New Venture Design (COMM 466, APSC 486)

Jointly offered by the Faculties of Applied Science and the UBC Sauder School of Business, and open to students from all faculties. The goal of the course is to provide students with knowledge and experience related to the formation of entrepreneurial ventures based on the development of a new product or process.

The course provides students with an experiential-based process of starting a company. It is a real-life immersion into the process that scalable founders go through when launching a startup.

Students work in interdisciplinary teams of six (with representation from multiple faculties) to develop their creativity, and learn about market definition, financial projections, the design cycle, product marketing, manufacturing, distribution to develop their own products to take to market. The end-target in the course is to produce a viable product prototype, learn to pitch to investors and produce an effective business plan.

This course has been endowed with a financial gift from Dr. Ken Spencer that provides funds for student teams to develop their product or process and compete at business plan and engineering competitions. New Venture Design student teams have gained recognition and won prizes in each of the last several years. Teams have seen success in competitions including CBC’s Dragon’s Den, New Ventures BC, Lee Kuan Yew Global Business Plan Competition in Singapore, and Queens University to name a few. The main benefits of these competitions however is to gain experiences, find mentors, and build contacts.

Applications for 2024-25 are now open, until May 3rd.

Interested in Learning more? Attend the Information Session:

Hear from course professors, current students, and alumni at the NVD information session.

  • Date: Tuesday, March 19, 2024
  • Time: 12:30-1:30pm  
  • Location: Sauder School of Business, HA 492
    A pizza lunch will be served.

We are also hosting Demo Day. Come out to see what the end result is:

This event is open to all who are interested in the NVD program.  It will take place on March 26, 2023 at the Sauder School of Business in rooms DL009* and DL005*.  The event begins at 6:15pm and will run until 8:00pm.  Students will be demonstrating their startups in a trade fair format.

  • Date: Tuesday, March 26, 2024
  • Time: 6:15pm-8:00pm
  • Location: David Lam Learning Centre, DL009 and DL005

For Comm/Law/Arts students, if you have questions please email: fraser.pogue@sauder.ubc.ca
For Eng/Sci/STEM students, if you have questions please email: paull@ece.ubc.ca