Startup Yale celebrates a decade of transforming innovation into impact

Every startup begins with an idea. For Startup Yale, that idea was to celebrate student innovation across campus. 

In 2015, the first iteration of the event took place. It was called the Entrepreneurship Across Yale contest weekend, and four prizes were awarded to students, with ideas ranging from an ed-tech startup scaling early literacy to a crowd-sourced matchmaking app. Two years later, the Startup Yale brand officially launched. 

Now, 10 years since its inception, Startup Yale has become a critical part of the university’s thriving entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystem. 

Each year the campus event continues to convene promising student entrepreneurs, industry leaders, and investors for a series of pitch competitions, workshops, and discussions. During the event, dozens of student entrepreneurs present innovative ideas to address a range of global challenges, competing for eight prizes totaling more than $200,000 in prizes.

And over time it has fostered a growing network of partnerships across Yale and beyond, with innovation hubs campuswide, strengthening the university’s entrepreneurial ecosystem and expanding opportunities for student founders. 

“For me, it’s an annual celebration of the collective work and the ecosystem at-large,” said Kassie Tucker, executive director of the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale (Tsai CITY).

Tsai CITY is the lead organizer behind Startup Yale. Other organizers include the Yale Center for Business and the Environment, the Yale School of Public Health, Dwight Hall, and Yale School of Music. 

“Every student can benefit from an entrepreneurial mindset,” Tucker said. “What we strive to do is provide opportunities where they can learn about innovative thinking mindsets and then test out new skills, take risks, learn from failure, do all the things in a supportive environment while they’re students.”

Here, Yale News spotlights a few of the companies that have come out of Startup Yale over the past decade: 

Spring Health

Conversations about mental health can be difficult for families. Guided by her own mental health journey, April Koh ’16 is now helping to change those conversations through her company Spring Health.

Founded in 2016, Spring Health is a mental health technology company providing a comprehensive benefit for employers and health plans, matching individuals to the care they need using data and machine learning.

“Our mission is to remove every barrier to mental well-being, offering better access, not just more access,” said Koh.

When she was still a senior at Yale, Koh was searching for better depression treatments when she came across the work of Adam Chekroud, who was pursuing a Ph.D. in psychiatry at Yale at the time. Specifically, Chekroud was researching how machine learning might be used to better understand and treat mental health disorders. Inspired by his work, Koh reached out to Chekroud, and the duo started working on what would eventually become Spring Health.

They wanted to solve the frustrating trial-and-error process in mental health care and needed resources to launch. So, they started entering entrepreneurship competitions, including Startup Yale. And, in 2016, they won its Thorne Prize for Social Innovation in Health or Education and other grants, totaling about $100,000 in non-dilutive funding.

“The experience validated our idea, sharpened our pitch, and expanded our network,” Koh said. “The late-night drafting of our grant proposals or prepping for pitch competitions helped us learn how to work together as cofounders. Looking back, it was the springboard that gave us funding, feedback, and confidence to grow.”

For Spring Health, Startup Yale was pivotal. The $100,000 in seed funding allowed Koh and the team to build their first product and sign initial customers without immediately seeking venture capital money. It also introduced them to mentors and advisors with health care and business expertise, as well as increased the company’s visibility, helping them recruit talent and meet investors, including leading internet entrepreneur Kevin Ryan ’85, a key early backer.

Delivered primarily as an employee benefit, Spring Health supports employees and their families via an app, web portal, or in-person sessions. The company now serves 20 million people employed by more than 450 companies, including Microsoft, Target, JPMorgan Chase, and Delta. Since its launch, Spring Health has raised a half-billion dollars in funding, reaching a $3.3 billion valuation last year. This fall, Koh was named one of “The World’s Most Influential Rising Stars” as part of the TIME100 Next. 

“The university gave us the freedom to experiment, fail safely, and shape a mission-driven ethos,” Koh said. “Yale didn’t just prepare us – it launched us.

Symbrosia 

Alexia Akbay ’19 M.P.H. found inspiration from an unexpected source: cow farts and burps. 

While a student at the Yale School of Public Health, Akbay was researching ways to address climate change and found herself reading a lot about cows. She learned that about 30% of methane emissions come from livestock production, particularly beef cattle and dairy cows. 

Akbay saw that problem as an opportunity — and so she came up with a solution. Today, she’s the founder and CEO of Symbrosia, a Hawaii-based climate tech company developing SeaGraze, a red seaweed feed additive that reduces livestock methane emissions. By partnering with cattle producers worldwide, Symbrosia is building a new supply chain that cuts greenhouse gas emissions at the source while unlocking productivity gains for farmers.

“My time at Yale cultivated the scientific rigor and public health perspective that underpins Symbrosia’s work,” said Akbay. “Yale pushed me to think not only about technology, but also about systems change — how an innovation scales, who it impacts, and how it contributes to planetary health.”

Akbay first learned about the potential of red seaweed to cut emissions as a first-year student at Yale. At the time, there were a few food additives available that could reduce methane emissions by 20 or 30%. But nothing came close to seaweed, which could reduce emissions by more 80%.

So, Akbay started developing an idea to create an aquaponic system to grow red seaweed in a sustainable way. She eventually won seed funding from the Yale Center for Business and the Environment (CBEY) to do just that. 

In 2018, Akbay brought her idea to Startup Yale where she hoped to transition it from an academic concept into a real-world company. Through the event, she was able to test the pitch, validate the model, and connect with mentors and funders who could help the company scale. Her idea won the Sustainable Venture Prize, now known as the Planetary Solutions Prize, awarded to student-led for-profit ventures dedicated to advancing environmental sustainability.

“Startup Yale was catalytic,” Akbay said. “It gave me the confidence to communicate Symbrosia’s mission clearly and the connections to take our early research into pilot projects. It was one of the first times I saw investors and community members really light up about what we were building.”

Since it launched, Symbrosia has raised more than $17 million in venture and grant funding to date, built one of the largest red seaweed aquaculture operations in the world, and partnered with major U.S. and international beef producers. According to Akbay, their work has the potential to mitigate hundreds of millions of tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions annually. Beyond numbers, she says they’re also proving that ocean farming can create green jobs and regenerate coastal economies.

“I’ll never forget the first time we fed SeaGraze to cattle on a ranch in Hawaii,” Akbay said. “The rancher, who was skeptical at first, called me after a few weeks to say not only were the animals doing well, but he was excited to see ranching play a direct role in climate solutions. Moments like that remind me why this work matters: it bridges science, tradition, and innovation to create hope for our food systems.”

Banofi Leather 

When she arrived on the Yale campus in 2021, Jinali Mody ’23 M.E.M. had a nascent business idea: to create a sustainable, plant-based leather alternative. And in the campus community, she found a vibrant culture of entrepreneurship, not to mention mentorship and support, that helped her turn that vision into a viable business.

“Yale gave me the mindset, community, and tools to take the leap into entrepreneurship far earlier than I thought possible,” said Mody. “It helped me see myself not just as a student but as a founder, and that shift in identity has made all the difference.”

Today, Mody is helping to redefine how we think about waste, sustainability, and fashion through her company Banofi Leather, which makes plant-based leather from banana crop waste. The leather looks and feels like traditional leather. But the material, she says, is vegan, does not harm animals, and uses 90% less water and has 90% lower carbon emissions than leather produced from animals.

In April 2022, Mody decided to pitch a then-early version of her business idea at Startup Yale. Her idea ended up winning the Sustainable Venture Prize, now known as the Planetary Solutions Prize.

Since its launch, Banofi Leather has won the Hult Prize, the largest student entrepreneurship competition globally, which provided a $1 million prize and global visibility. The company has also piloted with more than 150 brands across fashion, lifestyle, and automotive sectors, including receiving a recent grant from Mercedes-Benz, as well as serves as the official stationery partner for Yale and other major universities. On top of that, Banofi Leather has helped more than 100 small-scale farmers in India create new income streams and livelihoods.

And earlier this fall, Mody was one of three young entrepreneurs to win a 2025 Young Champions of the Earth award from the UN Environment Programme and American cleantech CEO Chris Kemper at an event during Climate Week in New York.

“Startup Yale wasn’t just a competition it was a transformational process,” Mody said. “It gave me the tools to clearly articulate the impact and potential of Banofi Leather, connected me with an amazing community of mentors and peers, and strengthened my belief that this venture could make a real difference.”

The next Startup Yale will be April 10, 2026.