CUNY Startups Opens Fall Cohort of New Venture Accelerator at Baruch

CUNY Startups has selected a new student cohort for its New Venture Accelerator Program, known as NVA 1, at Baruch College for the fall semester. The program, founded in 2014, says it propels students across all 26 CUNY campuses toward building a business idea through mentorship and hands-on learning. Twelve years in, the accelerator still publishes no figures on how many ventures survive launch — a gap worth noting for a program that describes itself as widely acclaimed.

What does the program actually deliver?

The NVA 1 track runs for up to 10 weeks. It covers team formation, artificial intelligence implementation and product refinement, all building toward a final Demo Day. The format targets students who are curious about developing new business ventures in a team-oriented setting rather than solo founders with finished plans.

Adia Johnson, associate director of CUNY Startups for the past four years, said her motivation comes from helping students balance college life with the constraints of growing a business.

"I know building a business is really challenging," Johnson said. "So, I just really wanted to help students in that capacity and build out their businesses."

That framing is candid. It concedes the difficulty upfront, which is more than most accelerator marketing does.

Who is in the new cohort?

One member is Angelica Flores, a Baruch College senior who said she applied because of an existing entrepreneurial pursuit: a photography business.

"I actually am an entrepreneur myself, so getting ideas and the proper steps on how to build my photography business is one of the main things that I want to learn from the NVA 1 program," Flores said.

Inside the accelerator, Flores works on a team building a platform that lets small warehouses track their inventory flow with ease. The idea is in its earliest stages. Flores said the program's mentorship approach is what she expects will carry the venture to product-market fit after launch.

"I would say one of the best things about CUNY Startups are the mentors," Flores said. "It's a whole bunch of different minds and individuals that give us incredible feedback and ideas on how to pursue what we're trying to do."

One student team, one early-stage idea and positive testimonials — the sample size is small, and the program has not disclosed cohort-wide outcomes.

How far does the mentorship reach?

Johnson emphasized mentorship as the mechanism that pushes students to continuously refine their business goals. Because CUNY Startups relies on digital platforms like Zoom, mentors can join from outside the New York area.

"Mentors from other countries are able to participate so it's not just siloed to mentors who live in New York City or New Jersey," Johnson said. "[Students] get to meet mentors who live in Paris or India."

The remote format widens the mentor pool at no geographic cost to students. Whether international advising translates into better outcomes for ventures aimed at local markets remains an open question the program does not address.

Beyond mentors, CUNY Startups aims to give students extensive access to professional networking. Johnson framed that access as broader than startup support alone.

"We want to provide an opportunity for our students to have access to mentors to not only help them with a startup business idea, but to help them professionally wherever they want to go," Johnson said.

The program also says it trains students to master critical and analytical skills for the business world — a claim every business school makes, and one CUNY Startups does not yet back with published results.

How do students get in?

Prospective applicants should visit their nearest career center, Johnson said. That step, she argued, helps candidates stand out in the application process and learn more about entrepreneurship as a potential career.

The program accepts students from any major who show a strong interest in startups. They can pitch their ideas to a team. Johnson rejected the idea that entrepreneurship belongs to a narrow set of majors.

"Anybody in any field can have an idea that will help somebody," Johnson said. "So why can't they start a business too?"

The open-admission posture widens the funnel, though it also means the cohort will mix first-time founders with students who have never written a business plan. For now, the fall cohort's success will be measured at Demo Day — and, after that, in whatever the warehouse-tracking team and its peers manage to ship.