CMU T&E - Updates for May 2025
Pittsburgh dinner, SF Agentic AI and Palo Alto Pitch Event w/VentureBridge, NYC Demo Day, & events with EchoHer in the Bay Area.
Hey Tartans,
May is packed with ways to plug into the CMU startup community!
Here’s what’s coming up:
DraperU dinner for aspiring deeptech founders in Pittsburgh
Multimodal AI panels + networking in SF with AICamp & VB
Founders pitching live in Palo Alto with Moon Creative
New EchoHer events for women & non-binary founders
NYC Demo Day + call for mentors for VentureBridge
Scroll for details and RSVP links below 🚀
🍽️ T&E Pittsburgh | DraperU Deeptech Dinner
📅 Tomorrow, Friday May 2 | 🕔 5:30–7:00 PM ET
📍 Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship, Pittsburgh, PA
👥 Application required. Attendees will be pre-vetted & approved, 30 person cap
Join Draper University and CMU T&E for an intimate dinner focused on deeptech entrepreneurship.
Learn about DraperU’s summer fellowships for aspiring VCs and engineers.
Connect with CMU founders, Pittsburgh engineers, and DraperU investors.
Applications for DraperU programs close Today, May 1 — don’t miss out!
🤖 Bay Area | Multimodal AI, Vector DB & Agentic AI
📅 Tuesday, May 13 | 🕕 6:00–8:30 PM PT
📍 CBRE, Salesforce Tower (46th Fl), 415 Mission Street, San Francisco
👥 Limited spots, in-person.
Join AICamp and CMU VentureBridge for an evening of cutting-edge talks on multimodal AI, featuring leaders in computer vision and vector database infrastructure. Explore the future of intelligent systems that see, understand, and interact across modalities.
Agenda:
- 6:00pm~6:30pm: Checkin, food and networking
- 6:30pm~7:00pm: Founder Talks
- 7:00pm~7:45pm: Panel Discussion with Phil Boyer (partner at Crosslink) and founders from Aperture, Voxel, Fort.
- 7:45pm~8:30pm: Open discussion, Mixer and Closing.
🚀 Bay Area | Moon x CMU Founders Meetup & Pitch Event
📅 Thursday, May 15 | 🕔 5:00–7:00 PM PT
📍 Moon Creative Lab, Palo Alto, CA
Please join us for a networking and pitch event with members of the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) network. Hear from students, alumni, and other founders within CMU as they pitch their innovative business ideas to an audience including VCs, investors, leaders, and peers.
Hosted by Moon and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) VentureBridge and Alumni Association San Francisco Bay Area Network, this event is an exclusive opportunity to learn about up-and-coming businesses and meet founders and other innovators from CMU San Francisco Bay Area Network.
Interested in pitching your startup?
If you are a founder in the CMU network (alumni, student, staff, or faculty) and would like to pitch your startup, please submit an application here. Applications must be submitted by 6:00 p.m. PT on May 1. Invitations to present will be sent via email by the end of business day (PT) on May 9.
👩🚀 EchoHer Events for Women & Non-Binary Founders
EchoHer is part of the CMU Project Olympus Incubator Program
✨ Unleashing the Power of Women Entrepreneurs
📅 Friday, May 9 | 🕟 4:30–6:00 PM PT
📍 Menlo Park, CA
This workshop is for women founders and leaders who want to elevate their pitch and connect with VCs. Sandy will provide actionable strategies to help you stand out and engage with investors, whether in-person or virtually.
🍷 Women Leaders Mingle
📅 Friday, May 16 | 🕔 5:00–8:30 PM PT
📍 Arbor, 384 Hayes St, San Francisco
Looking to meet fellow women founders, investors, and leaders in a relaxed setting? Join us for a no-agenda happy hour where real conversations and new connections happen naturally.
Feel free to drop by anytime after 5 PM — we'll be gathering at Arbor’s beautiful space in Hayes Valley.
🔍 Finding the Right Cofounder
📅 Friday, May 30 | 🕠 5:30–8:00 PM PT
📍 San Francisco
Choosing the right cofounder is one of the biggest decisions you'll make as a founder — and you don't have to figure it out alone. Join EchoHer for a hands-on workshop where we’ll cover:
Do you really need a cofounder?
How to find the right partner
Red flags and lessons from founder breakups
Real founder stories — the good and the messy
🗽 NYC | CMU VentureBridge Demo Day (Investors Only)
📅 June 2 | 🕔 5:00–7:30 PM ET
📍 New York, NY (Exact address shared upon approval)
👥 This is an invite-only event for investors and VIPs.
Doors open at 4:30pm. A networking reception will follow after the startup pitches, which will feature the new cohort and select VB alumni in the portfolio.
Carnegie Mellon University’s VentureBridge (VB) program is a pre-seed fund and an accelerator program, part of the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship, focused on supporting Carnegie Mellon founders working on their startups full-time. Since 2018, the VB program has supported dozens of startups collectively valued at over half a billion dollars.
Thank you to Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman for being an amazing champion of CMU founders—welcoming us to their New York office and continually supporting the CMU founder community.
Thank you to the Patrons that support our programming at the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship.
📣 Mentorship Call: Interested in mentoring the next VentureBridge cohort? Email Steven at stevengu@andrew.cmu.edu — we’re especially looking for mentors in B2B sales, wearable tech, legal/IP, and more.
🔗 Stay Connected
Want to co-host an event, recommend a speaker, or support the community?
Drop us a note at cmutehq@gmail.com and join the Slack.
Let’s keep building this thing together 💥
See you soon,
— The CMU T&E Team
I almost want to sign up for the multimodal AI just so there's an empty seat. For a program built on fostering the connection between tech and art, built on the shared art and labor of people, it's shameful to see talks promoting generative AI.