Stanford Founders hosts 90 startups in second-ever Demo Day

Stanford Founders — a student organization which connects students across Stanford’s graduate schools to investors and to one another — hosted its second Demo Day this academic year on Thursday.

The all-day event held at Tresidder Oak Lounge reflected the organization’s growth since its inaugural evening last November. The event, which was attended by over 1,500 students, faculty and alumni, gave 90 Stanford-affiliated startups the opportunity to pitch their ideas to over 300 investors.

Demo Day featured three-minute pitch presentations for startups and keynote speakers, interspersed with networking opportunities. 

Keynote speaker Hurst Lin M.B.A. ’93, a general partner at the venture capital firm DCM, offered advice to founders from his perspective as an investor. “To a venture capitalist, you’re not just money,” he said. “You’re there to give [venture capitalists] ideas.” 

He also advised founders to “talk about [their] excitement, not how much money [they’re] going to make” in their three-minute pitches.

Johnny Chang M.S. ’25, president of Stanford Founders, started Demo Day after his friends asked him to “introduce them to investors,” Chang said. “Initially, I was referring them to individual investors, but eventually, I was like, ‘Why not host an event where I invite founders and investors?’”

Angelina You M.S. ’26 co-founded Stanford Founders with Chang and serves as vice president of AI-related startups. The organization started as a WhatsApp channel with “a group of friends who felt that there was no founder community for graduate students, especially across departments,” You said.

Francesco Marchioni, a third-year mechanical engineering Ph.D. student and vice president of aerospace and defense startups, said that he joined Stanford Founders because he “thought that there was a real need for people like myself that are a lot more technical.” 

Chang, You and Marchioni have experience working on their own startups. “As founders, we can also pinpoint not having a community to help each other and not having a community to connect to investors,” You said.

“Folks here are very entrepreneurial,” said Chinat Yu M.S. ’25, the club’s vice president of education-related startups. “What we hope to do here at Stanford Founders and Demo Day is increase that exposure so that anyone … can turn to [the club] to find their next co-founder.” 

Yu added that while entrepreneurial clubs exist for all undergraduate students, Stanford Founders has allowed for graduate students to connect across schools.

“The fact that this initiative was led and created by Stanford students themselves is in itself a testimony to the entrepreneurial spirit that not only Stanford undergraduates carry, but also Stanford graduate students,” Yu said.

Yash Jain M.B.A. ’26 said that he joined Stanford Founders to connect with graduate students across schools. “In the GSB, all the events like Startup Garage are GSB proprietary programs. It’s full of business people, but I think this is the only community which is cross-school,” Jain said.

Fifth-year bioengineering Ph.D. student Trishia El Chemaly also highlighted the importance of the Stanford Founders community. “I wanted to meet more founders … in parallel with working on my own research,” she said. “The resources at the community had changed a lot for people, [providing] opportunities for funding and for meeting co-founders. I stayed because I wanted to contribute to that.”

“All the pitches were so good, we had a hard time picking which ones to invite to Demo Day,” said Rohan Parekh, a second-year masters student in materials science and Stanford Founders’ vice president for energy-related startups. “Seeing this high caliber from Stanford alumni and students was a highlight.”

Parekh added that the Stanford Founders team chose not to share details about individual startups before Demo Day to ensure that pitches with more popular appeal would not attract larger crowds at the cost of “more niche” startups. 

“We were really proud about the process that went into today but also about the quality of our founders that are our community,” said Chris Bradbury M.B.A. ’25, Stanford Founders’ vice president for healthcare-related startups and head of startup recruitment for Demo Day. 

Looking forward, Stanford Founders plans to host two Demo Days a year — one in fall quarter and another in spring, according to Bradbury.

“Our best founders aren’t doing class projects; our best founders are building companies that are being invested in by the best venture firms in the world,” Bradbury said.

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