experience working with start-ups and Fortune 500 companies. She is also the founder of Janeknows.com, a career advice website geared towards young leaders starting their careers. She is the author of Sleep your Way to the Top(and other myths about business success), a sassy business book targeted at Millennials.
Currently, Jane is the CEO of HannahMax Cookie Chips and recently, Jane was the CEO and President of ProYo, a high protein natural food and ingredient start-up. Previously, she was the CEO and President of Charter Baking Company, a private-equity backed rollup of organic and natural bakeries.
Over the course of her career, Jane was part of an executive team that brought Hostess out of bankruptcy, worked for HJHeinz as the Chief Growth Officer and then the President of the UK & Ireland Division, and she ran the Western division of Bestfoods Baking. The first fourteen years of her career were at PepsiCo, where she rose to be the President of the Central division of Frito-Lay.
Jane currently serves as a board member at the University of Colorado Leeds Business School, Eldorado Springs Artesian Water and Madhava Sweeteners. Her involvement as a mentor for young professionals and start-ups resulted in her being named the Lifetime Achievement Award Winner for the Denver Business Journal in 2013, the Boulder Chamber of Commerce’s Women Who Light the Community in 2015 and the Naturally Boulder Industry Leader Award in 2016. In 2015, Jane established the Jane Knows Scholarship Fund at Leeds supporting students who are the first in their family to go to college.
Jane has a Russian Studies degree from Knox College in Galesburg, IL, where she received a 2017 Alumni Achievement Award, and an MBA from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX.
Kevin Starr
Director, Mulago Foundation
Kevin Starr
Director, Mulago Foundation
Kevin Starr directs the Mulago Foundation and is the founder and director of the Rainer Arnhold Fellows Program. Mulago spends its money to drive forward the most promising ideas in health, development, and conservation in poor countries. The Foundation is unabashedly obsessed with impact: designing for it, measuring it, investing in it, and taking it to scale. The Rainer Arnhold Fellows program is an outgrowth of the Foundation, and works with the best emerging social entrepreneurs with solutions for the less-than-$2-a-day world. The Program uses a clear understanding of impact and behavior change as the raw material to drive a systematic process of design for maximum scalability (see www.rainerfellows.org). Kevin’s stint in Cambodian refugee camps at age 19 propelled him on the path to his current work. He had a perfectly good career in medicine and international health when he stumbled into philanthropy in the early 1990’s. Since then, he’s gotten deep into dozens of projects ranging from forest conservation by monks in Tibet to micro-franchise clinics in Kenya to one-acre farming in Burma. He still practices medicine (very) part-time.
Jennifer Dulski
President, Change.org
Jennifer Dulski
President, Change.org
Jennifer Dulski is president of Change.org, the world’s largest social change platform, with more than 150 million members in 196 countries who start, support and win campaigns on causes that matter to them Change.org is a Certified Benefit Corporation, a new class of companies dedicated to positive impact. The company has raised more than $50 million in investment, from a group of tech and business luminaries, including Bill Gates, Reid Hoffman, Richard Branson, Arianna Huffington, and the founders of eBay, Twitter and Yahoo!, among others.
An accomplished leader and entrepreneur, with more than 17 years of experience in both successful startups and big-brand internet companies, Jennifer was an early Yahoo! employee, holding a number of roles over her 9-year tenure there, ultimately serving as Group VP and General Manager of Local & Commerce, one of Yahoo’s six business units. In 2007, Jennifer left Yahoo! to become co-founder and CEO of The Dealmap, a mobile, location-based deals company that Google acquired in 2011, making Jennifer the first female entrepreneur to sell a company to Google. She stayed at Google for nearly 2 years as a senior executive leading the global, business for Google Shopping & Product Listing Ads.
A thought leader in Silicon Valley, Jennifer is featured regularly in the media including CNN, The New York Times, Forbes, Businessweek, and The Wall St. Journal and writes frequently about leadership, management, and entrepreneurship for LinkedIn Influencers, Fortune, Huffington Post, and other outlets. She also currently serves on the boards of TEGNA (NYSE:TGNA), Little Passports and She++.
Ray Weston
VP of International Business at Yum Brands
Ray Weston
VP of International Business at Yum Brands
As an international lawyer and business executive at a Fortune 500 company, Ray’s experience centers upon licensing, franchising, intellectual property, M&A, and launching/growing international businesses, including the use of joint ventures and other M&A to launch and expand businesses in developing countries (Brazil, Poland, Czech Republic, Russia, Nigeria) and developed countries (U.S., Canada, Belgium, France, England). For ten years Ray coached licensees in Latin America, Eastern & Western Europe, Israel, and Africa how to start, operate, and grow businesses in support of global US brands.
We asked: Describe the moment you stepped into uncharted territory. How did it feel? What happened?
Vien Truong
"Six of the ten places in the United States with the dirtiest air are in California. My family and I live in Oakland, a city ranked fourth on the list. Heavy smog and soot in the air has left my community riddled with poverty, expensive groceries, and sicker people. This was not the Oakland I envisioned growing up nor is it the future I wish for my kids."
Praful Shah
"Reading newspapers in a small, one room library in an Indian village was my lens to the outside world. I read about opulence and abundance beyond my imagination and abject poverty with starving children. From immigrating to the United States for college, taking the first right job, and to my early retirement, there have been many trials, tribulations and triumphs—each requiring the courage to travel across uncharted territories. "
Mirta Desir
"Like most Haitian-Americans, I heard about the earthquake in Haiti from family, followed by the words, "turn on the news." For the first 12 hours I watched, listened, and grieved. But I could only do that briefly, because grieving can be done after helping the living. "
Kago Kagichiri
"Being the CTO was all about tools and Slack and as little communication with my team as was needed—we were automation nerds who enjoyed chatting about the things that excited us. I didn’t realize spending most of my time with non-techies would be such a pivotal learning experience. I assumed that I knew the team better than my cofounder and that it would be a breeze."
FuMing and Elaine
"In childhood, we both dreamed of living on the other side of the world. So when we met, we quickly asked each other: "Would you live abroad?" Eventually, we promised ourselves we'd move upon marriage. After our wedding, we began working for the first Internet startups and "life happened"—five tech companies and three kids later, we lived in Silicon Valley."
Gavin Armstrong
"It often seems there's a general consensus that “complex problems need complex solutions,” and in my opinion this school of thought is the reason why problems are getting worse. Simple ideas and innovations, like cooking with a special piece of iron, can have a profound global impact. Let me explain."
Ayla Schlosser
"I grew up in a household with a strong feminist mother, a supportive father, and with the understanding that I could do anything I put my mind to. Yet at 20 years old, I was unable to recognize or admit to myself or others that I was in an abusive relationship. I was able to extricate myself from that relationship, but it changed my perception of strength and the origin of confidence."
Toni Maraviglia
"About three weeks after first conceiving Eneza, I made a decision. Over my first meal of the day, a banana split at 5pm, I called up the top-ten business school where I was enrolled and told them I wanted to cancel my enrollment. When they asked me why, I responded, “I have an idea, and it can change the lives of half a billion children. It’s important.""