Kairos for Student Venture Builders
Kairos is UNC’s AI-powered venture studio, where students become co-creators of real-world startups. Whether you're a business strategist or a technical builder, this is your opportunity to join a founding team, work directly with UNC faculty, and help shape the future of healthcare innovation.
Build Real Startups While Still in School
Venture Builders are embedded members of Kairos startup teams. Over six months, you’ll work alongside domain-expert faculty, experienced entrepreneurs, and your student co-builder to take a digital health concept from idea to investor-ready startup.
- Business Builders focus on customer discovery, business modeling, pilot scouting, and go-to-market strategy.
- Technical Builders lead product prototyping, MVP development, and early tech architecture—leveraging cloud and AI-native tools from day one.
This is not a simulation. You will help build a real company.
- Hands-on Startup Experience: Go from 0 to 1 on a real venture in a high-accountability, team-based environment.
- World-Class Mentorship: Work directly with UNC faculty, serial entrepreneurs, and innovation leaders.
- AI Training and Toolkits: Learn how to use agentic AI, no-code platforms, and market analysis bots to accelerate venture building.
- AWS Immersion for Technical Builders: Get exclusive access to AWS cloud and AI tools, plus hands-on mentorship from AWS startup specialists.
- Career Edge: Gain the skills, network, and experience to become a founder—or an innovation leader inside top tech, health, or consulting firms.
- Equity Potential: Top-performing builders may have the opportunity to continue with their startup post-sprint as co-founders or early employees.
We’re looking for ambitious, impact-driven students from any discipline with a passion for startups, digital health, and problem solving.
Ideal Business Builders:
- Great at research, communication, and business modeling
- Comfortable navigating ambiguity and talking to users
- Excited by markets, storytelling, and strategy
Ideal Technical Builders:
- Experience with coding, prototyping, or technical problem solving
- Familiarity with agile workflows, APIs, databases, or low-code tools
- Motivated to build and iterate quickly with limited resources
No prior startup experience required—just curiosity, hustle, and drive.
Kairos is UNC’s AI-powered venture studio, designed to translate cutting-edge university research into scalable startups. Kairos accelerates university innovation by harnessing faculty expertise, student creativity, and generative AI tools. This bold, purpose-driven initiative represents a new model of venture building—AI-enabled, student-powered, and focused on creating the next generation of digital health companies.
- Use AI tools to accelerate discovery, strategy, and product development
- Conduct customer interviews, market research, and stakeholder mapping
- Prototype solutions and build MVPs for real-world healthcare problems
- Engage with mentors from AWS, health systems, and venture capital
- Present at Demo Day to investors and healthcare leaders
