Bronco Ventures Is More Than an Accelerator

Building the Entrepreneurial Continuum

Bronco Ventures has built an entrepreneurial continuum that develops founders from their earliest stages through company creation and beyond.

The journey begins with Prep School, where aspiring founders learn entrepreneurial fundamentals, validate ideas, and develop both themselves and their ventures before they are accelerator-ready.

The strongest founders then earn admission into the Bronco Ventures Accelerator (BVA), where they receive intensive mentorship, capital readiness support, customer development, and investor access.

Success does not end at graduation. Alumni return as mentors, investors, customers, operators, and advisors, strengthening the community for future founders and creating a self-reinforcing cycle of entrepreneurship.

Bronco Ventures is building something larger than an accelerator - it is building a lifelong platform for entrepreneurship.

 

Expanding the Founder Pipeline

Prep School is not simply a recruiting mechanism for the accelerator.

It expands the addressable founder pool by creating opportunities for students who may not have previously viewed themselves as entrepreneurs.

Our philosophy is simple:

Potential before pedigree. Progress before polish. Community for the long run.

By identifying entrepreneurial potential early and investing in founder development before companies are investment-ready, Bronco Ventures creates opportunities that traditional accelerators often miss.

 

The Bronco Ventures Advantage

Bronco Ventures enters the founder journey before the market does.

While most investors discover founders after they have traction, we build relationships while they are still developing inside the university ecosystem.

This creates proprietary, relationship-driven access to emerging founders months before institutional investors typically engage.

Prep School emphasizes exploration across consumer products, education, sustainability, AI experimentation, and student-focused ideas.

As founders mature, the accelerator naturally shifts toward more commercially sophisticated sectors including enterprise software, fintech, industrial technology, healthcare, and biotechnology - ventures requiring stronger technical validation, customer discovery, and capital readiness.

We don't wait for founders to become exceptional.

We help build them.

 

Building Entrepreneurial Human Capital

Bronco Ventures is a lifelong entrepreneurship platform for the Santa Clara community.

Students can enter before they know how to build a company.

Faculty can commercialize research.

Alumni can return years later with operating experience, investment capital, industry expertise, and customer relationships.

Together, these groups create a connected community rather than a collection of isolated founders.

This student–faculty–alumni bridge is one of Bronco Ventures' greatest competitive advantages and transforms Santa Clara University's distributed entrepreneurial talent into a durable innovation network.

 

Evidence That the Model Works

Our outcomes demonstrate the value of developing founders over time.

• More than 25% of Prep School founders who apply to the Bronco Ventures Accelerator are accepted.
• More than 30% of accelerator founders receive professional investment after Demo Day.
• More than 50% of accelerator companies remain active two years after Demo Day.
• More than 2,000 founders, investors, operators, and mentors participate in the Bronco Ventures network.
• Approximately 700 attendees including institutional and angel investors attend Demo Day each year, making it Santa Clara University's premier innovation and entrepreneurship event.
• Since the inception of Bronco Ventures Accelerator, SCU has made Crunchbase’s list of top 25 universities in the US for most funded startups.

Our evidence suggests founders who progress through the complete Bronco Ventures pathway enter acceleration with greater preparedness and demonstrate stronger long-term venture persistence.

Across our portfolio, founders have built venture-backed companies, acquisitions, revenue-generating businesses, patented technologies, physical products, beta launches, paying customers, and have continued into leading accelerators including Y Combinator and Alchemist.

An AI-Native Venture Ecosystem

Bronco Ventures is not simply an AI accelerator.

It is an AI-enabled venture ecosystem spanning real industries.

Today, more than 90% of portfolio companies leverage artificial intelligence, while more than 25% of AI startups operate in healthcare and medicine.

This concentration reflects where emerging founders are creating the greatest impact, not only building AI technologies, but applying AI to solve meaningful problems across healthcare, enterprise software, manufacturing, education, sustainability, and financial services.

As the quality of our AI founders and ventures has grown, industry leaders have taken notice. Organizations such as NVIDIA and BP Castrol have expressed interest in supporting and collaborating with Bronco Ventures through mentorship, technical resources, industry partnerships, founder engagement, and financial resources. These relationships help connect our startups with global companies that can accelerate product development, customer discovery, and commercialization.

The result is an ecosystem where founders gain access not only to entrepreneurial education and mentorship, but also to strategic industry partners that can help transform promising ideas into market-ready companies.

From Mission to Medicine - Entrepreneurship in Service of Humanity

For more than 170 years, Santa Clara University has educated leaders committed to serving others. As Santa Clara University prepares to launch its medical school, Bronco Ventures Accelerator is becoming an important catalyst for healthcare innovation.

An increasing number of founders are tackling challenges ranging from obesity and metabolic health to drug discovery, disease diagnostics, precision medicine, and human mobility.

Calorify is democratizing gold-standard metabolic measurement technology to improve nutrition, weight management, diabetes prevention, and overall metabolic health.

 

Intero Biosystems develops stem-cell-derived miniature human organs that improve drug testing, reduce development costs, and accelerate new therapies.

 

RealSeq Biosciences uses genomics and multi-omics technologies to identify disease biomarkers and develop precision therapeutics.

 

Biomotum combines biomechanics, robotics, and healthcare innovation to restore mobility and improve quality of life for individuals facing physical challenges.

In BVA's sixth cohort, healthcare and life sciences companies emerged among the program's strongest ventures.

That momentum continues today. Among the first nine startups admitted early into BVA8, five are healthcare-focused.

This represents more than startup success. It reflects the convergence of entrepreneurship, medicine, engineering, and Santa Clara University's Jesuit mission to improve the human condition. Our founders build companies that improve lives, expand access to healthcare, accelerate scientific discovery, and address pressing global challenges.

 

Insert picture of Morgan with his name and title. Morgan Slain, Founder and Director

Morgan Slain always lived inside the engine of innovation. His career began at the intersection of creativity and technology, serving as Vice President at The Walt Disney Studios, where he helped shape early video-on-demand services and led international strategy across Europe and the Asia-Pacific. It was there that Morgan saw how bold ideas, when paired with the right execution and support, could change entire industries.

He went on to co-found QuickOffice, a mobile productivity company that would later be acquired by Google. As a founder-operator, Morgan experienced firsthand the highs and pressures of building a startup - from product decisions to scaling, fundraising, and ultimately an exit that led him into the investor role as a partner at UP2398, a seed-stage venture firm launched by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. From that seat, he evaluated hundreds of early-stage startups emerging from top ecosystems like Y Combinator.

This journey gave Morgan something more valuable than success - perspective. He saw what worked. He saw what failed. And he saw what founders needed most: access, belief, and a community that didn’t just teach entrepreneurship, but practiced it.

Perspective That Sparked a Movement

Morgan noticed that Santa Clara University - a university sitting in the heart of Silicon Valley, surrounded by innovation - did not yet have a startup accelerator. So, he did what founders do best. He called a meeting. In collaboration with university leadership, he shared a simple but powerful vision: Santa Clara founders needed a world-class launchpad that was rooted not only in innovation, but in values.

In 2019, that vision became reality and Bronco Ventures was born!

Building More Than a Program

Morgan designed the Bronco Ventures Accelerator to mirror the real startup world - rigorous, founder-first, mentor-driven - while staying grounded in Santa Clara’s mission of competence, conscience, and compassion. He also built something different - not just an accelerator, but an ecosystem. In addition to the Bronco Ventures Accelerator, Morgan founded The Bronco Ventures Fund, one of the few university-affiliated funds that exclusively invests in Bronco founders, putting real capital behind belief in the community. 

Morgan’s leadership was shaped by his work as partner and investor in the venture capital world, as well as decades of experience as CEO of SplashData, CEO of SPARC International, Senior Executive at Palm (where he worked on the company’s IPO and M&A strategy), and Chief Digital Officer at Frost & Sullivan.

The People Who Power the Vision

The true strength of Bronco Ventures came from the team he assembled.

To bring Bronco Ventures to life, Morgan surrounded himself with leaders who shared his belief in founders and in education as a force multiplier.

Insert picture of Cristina with her name and title. Cristina Cismas Florea, Assistant Director

At the heart of the program is Cristina Cismas Florea, Assistant Director of Bronco Ventures. With over 20 years of experience in education and program design, Cristina has dedicated her career to empowering students through entrepreneurship.

In 2014, she founded the BEAM Program, an international initiative that helps high school students build startups using curriculum developed with firms like PricewaterhouseCoopers and Ernst & Young. BEAM has reached thousands of students worldwide and was recognized by the Nuffic Report in the Netherlands as a global best practice in education. Cristina’s impact earned her recognition as a Notable Alumna of Santa Clara University.

Cristina has served as Chief Program Officer at Boys & Girls Clubs, guest lectured at Stanford University, spoken at Wharton School of Business, and now teaches design thinking and entrepreneurship as adjunct faculty at Santa Clara University. She also advises Santa Clara Ventures and serves as a Fellow on the Santa Clara University Board.

Insert picture of Michal with his name and title. Michael Kovalich, Cohort Advisor

Alongside Morgan and Cristina is Michael Kovalich, Cohort Advisor for Bronco Ventures, host of BVA Café, and a guiding force since the program’s inception. Michael brings decades of financial, operational, and governance expertise across startups, law firms, nonprofits, and global organizations.

Beyond Bronco Ventures, Michael serves as CFO for Vanguard Music and Performing Arts and SPARC International, advises Bay Street Capital Holdings and Santa Clara Ventures, and mentors founders through SCORE, a program sponsored by the U.S. Small Business Administration. His career spans leadership roles at Frost & Sullivan, Greenberg Traurig, and Weber Shandwick, among others—and his commitment to community includes overseeing public accountability for Santa Clara County’s Measure K initiative.