Celebrating Ten Years of Supporting Hard-Tech Fellows
When Activate was founded, there was little support for early-stage entrepreneurs in hard tech. Ten years later, Activate has supported 296 fellows and stayed true to its people-first mission.
When you’re a new entrepreneur, you need all the help you can get. “What's the cliché—it takes a village? Activate is my village,” says Deepak Dugar.
Dugar is counted among Activate’s many success stories. An early Activate Fellow, his company, Visolis, carved its own niche by making chemicals and fuels using synthetic biology and chemical catalysis, becoming an industry leader.
Dugar was part of Activate’s inaugural cohort in 2015, which had nine fellows. Fast forward ten years: we recently welcomed 47 new fellows to Cohort 2025, and they’re located across the United States. In total, Activate has now supported 296 fellows, who have created 236 companies—96 percent of which are still active.
Even as we’ve scaled significantly, we’ve stayed true to the spirit of Activate: investing in people, emphasizing community, and championing world-changing hard tech.
As we look back on ten years of Activate, we’ve asked Activate’s co-founders and our fellows to help tell our story.
Taking a Chance on Hard Tech
Activate was co-founded by Ilan Gur, Matt Price, Brenna Teigler, and Sebastien Lounis who recognized the massive potential for scientists and engineers commercializing their breakthrough technologies, and the fact that it was going untapped due to lack of support.
“Our hypothesis was: there's a bunch of stranded talent that doesn't have a place to do this. No venture capitalist wanted to fund early-stage clean tech or hard tech or anything like that,” recalled Gur. “I think, just like every Activate Fellow, we started this because of a combination of frustration and excitement that the world could look different.”
Indeed, they were right about the demand for an early-stage hard-tech fellowship. When Activate launched, 100 people applied, ready to give the brand-new program a try.
“I think what I underestimated was just how bold a leap it was for those people to be like, maybe I'll do this with the next few years of my life, without having any idea what it was,” said Gur. “Now we've got incredible people actually putting their lives on this path, versus whatever else they could have done, like taking the Google job or whatever else.”
Gur said this was both exciting and nerve-racking at the time—but now he can say that the experience has “worked out pretty well” for most of the fellows. And the co-founders’ vision still underpins it all: “Focus on the fellows: find awesome people, and empower and support them to change the world.”
Fellows First, Forever
In the words of Teigler, Activate set out to be “ruthlessly focused on the fellows and making them successful.”
Since the beginning, Activate has distinguished itself from other entrepreneurial support programs by investing in people, not companies or technologies. Activate’s theory of change rests on accelerating early-stage innovation by way of supporting scientists and engineers as they transform into entrepreneurial leaders.
What does this look like? “Something that Activate puts a lot of energy into is identifying the mindsets you need to be an entrepreneur, ” said Jill Fuss, who went from being a fellow to Managing Director of the Activate Berkeley Community.
Rok Sitar (Blaze Energy Technologies, Cohort 2023), for example, recently reflected on how his mindset shifted from science to business over the course of the fellowship. This allowed him to achieve the goal he stated during his finalist week presentation two years ago: to transform from a scientist into an energy leader with the help of Activate’s mentorship and community, and become a resource for future technology leaders.
Activate’s approach also allows fellows to make the early pivots that are often essential to their long-term success. Vince Romanin (Gradient, Cohort 2017) said, “One of the reasons I like that Activate focuses on supporting the founders, rather than supporting the idea or supporting the company, is because sometimes in that journey, you find out that what you're doing is not really the right fit.”
Andrew Hsieh (Liminal Insights, Cohort 2016), also now an Activate board member, echoed, “I think that's one of the great things about Activate, is that there is no one journey.”
“When we support the person, we’re making a lifetime investment,” said Activate CEO Cyrus Wadia. “We just need more scientists and engineers and technically trained individuals believing in themselves.”
Our Next Decade
Over the past ten years, we’ve expanded our reach well beyond Berkeley—establishing additional communities in Boston, New York, Houston, and remotely across the United States with Activate Anywhere. We’ve also deepened our impact, supporting innovators across a growing range of critical technology areas. In turn, we’ve seen our fellows become leaders and even catalyze new industries.
“We've spent the last decade proving what's possible. Over the next 10 years, we're going to be scaling our impact and broadening our reach,” said Wadia. “We're seeing the sparks of new entrepreneurial activity growing up. That's the thing that is exciting—that there's a huge opportunity that is untapped.”
Hear fellows from our very first cohort through Cohort 2024 discuss how Activate and our community helped them transform from a scientist and engineer into a leader of their company in our ten-year anniversary video here.
