We’re primed to support scientific founders and very early-stage biotechs or techbio startups who want to develop their business literacy while also getting hands-on expert guidance and mentorship from industry leaders and growing their industry networks.  

Specifically, we’d like to see applicants that:

• Have access (or a clear path to) to the intellectual property that the startup is founded on
• Are interested in incorporating (if they haven’t already)
• For Biotechs: Have a high potential therapeutic pipeline or platform with an asset
• For Techbios: Are addressing challenges in drug discovery, design, and development by leveraging data science, engineering, computational approaches, or new tools and platforms like artificial intelligence, machine learning, generative AI, large language models, or computational biology

If your science or startup doesn’t meet these criteria (or meets some of it), we’d still encourage you to apply – our application gives you room to provide more context. 

This is for emerging founders who want the support of a community as they take the next step with their science. Drive’s network of experts, mentors, and industry stakeholders are here to support you before, during, and beyond this program.

All of Drive’s benefits are provided for free and with no equity taken:  

• 6 weeks of business curriculum and individualized working sessions
• 5 mentors who will serve as an advisory board for the course of the program; the Drive team will help match you with mentors that fit your specific needs  
• Business development and networking support from the Drive team throughout the program  
• Ecosystem visibility through Drive networking events and an end-of-program Demo Day event, and through marketing channels

We know that our founders are busy with academic work, research, families, and everything else, so we’ve worked to make this program as manageable, but as high impact as possible. 

The two pillars of our 8-week program are curriculum modules and mentor meetings, which both take place weekly: 

• Curriculum modules: We take a hybrid and asynchronous approach to our six curriculum modules, which are composed of reviewing a video about that week’s topic and participating in a 1:1 deep dive working session with that week’s topic expert(s). Each week, you’ll receive a video overview of the next week’s curriculum topic; you (and anyone on your team who is interested) will watch it, take notes relevant to your startup, and share any questions or topics you’d like to discuss during the 1:1 working session with the curriculum expert. During the 1:1 working session with the curriculum expert, you’ll have the opportunity to connect on Zoom on specific topics or questions directly related to your startup. 
    
• Mentor meeting: The virtual, weekly mentor meeting will function as an advisory board meeting – you’ll have a set time to connect with your mentor team to discuss that week’s curriculum module, provide updates on your roadmap progress over the last week, and get advice or make asks of your mentors.

Here’s what a sample week at Drive looks like: 

• Throughout the week:
  • Continue to make progress towards the goals outlined in your program roadmap, which you’ll develop with the support of your Drive and mentor teams during the first two weeks of the program  
• Monday:
  • 1:1 meeting with that week’s curriculum expert
• Tuesday:
  • Receive next Monday’s curriculum video, which you should watch between Tuesday and Wednesday (approximately 45 minutes – 1 hour)
  • Weekly mentoring meeting, where you’ll discuss your progress on last week’s goals, new organizational priorities, and next steps for the week ahead
• Thursday:
  • Prep for the next Monday’s curriculum module by sharing any questions or agenda items you’d like to review during the 1:1 meeting 
• Next Monday:
  • Start the cycle over again!

Absolutely! We welcome all eligible applicants. 

This is a hybrid program for a reason – we want it to be as easy as possible for all founders with great potential to harness our regions’ networks and resources.

The core program components (application process, the mentor community, and the 8-week program) are the same across both locations. But because each Fall 2025 program will have a different focus – techbio facilitated by MassBio and biotech facilitated by SCbio – elements are tailored to fit the specific needs of those founders/startups. 

To start, fill out our online application. We use this application to collect basic information about you and your startup, and we expect that it will take most applicants about an hour to complete.

All applications will be anonymized and undergo a blind review process by an expert team. Select companies will be invited to participate in 1:1 interviews with our review board of industry leaders, who will select the final cohort.

Here are the key dates for our Fall 2025 program:  

• Key Application Dates 
  • May 20: Applications for Drive Fall 2025 Cohorts Open (F25) 
  • June 20 @ Noon ET: Deadline to apply for F25 Cohorts  
  • July 11: Applicants notified if accepted to interview round (techbio only) 
  • Week of July 28: F25 Cohort Interviews with Review Board (techbio only) 
  • August 8: Interviewees notified if accepted into F25 Cohort  

• Key Dates for F25 Cohort 
  • September 2 – October 24: F25 Program 
    • Note: Onboarding will begin the week of August 11 
  • October 7: Demo Day Presentations @ Align Summit (Boston Marriott Copley Place) 

Learn more about our previous cohorts below and check out what they had to say about Drive.

First – congratulations on your success!  

Second – thanks for your interest in joining our community: join us by attending our events or becoming a mentor (see below)!

We firmly believe that everyone in this ecosystem has a role to play in supporting emerging innovators. Here are a few ways to support Drive: 

If you’d like to give back: 

Consider mentoring with Drive. Mentors play an invaluable role in helping founders take the first step (and all the other steps after). Your perspectives and experiences could be extremely valuable to someone who is just starting out. If you’d like to learn more, visit our mentor and interest forms: Biotech Mentors and Techbio Mentors.  

If you have resources to share:

Partner with Drive to provide tools or resources to our cohorts. It could be consulting services, access to a technology, space, or cold hard cash; startups can benefit from all different types of support.

If you have something to share and would like to get involved, reach out to our team.  

If you want a front-row seat to the latest industry breakthroughs:

Volunteer as an analyst. Analysts are undergraduate and graduate students pursuing degrees in the life sciences (biology, biotechnology, biomedical engineering, chemistry, or biochemistry preferred) or business, or experienced professionals who help conduct due diligence on our cohort applications. Interested? Send us your CV to start the conversation.