Harvard Institute of Politics Startup Incubator Partners with Venture Capital Firm XFund

The Harvard Institute of Politics Governance Lab — an incubator for student-led social impact startups — has partnered with Harvard-affiliated venture capital firm XFund to grant its startups a fast-track through XFund’s $100,000 startup competition.

Under the new partnership, up to three of the 10 finalist spots in XFund’s startup competition — which receives hundreds of applications each year — will be reserved for GovLab-backed startups. GovLab — which launched this fall as a pilot program — had originally only offered up to $1,500 in funding for the startup that won its pitch competition.

Dev S. Ahuja ’27, an IOP Student Advisory Committee member who co-founded GovLab, said that the new partnership “sweetens the pot a little bit.”

“It encourages more teams to apply,” he said. “The fact that this is a dedicated social impact startup space that now has financial backing speaks to the fact that there are people who believe in what Harvard undergrads are doing.”

The IOP had previously considered funding the startups itself or using funds from Harvard, but both options would have required student founders to forfeit intellectual property rights or ownership of their startups to the University — something IOP President Pratyush Mallick ’25 said GovLab leadership wanted to avoid.

“We wanted to make GovLab something that would be valuable to founders,” Mallick said.

While applications will remain open until Sept. 14, GovLabs has already seen significant interest from prospective student founders hoping to kickstart a range of social impact startups, according to Ahuja.

“A significant number of people have reached out to me saying they’ve either applied or asking for help on their applications,” he said. “We’ve seen a wide range of ideas already — for profit, nonprofit ideas.”

GovLab will also reserve between two and five seats in its inaugural 10-startup cohort for ventures pitched by students at the Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School. Previously, the incubator was targeted for only undergraduate students.

Startups led by graduate students that are applying to GovLab will be expected to be more developed than those led by undergraduates to account for the shorter time undergraduates have had to develop their ideas, according to Mallick.

“Anyone that’s pre-idea or doesn’t have an idea is welcome to apply at the undergraduate level,” Mallick said. “Anyone that’s applying from the Kennedy School or the Business School, they have to come in with an idea or some traction.”

Tuan Ho ’09 — a partner at XFund and a 2024 HKS graduate — had initially pitched the collaboration between XFund and GovLab to the IOP’s leadership after more than a thousand students attended a speaker event between XFund and OpenAI founder Sam Altman in May.

Ho called the founding of GovLab a “no brainer” and praised it as being a critical resource for students.

“It would be really great if we could find a way to make some of these entrepreneurial resources — the sort of entrepreneurial advising and mentorship that we provide to students across the campus — made that more accessible to students,” Ho said.

Mallick said that Ho and IOP leadership hoped GovLab could build stronger connections with the Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs specifically, which boasts strong ties to the U.S. government and military.

“Deepening that relationship and tying it really into its mission is kind of the vision that Tuan and I aligned on, alongside the rest of the GovLab team,” he said.

Through the XFund partnership, Ho and several XFund colleagues will also mentor GovLab startup founders and host weekly events on entrepreneurship. The XFund mentors have already scheduled an event with the COO of Bluesky, a competitor to the social media platform X.

“The IOP incubated programs before, but establishing GovLab as a program kind of solidified our commitment to political entrepreneurship,” Ahuja said.

“I’m just excited to be able to continue that legacy, and I’m excited to see what ideas people bring to the table that’s gonna change our world for the better,” he added.

—Staff writer William C. Mao can be reached at william.mao@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @williamcmao.

—Staff writer Dhruv T. Patel can be reached at dhruv.patel@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @dhruvtkpatel.