Nurturing the Next Generation of Bold Innovators
At Moves The Needle, we believe universities and startup ecosystems are the launchpads of future-shaping innovation. But turning bold ideas into successful ventures requires more than inspiration.
We partner with university entrepreneurship centers, incubators, and accelerators to help founders de-risk uncertainty.
Igniting Entrepreneurial Action
Moves The Needle teaches, coaches, and mentors founders using our proven, customer-driven, hands-on approach. Founders learn to develop products that solve real-world problems, validate market demand, and scale with confidence. We also prepare them for investment and facilitate introductions to vetted investors.
Universities: Student Founders Drive Real-World Impact
- Impact-Driven Curriculum: A milestone-based, immersive learning experience that builds both growth skills (IQ) and entrepreneurial mindsets (EQ) while advancing students’ startups. Participants learn to identify real problems, validate opportunities with customers, apply emerging technologies, and adopt evidence-based decision-making to find a path to market.
- Bold,Experiential Learning: Founders build confidence and accelerate progress by testing bold ideas in the real world, minimizing risk and waste. Through rapid in-market experiments, assumption testing, and purposeful pitching, they grow into resilient, aware, and dynamic (RAD) leaders.
- Enduring EntrepreneurialMindsetsPost-program mentoring ensures entrepreneurial, customer-driven mindsets and practices endure, empowering graduates to continue driving impact and delivering business results with speed and agility.
- Investor and Ecosystem Access: Curated investor showcases and networking events connect students with vetted funders, experienced mentors, and key partners to accelerate real-world traction.
Startup Ecosystems: Empowering Entrepreneurs To Thrive
- Immersive Sprints & Accelerators: Hands-on programs that guide founders through customer discovery, ideation, and business model validation — using real customer feedback to accelerate the path to product-market fit.
- Opportunity Discovery and AI-readiness: Equip ps to uncover unmet needs and evaluate when and howto apply AI and emerging technologies—gaining market evidence early whilereducing technical and business risk.
- Growth-Focused Mentoring & Ecosystem Building: Ongoing advising that supports founders beyond the accelerator, helping build sustainable innovation ecosystems that attract funding, form strategic partnerships, and scale impact.
Ready to ignite entrepreneurial action?
Programs Built For Impact
- Lean Innovation Sprint: A "learn by doing" engagement that teaches founders Lean Innovation as they make progress on their startup idea gaining market evidence to reduce risk
- Transformation Accelerator: Impact-based, milestone-driven program with dedicated coaching to understand customers, de-risk solutions, define MVP, and achieve Product-Market fit
- Exploration Days: 2-3 day intensive workshops to identify high-potential opportunities, prototype, validate assumptions, and create early-stage experiments
- Mentoring to Scale: Tailored mentoring to help founders move from early-stage validation to revenue growth and scale
- Venture Matchmaking: Establish strategic partnerships with relevant organizations through investor showcases, startup pitch events, and demo days
- RAD (Resilient, Aware, Dynamic) Leadership Development: Designed for faculty, advisors, and ecosystem leaders to elevate their leadership competencies in mentoring and coaching entrepreneurs
Why Universities & Startup Communities Work With Us
Our Founder Brant Cooper had a vision he boldly pursued through thought leadership, community engagement, and entrepreneurship, helping hundreds of start-ups all over the world create value. We continue to build on his legacy of setting entrepreneurs up for success.
- Real-world results. Our methods are used by successful founders and global brands like P&G, Nike, and Roche to accelerate speed to value.
- We teach by doing. Our seasoned coaches don’t just deliver frameworks and tools — we embed with your teams and transfer lasting skills. We focus on both growth skills (IQ) and mindsets (EQ) to ensure these new ways of working endure.
- Future-ready focus. We blend behavioral customer-driven approach with emerging technologies like AI, helping early-stage teams understand when to use emerging tech, and how to avoid the hype.
- Frontline Expertise: Our coaches have leadership experience and expertise in both startup and corporate innovation.
- Strategic Partnerships: Our global network facilitates connections with potential investors and partners to establish ongoing relationships.