Carnegie Mellon University

Carnegie Mellon University's Open Field Entrepreneurs Fund (OFEF) is a new model for providing early-stage business financing to CMU alumni who are driving innovation. The OFEF is open to all CMU graduates from the past five years who have the desire to become entrepreneurs. The fund was created from a generous gift by Flip video camera creator and Carnegie Mellon alumnus Jonathan Kaplan, Kaplan's wife, Marci Glazer, and Kaplan's classmate and bitly CEO, Peter Stern. Selected companies will receive $50,000 from the OFEF and must raise an additional $50,000 matching investment to be eligible. In addition to financial support, OFEF recipients also gain access to other funding sources, receive personalized mentoring, an invitation to attend an annual OFEF business conference and receive legal and accounting support for their start-ups.