Rice eXperiment Fund Grant

LILIE RICE EXPERIMENT FUND FOR ALL CURRENT STUDENTS

The Rice Experiment Fund is a program designed to enable you to get straight to testing the assumptions in your student venture. Open to any current Rice Student, RXF pairs equity-free funding with guided mentoring sessions to help you maximize the impact of your experiment. Need to A/B test a social media ad campaign? We’ve got you covered. Want to buy a domain name and test some landing pages to verify your customer’s needs? You’ve got it. Need to hire a freelancer on Fiverr to build out an MVP of your app? Done.

The maximum grant is $500 per student per semester, and the application is open and rolling to ensure you get funds in your hands to conduct experiments quickly to enable your venture to focus on what matters. With up to $4,000 of equity-free funding available to a student over the lifetime of the program, this is a unique opportunity to get out there, test your assumptions and iterate quickly!

THE HIGHLIGHTS

RXF is an annual pool of funds dedicated to financially supporting early-stage undergraduate and graduate student ventures.
Recipient(s) may be awarded up to $500 per semester to develop and implement an exceptional idea, innovation, discovery, or entrepreneurial undertaking in the course of their studies at Rice.
The recipient will be allowed to withdraw funds (not exceeding their awarded amount) incrementally to support the design and growth of the project. Limited to one time a semester.
In addition to financial support, the winner(s) of this award will have the support of faculty, mentors, and programs of the broader university and the Liu Idea Lab for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

WHO CAN APPLY?

Currently enrolled undergraduate or graduate Rice University students.
Any major or discipline is welcome to apply.
Students can apply individually or as part of a team. There is no limit to the size of your team.
All applying individuals and team members must be in good academic standing.

HOW TO APPLY

Applications are now open for the Spring 2023 semester.
Provide short explanation of your idea, the problem you hope to solve, and how the funding will help you better understand the target market and solution.
Create an estimated, line-item budget for the funding needs your venture.
Applications are accepted on a rolling basis. We will follow-up within one week.

What are some examples that RXF could support?

Conducting in person or virtual focus groups or customer development interviews.
Creating a prototype of the proposed product or service to better articulate and test the solution.
Running small dollar ad campaigns to gather data to test and hone customer acquisition channels.
Setting up a Shopify or other e-commerce implementation to test demand.
Recording and distributing content, or filming videos for Kickstarter campaigns.

Have other ideas, needs, or not sure if you qualify? Let us know! Reach out to lilie@rice.edu with any questions.

What to expect:

Provide a short explanation of your idea, the problem you hope to solve, and how the funding will help you better understand the target market and solution.
Create an estimated, line-item budget for the funding needs of your venture.
Admission to the program is decided by Lilie within 1 week of your application, and we’ll notify you of our decision promptly.
Session 1: We’ll set up an initial meeting with you to outline the program, go over your experiment, and to talk about the design of experiments.
You’ll have some time to identify the variables and metrics associated with your experiment
Session 2: We’ll meet to decide which variable(s) and assumption(s) you’d like to measure, then brainstorm ways to effectively test these variables and assumptions.
We’ll get funding in your hand at this stage, and you’ll have some time to run your experiment and collect results. The amount of time taken to complete the experiment is variable, but we’ll agree on a check in date ahead of time.
Session 3: We’ll go over your experimental results, identify any next steps, and determine the need for further iterations.
You’ll have some time to put together the results of your experiment into a short, simple report (no minimum length, though it should be thorough enough to make future reference feasible)
Session 4: We’ll go over your report and any lingering questions you may have. If further iterations are desired, we’ll revise assumptions and continue the process from Session 2 or 3 as needed.