General Information

Boğaziçi University (BU) has long wanted to establish a startup gateway in New York City to support the entrepreneurial activities of the entire Boğaziçi community. Within this context, BU signed an agreement with New York University Tandon School of Engineering (NYU) to provide BU-affiliated entrepreneurs with a startup gateway in New York, leveraging the city’s burgeoning entrepreneurial landscape and the supportive infrastructure of NYU Tandon Incubators.

As part of the agreement, the NYU Tandon incubator system will house an accelerator for BU-affiliated startup companies (the BUNY Accelerator). BUNY can accommodate up to four startups, three times a year, for a period of three months per cycle.

BUNY will support BU-affiliated startups in the following ways:

• Hosting those startups selected for the BUNY Accelerator Program within the NYU Tandon incubator system, with access to startup support and mentoring in New York.
• Establishing close cooperation between BUNY and relevant startup activities at NYU that support the success of early stage technology startups with at least one minimum viable product (MVP).
• Guiding BUNY startups for product/market fit and ramping up revenue activities
• Organizing regular roundtables, seminars and/or workshops focusing on promotion and startup excellence in various high-tech areas. These events may alternate between New York and Istanbul.

About Boğaziçi University

Boğaziçi University was established in 1863 as Robert College, the first American college founded outside the borders of the United States. In 1971, it was transformed into Boğaziçi University, an elite Turkish public research university that has kept the liberal arts education tradition and English as the language of instruction. Since then, it has expanded its undergraduate and graduate programs and added new campuses. Currently, Boğaziçi University is one of the most prominent universities in Turkey, with outstanding undergraduate and graduate programs in natural and social sciences, humanities, engineering, education, and applied disciplines. It is the most sought after university for students in Turkey and the region, with world-class faculty, top-notch laboratories and facilities, and a breathtaking campus. The total number of students has reached 15,000 with more than 3,800 graduate students. Boğaziçi University pursues high impact research with its 32 academic departments, six graduate institutes, and 19 research centers, covering a wide range of disciplines. The university attracts research funding from both national and international research funding organizations as well as from industry.  Partnerships with leading academic institutions across the world have strengthened the university’s prominence in research. The university is currently involved in 50 ongoing European projects. Boğaziçi University researchers also take part in various U.S.-based NIH (National Institutes of Health) and NSF (National Science Foundation) projects.

About the New York University Tandon School of Engineering

The NYU Tandon School of Engineering dates to 1854, when the NYU School of Civil Engineering and Architecture as well as the Brooklyn Collegiate and Polytechnic Institute (widely known as Brooklyn Poly) were founded. Their successor institutions merged in January 2014 to create a comprehensive school of education and research in engineering and applied sciences, rooted in a tradition of invention, innovation, and entrepreneurship. In addition to programs at its main campus in downtown Brooklyn, it is closely connected to engineering programs in NYU Abu Dhabi and NYU Shanghai, and it operates business incubators in downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn.