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Technology has the potential to solve many problems, making tasks easier, but often these solutions don't address the toughest challenges faced by New Yorkers.
Our Fellowship Launch Program aims to create products and services that tackle real community issues. Tech builders, designers, product managers, engineers, and experts in different fields collaborate directly with the community to design and build impactful solutions.
Fellows (which we also refer to as 'EIRs', Entreprenuers-In-Residence) participate in intensive, community-centric research to identify, define, and test potential solutions, followed by several weeks to prototype, test, and iterate on their projects. The goal is for teams to focus on both user and customer validation, and leave the program with a minimum viable product (MVP). Past Fellows have created venture-backed companies, tech-enabled nonprofits, open-source projects, and more.
We seek Fellows who are dedicated to addressing the most pressing issues for low-income communities in NYC, focusing on both launching and sustaining impactful solutions quickly.
Below is further information about our program for 2024. The information is subject to change (including our focus areas, key dates, and other aspects of the program) based on the strategy and resources available to execute. We will keep this website updated with the latest information.
Fellowship Runs: September 12, 2024 - December 13, 2024
Application Opens: May 20th, 2024
Q&A Session:
July 12th, 2024 https://lu.ma/jhqbs5t1
Application Closes: July 17, 2024
Interviews: July 17th, 2024 - July 29th, 2024
Virtual Workshop: August 3rd (half day)
Final Decisions: Sent on August 15th, 2024
This category focuses on ensuring individuals are healthy from birth and throughout their lives.
Early Childhood: Promoting healthy birthweights, minimizing exposure to trauma, providing treatment and preventative care for both mental and physical health conditions
Young Adult & Adult: Providing essential pre- and post-natal care to support the health of parents and children.
This category emphasizes the importance of education at all stages of life to promote lifelong learning and development.
Early Childhood: Providing early development opportunities, such as pre-kindergarten and childcare, to ensure children are ready to learn upon entering kindergarten.
School-Age: Ensuring children achieve key educational milestones, such as 3rd-grade and 8th-grade proficiency, and obtain a high school education or equivalent credential.
Young Adult & Adult: Supporting postsecondary education and obtaining degrees in high-paying fields to enhance career prospects.
This category aims to equip individuals with the skills and opportunities needed for successful and sustainable careers.
Young Adult: Helping individuals secure their first full-time job with advancement opportunities, providing high-quality job training, and ensuring access to jobs that pay living wages with employer-based benefits.
This category is focused on achieving economic security and independence.
This category highlights the importance of stable living conditions and strong community support systems.
Early Childhood: Providing access to stable, affordable housing and fostering economic inclusion by addressing issues like poverty concentration and social capital.
Young Adult & Adult: Reducing interactions with the criminal justice system, minimizing the harms of justice involvement, and ensuring reliable and affordable access to essential physical and digital infrastructure, such as transportation and internet access.
This category is for projects that positively impact individuals who experience the challenges related to poverty that do not fit in the existing tracks.
These questions cover general topics
- Codesign with community: Build with communities that technology often leaves behind
- Possibility to make a difference: Work on real-world poverty reduction projects
- Access a network: Collaborate with other skilled individuals and organizations working on poverty reduction in New York City
- Learn from the BRL community: What is needed to build a social impact tech company
No. The stipend ($17,500) and the resources we provide is not equivalent to an official equity investment.
Applications are open to individuals from all backgrounds. We are looking for individuals before they have formally started their next venture. If you have an idea (or many ideas) that is fine, what we are looking for is individuals that really want to build a venture, but are open and interested in engaging with individuals who have experienced poverty and build scalable technology solutions based on what they learn.
We have had participants from all backgrounds including product management, design, engineering as well as experts in various areas. We value lived experience or proximate experience with candidates to problems communities experiencing poverty face.
No. The office is available and open for you 5 days a week, but your attendance to programming is only required during 2-3 days of the week.
Programming happens 2+ days a week. During the programming days, BRL provides a mix of learning sessions, workshops, mentorship, coaching opportunities and community activities.
Yes, participating in a BRL fellowship is a full-time commitment. We expect all participants to be available for the entire duration of their cohort. Holding a full-time job while participating is not feasible given the demands of the program.
Blue Ridge Labs has a diverse portfolio of successful companies that have made significant contributions towards addressing social issues through the use of technology. These companies are committed to creating innovative solutions that improve the lives of individuals living in poverty. Check out some of the examples here.
We are looking for solutions to local problems in the US. We don’t have the ability to help with legal status issues.
No.
We treat application data as confidential information. Each year, we see many applications, and many of them include similar ideas, we don’t share any information with people outside our organization. Our application does not ask you to disclose any information you are not comfortable sharing. We hope that our reputation and our mission speaks for itself on this topic.
If your idea is no longer an idea, but a formed company with some sort of traction, we recommend that you review our Catalyst program to see if your company can be a good match with that program. Fellowship is really focused on the early/idea phase of your organization.
These questions cover selection topics
- Application Review: Our team evaluates your background, experience, and vision.
- Initial Interview: A conversation focused on your motivation and resilience to build a product and a company.
- Second Interview: A deeper discussion about your potential as a founder, idea sparring (if you have an idea), and how the BRL experience could benefit you.
- Workshop: Interact with other participants on a virtual event to understand more about the program and its dynamics.
- Offer: Successful candidates receive an offer with cohort details.
- A strong passion and commitment to change the status quo for low income communities
- A bias towards action
- Entrepreneurial spirit and resilience
- Lived and proximate experience, which means that the person deeply understands the issue they want to solve
- Comfort around technology
We offer a stipend of $17,500 to all our in-person founders for the duration of the program. The program is designed to last 13 weeks. In addition to the stipend, BRL provides value through lectures, workshops, space, networking and user research expenses through the Blue Ridge Labs and Robin Hood community.
You will receive a notification once your application has been approved to the next step in the process. Final approval will be sent to you a month prior to starting the program.
We receive many applications and do not have the resources to give concrete, useful feedback at this point.
Yes, you can join BRL without a specific idea. Our program is designed for both individuals with defined ideas and those who are eager to start a venture and have the skills, drive, and determination to build something that will positively impact the lives of low income communities.
Yes, you can join BRL with an idea as long as it is mission aligned.We welcome ideas at all stages, whether you're just starting to conceptualize or have already started generating interest. We offer the resources, guidance, and ecosystem needed to help transform your idea into a viable product.
Apply! Candidates are evaluated on an individual basis. If you already have a registered organization defined working product, you may be too far along for the Fellowship. The essence of the program is about iterating, pivoting, and rapidly evolving based on feedback from the Design Insight Group (DIG) and potential customers. If you have additional questions we encourage you to speak with a member of our team!
Funding. A stipend of $17,500 and research budget.
Co-founders. A cohort of talented peers with complementary skills.
Access. The chance to connect with hundreds of users and experts through our Design Insight Group and community partners.
Community. An ecosystem of high-impact startups and mentors.
Note: You must be eligible to work in the U.S. We unfortunately are unable to sponsor visas at this time. Because the Fellowship will be hybrid and require some in-person sessions, we require compliance with Robin Hood’s COVID-19 protocols.
We think the group benefits from a wide range of backgrounds. Past EIRs have included everything from former employees of top tech companies, folks from design and software agencies, and exited founders to journalists, social workers, and lawyers.
EIRs will be expected to bring expertise in their role from day one. The strongest candidates have sufficient professional experience to jump right in.
EIRs should be committed to community-centered design, that means co-creating a new technology-enabled solution with the community.
EIRs are excited to explore a variety of ideas and would consider continuing to pursue their venture post-Fellowship. We hope the Fellowship will lead you to become founders!
EIRs are excited to develop and use skills outside of your immediate role. For example, engineers may not do much if any coding during the first half of the program. The best fit candidates are excited to explore and lean in on a broad set of skills.
EIRs have a track record of action on issues they’re passionate about. We want to see that you’ve dug in on understanding problems and figuring out possible solutions. It could be an open source side project, a tool you hacked together for the place you volunteer, a change you helped enact in your community, or research you’ve led to explore a new issue.
We are committed to fostering a community that values diverse perspectives and experiences, particularly from those who we aim to serve. We actively seek applicants from, or who have worked closely with, historically marginalized groups, including but not limited to: people of color, people with disabilities, LGBTQIA+ people, first- or second-generation immigrants, and people from low-income families.
We’re looking for candidates who are comfortable conducting interviews and focus groups and have a bag of tricks they use to draw out insights and feedback. Within a team, they’ll often be responsible for planning and leading research conversations, building rapid prototypes, and ensuring digital products are delightful, easy to use, and visually appealing.
I feel quite lucky to say that I am still working on a project that came out of that summer, so it’s without a doubt the best thing I took from that experience was meeting my team!… If you told me at the start of the Fellowship this is where I would be today, I would have never thought it possible, and can’t imagine anything else I’d rather be doing.
Ideally with prior project work in mobile web, web applications, or third party APIs. We’re looking for candidates who write concise, clean code but also understand that part of building technology is getting out and talking to people. Within a team, they’ll often be responsible for picking the platform, building the architecture, and setting the plan for implementation.
Affiliation with Robin Hood grants unparalleled access… Having both the time to prototype things and the chance to get feedback from everyone from tenant organizers to directors of legal aid organizations to everyday people who are the unofficial ‘mayors’ of their communities is what lets the magic happen.
whether that comes from academic research, frontline service, personal experience, policy or advocacy. We’re looking for candidates who have a perspective on where opportunities may lie and a strong desire to share their expertise with others. Within a team, they’ll often be responsible for framing the research agenda, identifying resources, and building networks and partnerships.
The Fellowship was recommended by a friend and my initial reaction was to pass. I doubted I would be selected because my technology skills were limited. But after experiencing a 92-year-old mistreated by Access-A-Ride, the community activist in me quickly opened the application and applied.
We’re looking for candidates who can translate a big vision into a product roadmap and are skilled at finding and capturing market opportunities. Within a team, they’ll often be responsible for defining and testing assumptions, owning the product roadmap, and figuring out how the product fits into the broader ecosystem.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from the Fellowship, it’s that there are not nearly enough talented technologists working on the problems faced by low-income Americans. The Fellowship provides a unique opportunity to dive into some truly important problems – don’t pass it up.
