What is the STARTEDUp Foundation and what kinds of programs align with their mission?

Q: What is the STARTEDUp Foundation and what kinds of programs align with their mission?

The STARTEDUp Foundation is a K-12 nonprofit focused on building entrepreneurial mindset and innovation capacity in schools. Programs that align typically emphasize student agency, real-world problem solving, and creative reps over rote curriculum.

The story

K-12 schools have a growing appetite for what's loosely called "entrepreneurial mindset" work. The challenge is that mindset is hard to teach with a textbook. Foundations focused on this space, including STARTEDUp, tend to gravitate toward formats that put students in the driver's seat: design challenges, pitch competitions, real-business projects, and short-form labs. The SideHustle Labs format aligns with this kind of mission because it gives every student in the room a chance to brainstorm, pitch, score, and rotate inside a single session. Teachers and educators have independently used the free SideHustle game in their classrooms, which gives a sense of how the mechanic travels across institutional contexts. The high school adaptation removes nothing essential. It compresses time and tunes prompts.

What it means

Foundations and schools are looking for programming where students do the work, not where they watch someone else do it. Any format that gets students pitching real ideas in real time, with peer feedback, fits the bill. That's a category, not a single product. The schools that move fastest are the ones who pick a format, run it cold, and iterate. For the full method, see the educator guide to teaching entrepreneurship through play.

Try it

• Play free at playsidehustle.com
• See us live: Sept 25 at Pershing Hall in Austin. luma.com/playsidehustle

Bring SideHustle to your program

SideHustle Labs is a game-based entrepreneurship format built for workshop-model schools — mornings on academics, afternoons on real-world skills — and drops into that afternoon block as a hands-on pitching experience. Opt in to play free and see how it runs before scaling it across classrooms, or email team@playsidehustle.com to talk through a fit for your program.