We help great scientists and engineers become great founders
A free, 12-week program to build a startup humanity needs.
In partnership with the UK's Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA), 5050 has landed in the UK.
Alumni building the Star Trek future
535
Scientists & engineers have come through 5050.
115
Companies started by our alumni. Many wouldn’t exist without 5050.
96%
Raise-success rate among alumni who fundraise.
Ultra-fast sequencing as a service
Autonomous sailboats to decarbonize maritime shipping
AI foundation models for molecular discovery
Robotics and computer vision for the wetlab
Laser-powered machines for precision metal parts
Measuring and modifying cellular function
Sustainable, cost-effective lithium chemical production
AI-driven in vivo delivery for precision medicine
Automating drug formulation development
Next-generation turbines for cleaner power
AI-enabled on-demand molecule synthesis
Autonomous cargo airships for cheaper freight
American-made hardware for defense & aerospace
Enzymes that make textiles infinitely recyclable
Making human mitochondria superhuman
Reusable enzymes for specialty chemicals
Whether you’re validating an idea or ready to build — 5050 is for you
We’ll coach you through the early days of building in deep tech. Through our curriculum designed for technical founders, entrepreneurship workshops, one-on-one mentorship from 50Y Partners, visits to startups, and a cohort camp, you’ll be ready to start a startup humanity needs.
Building alongside a cohort of scientists and engineers working across bio, energy, climate, space, and compute will challenge you to level up.
No deck, co-founder, or polished idea required. Built to fit around your PhD or job until you gain conviction to go full-time.
100% free. No equity, no fees, and no weird clauses.
Whether you’re validating an idea or ready to build — 5050 is for you
We’ll coach you through the early days of building in deep tech. Through our curriculum designed for technical founders, entrepreneurship workshops, one-on-one mentorship from 50Y Partners, startup visits, and a cohort camp, you’ll be ready to start a startup humanity needs.
Building alongside a cohort of scientists and engineers working across bio, energy, climate, space, and compute will challenge you to level up.
No deck, co-founder, or polished idea required. Built to fit around your PhD or job until you gain conviction to go full-time.
100% free. No equity, no fees, and no weird clauses.
Learn what it takes to become a great founder
Choose the right problem, technology, and market
Learn how to build a deep tech startup
From SpaceX, Tesla, and Anduril to building deep tech startups
Where and when
KICKOFF WEEKEND
Sep 12 – 13 · SF
Identifying who you need to become
COHORT CAMP
Oct 23 – 25 · SF
3 days off the grid to level up as a founder
CLOSING
Dec 5 · SF
Ready to build
EVERY WEEK
Office hours
Small group mentorship with 50Y
EVERY WEEK
Workshops
On essential entrepreneurship skills
3+ TIMES PER COHORT
Sprint days
Full days building with your cohort
How it works: Workshops are held in SF, Boston, and remotely. Time commitment is roughly 10 hours per week, most of it spent pushing your idea forward. We fly the cohort and cover accommodations for kickoff, camp, and closing.
Where and when
KICKOFF WEEKEND
Sep 19 – 20 · London
Identifying who you need to become
COHORT CAMP
Nov 6 - 8 · London
3 days off the grid to level up as a founder
CLOSING
Dec · London
Ready to build
EVERY WEEK
Office hours
Small group mentorship with 50Y
EVERY WEEK
Workshops
On essential entrepreneurship skills
3+ TIMES PER COHORT
Sprint days
Full days building with your cohort
How it works: Workshops are held in London and remotely. Time commitment is roughly 10 hours per week, most of it spent pushing your idea forward. We bring the cohort out and cover accommodations for kickoff, camp, and closing.
The 5050 experience
01
Identify a civilization-scale problem that can be a great business
5050 will help you answer: Do I have an idea worth pursuing? Does the idea chunk nicely into milestones? Do the technoeconomics make sense? Is there a market for it? Is my invention 10x cheaper, better, or faster than how things are done today? Am I the right person to do it?
We’ll help you diagnose and mitigate risks, pivot quickly if necessary, identify the problem you can uniquely solve, and make a solid plan to commercialize your tech.
02
Learn how to build a deep tech startup
Recognizing that every delayed solution can cost real lives and entire ecosystems, 5050 will help you quickly de-risk your technology, hit milestones, raise your first round, and avoid costly mistakes. Through weekly workshops and small group office hours, you’ll learn the best deep tech approaches to fundraising, selecting your co-founder, recruiting, closing customers, moving fast, and storytelling.
03
Grow into a great founder
We’ll help you figure out if entrepreneurship is for you and coach you through the early days of building your startup. 50Y Partners will meet with you weekly to give mentorship, resolve challenges, and set the pace for execution. Founder-growth workshops will push you past your edge to develop the traits great founders share: thinking against the grain, high expectations, speed, optimism, audacity, and relentlessness.
You’ll visit deep tech startups and meet founders a few years ahead of you to learn what the early days of building a startup look like.
04
Build alongside a cohort of future founders
You’ll join a cohort of ambitious scientists, engineers, and builders tackling the world’s most pressing problems. Building alongside entrepreneurial peers will challenge you to level up and provide a community to lean on for support.
Since you’re navigating the entrepreneurial journey together, it’s almost guaranteed someone in your cohort has just solved the challenge you’re facing right now. 5050 alumni, many of whom are now deep tech founders, are eager to share their experiences with you.
Hear from 5050 alumni:
5050 was the fundamental catalyst for founding Huminly! It helped me focus on a select number of objectives I needed to hit to spin out of Stanford and raise. Alex told me early on to focus on the polyester monomer and to meet the technical specs at a viable cost. Now we’re chasing that at full speed!
Nikita Khlystov
Co-founder of Huminly · prev. Cochran lab at Stanford
When I came to 5050, I was helping Anduril become the next great American defense contractor. I realized what I actually wanted to do was rebuild the American tech tree. 5050 gave me the confidence to go start something, and that starting something was the right move.
Dan Moore
Founder of Type III · prev. Anduril
Before 5050, I was a postdoc at Stanford with a whole lot of constraints keeping me from starting a company: a paper, a disclosure, collaborative projects. Speed is the one word I've learned in 5050: you can speed up literally everything you're doing. The constraints are gone. I left Stanford, and I'm building Powerhouse.
Mariëlle van Kooten.
Co-founder of Powerhouse Bio · prev. Stanford postdoc
Before 5050, the chances of us starting a company were ~10%. They’ll tell you if it’s a bad idea and help you land on something worth pursuing. Within weeks, we quit our jobs at Tesla, and we’re now building the startup full-time.
Niccolo Cymbalist
Co-founder of Clippership · prev. Tesla, PhD from Caltech
My life looks drastically different because of 5050. It gave me the conviction to fully commit to building Lightmill. 5050 helped me land on a mission that I'm beyond excited to build every day.
50Y’s weekly mentorship pushed me to kill ideas, de-risk, and move extremely fast.
Owen Murphy
Co-founder & CEO of Lightmill · prev. Neuralink
The caliber of scientists that Fifty Years brought together was incredible.
You gain insider knowledge you’d only gain if you talk to and share with peers who are also trying to figure out the entrepreneurial journey themselves.
Floris Engelhardt
Co-founder of Kano · prev. Bathe lab at MIT
We help founders build before the world believes
5050 is run by Fifty Years. We've built deep tech companies ourselves and backed over 130 companies from the earliest, jankiest prototypes, helping them raise over $4.6 billion. We've helped our founders achieve many “firsts”:
the first carbon-negative molecule factory
the first cultivated meat approved in the U.S.
the first microgeo satellite for internet connectivity
the first in-orbit space factory that manufactured pharmaceutical drugs
the first de novo synthesis of a 1000+ base DNA molecule
and many more
The story of Plasmidsaurus
We started supporting Mark Budde, the founder of Plasmidsaurus, in the inaugural 5050 cohort. He was still a postdoc at Caltech, researching mammalian synthetic cell circuits.
We helped him realize the workflows he built to speed up his research could be the foundation of a great business. He set up a shack in his backyard and began delivering overnight plasmid sequencing.
Plasmidsaurus is the fastest-growing startup we’ve seen, profitable, serving scientists across 50 U.S. states and most European countries.
Scientists and engineers have the potential to build civilization-bending companies
We help you get started.
Penicillin, fiber optics, DNA’s double helix, MRIs, monoclonal antibodies, the electric motor, the telephone, and the World Wide Web were all invented or discovered by brilliant UK minds.
But not a single one was successfully commercialised in the UK.
The UK is a powerhouse of invention.
5050 will help the next wave of UK invention be commercialised and built in Britain.
FAQ
-
Scientists, engineers, and builders interested in entrepreneurship. Whether you're in the early stages of building a company or actively pursuing a PhD and deciding whether entrepreneurship is right for you, we can help you accelerate the journey to build a company to solve humanity’s biggest problems.
-
Deep tech companies require deep technical expertise to drive breakthroughs in areas like energy, climate tech, materials, bioengineering, transportation, hardware, computation, communication, health, aerospace, and AI. If you're building something that could be civilizationally important tech, we'd probably call it deep tech!
-
Not at all. Many cohort members are simply talented, curious, and ambitious builders. If you do have an idea, you’ll make the idea even stronger during the cohort.
-
Roughly 10 hours per week for sessions and office hours with the 50Y team. We expect you to spend the rest of your time pushing your research or startup idea forward.
The cohort runs for 12 weeks. Core commitments include:
A kickoff weekend (in person)
Weekly sessions, usually weekday evenings, and some on Saturdays (sessions will be held online and in person).
Weekly 1-hour group office hours with 50Y Partners (on Zoom)
Access to 1:1 check-ins with 50Y team as needed
A Friday–Sunday off-the-grid cohort experience
You can join 5050 while doing your PhD, postdoc, or full-time job. Many past participants made the most of nights and weekends until they were ready to go full-time. What matters is showing up, attending sessions, and pursuing your ideas with the intensity of a founder.
-
Nope! The program is free.
-
The goal of 5050 is to help more indispensable companies get started! Scientists and engineers are the best people to solve some of the world’s biggest problems; we want to increase their chances of success regardless of whether 50Y backs the founders who go through the program!
-
Shoot us an email at ale@50y.com.