Our Origin Story
Immersion was founded out of a desire to create better access to knowledge, community and capital for ambitious leaders taking on the challenges of the world. Throughout our experience as founders, investors, executives and policy leaders we saw first hand just how hard it is to find the right people and resources in an efficient way to support a high-growth venture. The greatest challenges present themselves in the early stage foundation and that is the determining factor that decides how far a venture can go. This inspired our team to take our 30 years of experience to build a collective that would bring all of those resources together under one roof. Creating an innovation ecosystem called Immersion that operates as a venture development partner organizing and mobilizing global leaders in innovation so that they can create solutions to the world’s challenges together.
What We Have Accomplished
Over the past 3 decades our collective has aided in the development of over 100 ventures from enterprise technology, hospitality tech, consumer goods, IoT to aerospace. Creating over $2B+ in value across 8 funds and alongside 20+ enterprise organizations around the world. Our partners are disruptive technology leaders, bold brand builders and smart money investors that have been pivotal in the growth of many industries. Immersion focuses on the full lifecycle of innovation and aids in the development of programs that range from as early as high school to executive venture development programs at the world’s top research universities.
Through this work we have been able to assist in the venture development of the country’s largest high school innovation program StartedUp Foundation that engages over 4,500 students per year and is offered in 100% of high schools in Indiana and expanding nationwide. This work continues at universities such as the Executive Design Thinking Program at the University of California Riverside where we teach executive leaders how to use human centered design to drive innovation programs within their organizations. We have a passion and commitment to being both leaders and educators. This is what drove us to build Immersion so that more people in communities around the world can gain access to venture resources and education.
What We Are Doing Now
Our mission at Immersion is to be a premier venture development partner helping founders, enterprises and public organizations and policy leaders in the development of commercializable solutions to the world’s problems. We do this through a comprehensive programmatic strategy that unlocks the true innovation potential of a community by providing the people within it with access to a suite of knowledge, resources, and partnerships from inside and outside of their city, state or country.
Our flagship offerings include:
- Access to advisory services:
- Seed To Exit Program supporting founders in their journey going from idea to enterprise through advanced hands-on operational support and leadership development programs.
- Executive Leadership Program offering cutting edge programs to help leaders at the nation’s top enterprises with execution strategies and how to use human centered design to successfully develop, partner or acquire new solutions.
- Venture Fellow Program for those eager to learn successful strategies from the industry’s leading venture capitalists.
- Value of Policy Program is taught by policy leaders to people from all levels of business how to work together to drive stronger policy outcomes that create equitable growth in communities.
- Venture development as a service model enabling organizations with access to a dedicated team of experienced operators, technologists, designers and leaders that can help you build, buy or fund your next solution. Organizations bring in Immersion and U+ to build a team composed of both internal and external subject matter experts to develop new highly scalable solutions. We support not only in the technological development of the solution but also with developing both a commercializable and investable solution designed to return capital to those participating in building it.
- Innovation Challenges in partnership with some of the nation’s top enterprises. This allows startups to participate in a custom venture challenge driven by sponsoring enterprise organization’s challenge statements to solve a proprietary or commercializable problem that has high potential for growth and venture investment. This is a strategy that we have used to develop dozens of ventures out of the challenges of corporations.
- Venture Acceleration Program is a cohort based engagement program where a collective of companies from the same industry go through a 12 week growth program focused on taking them from seed to series A with a focus on product market fit and deal flow first and then capital.
Immersion is on a mission to act as a catalyst for both business growth and the strengthening of the culture of entrepreneurship in communities around the world. We know the significance of building a successful enterprise and the responsibility to the community that it comes with. This is why it is more important than ever for us to be building Immersion. Allowing the world to engage in innovation regardless of who you are and where you are. Democratizing the access to innovation through education and collaboration.
We welcome you to join us in this journey by supporting us in a number of ways.
- Subscribe to our newsletter to stay up to date on all things innovation and Immersion. This includes regular updates on industry trends, founder milestones, deal flow trends, resources and much more.
- If you’re a founder we welcome you to contact us and see how we can support you.
- If you’re an investor we are eager to learn more about the impacts and industries that you are looking to back.
- If you’re an executive we welcome you to a coffee and a conversation on how you are future proofing your enterprise.
- We even have something for if you just want a community of like minded people and aren’t quite sure where to start. Join our VentureEd community and start your journey to finding answers with trusted peers.
Thank you for supporting Immersion and we can’t wait to support a community near you.
