The Brown Institute for Media Innovation at Columbia University wrapped up its 10-week Summer Entrepreneurship Program, a core piece of Pronto, our initiative supporting ventures at the intersection of media and technology. The program builds on the momentum of the annual spring Venture Competition, run in partnership with the Bill Campbell Center for Entrepreneurship, which awards seed funding to promising Columbia startups. Winners from that competition, alongside select Magic Grant recipients, are invited into the summer program, where they receive stipends, mentorship, and intensive training to help refine ideas, test business models, and prepare for launch.
Led this year by Justin Hendrix, the program brought together five teams: The Source Report (Sarah Ryley, Mike Tigas), VIOU (Asabe Vincent-Otiono, Rhema Komolafe), Press Is (Lauren Watson), The Dicks (Sally Herships, Maty Bohacek, Mark Fiore – 2025–26 Magic Grant), and Here Today (Justine Landis-Hanley, Alex Tighe, Alex Klavens – 2025–26 Seed Grant). Over the course of the summer, these ventures engaged in a modified Lean Launch process, testing hypotheses, interviewing stakeholders in their respective spaces, and sharpening their pitches and strategies week by week. At the close of the program, teams vied for the Brown Institute’s Magic Grant—an award of $75,000 to accelerate their projects.
This year’s venture program Magic Grant was awarded to The Source Report, a venture designed to make investigations into labor and environmental abuses in global supply chains faster and more scalable. Traditional reporting on these issues can take years, limiting its impact. This project combines investigative methods with machine learning and data lakehouse technology to automate the collection, integration, and analysis of supply chain records and intelligence. By streamlining one of the most time-intensive phases of reporting, the team seeks to build a framework that enables more consistent accountability in the manufacturing sector. In addition to receiving a Magic Grant, the team has been awarded the Brown Institute seat amongst the 2025–2026 cohort at the Columbia Startup Lab in Soho.
The Summer Entrepreneurship Program reflects the Brown Institute’s deep commitment to supporting Columbia founders who are building bold ventures in media and technology. Looking ahead, the 2026 program will be announced in late fall 2025, with applications due in early January. Run in partnership with Columbia Entrepreneurship, it will once again provide a launchpad for students and alumni ready to transform ambitious ideas into ventures with real impact.