The Darwazah Center for Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship (DC) of the Suliman S. Olayan School of Business (OSB) – American University of Beirut (AUB) has been organizing and sponsoring the Darwazah Startup Accelerate (DSA) since 2014.
The purpose of the DSA is to encourage entrepreneurship and innovation amongst AUB students and to facilitate the creation of interdisciplinary teams that will work together on building startups.
Eligibility Criteria
- There is no limit or restriction on the number of team members; teams typically range between 1-5 members.
- Each application needs to have at least one AUB active student.
- Previously accelerated/funded startups are not eligible to apply [unless they received less than $2,000 prizes].
- Team members cannot be in more than one team.
Competition Timeline
The Shortlisting Process
The DSA is a marathon of sorts and throughout the competition, participants work hard to take their startup idea to the next level.
Submitting an application does not guarantee one participation in the DSA. Applicants will receive emails on whether they were selected to participate or not to the event based on a thorough selection process. We aim for everybody to make it, however, for practical reasons, no more than 8 finalists are allowed. As such, at every stage, some startup ideas are judged by the mentors and jury to go to the next stage.
As a matter of policy and also for variety of other reasons, the jury deliberations are confidential and also the teams that do not make it to the next stage cannot be provided with any feedback or debriefing as to the reasons why they were not selected. We do wish all the teams the best and want them not to give up and keep improving on their idea and startup.
Prize & Prize Disbursement
Experience the Highlights of "Darwazah Startup Accelerate 2025"