These Co-Founders Raised $2M To Expand Accelerator That Aims To Open Doors For Student Founders To Receive VC Funding

Roman Scott and Itbaan Nafi, both hailing from Stanford University, are on a mission to empower student founders in the VC world.

It all started in 2024 at San Francisco International Airport, where Scott and Nafi first met by chance at baggage claim, according to information shared with AFROTECH™. By that time, the pair had already become founders, each having established a footprint in technology.

Scott, who graduated from Stanford that year with a bachelor’s degree in systems engineering and then a master’s in management science and engineering, launched a software development company at 15 to help support his unemployed parents, per an email to AFROTECH™. That company, called Burton Algorithms, has now worked with more than 20 companies across healthcare, financial services, and infrastructure, and even with his alma mater, Stanford.

Nafi currently attends Stanford, where he created his own bachelor’s program in software, policy, and design engineering and is pursuing a master’s degree in engineering, according to his LinkedIn.

Nafi is an inaugural Obama-Chesky Voyager Scholar, a scholarship program for aspiring leaders, as AFROTECH™ previously reported. He launched an entrepreneurial bootcamp to equip low-income rural college students in Bangladesh, his home country, receiving assistance from the Obama Foundation and Airbnb Co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky, those behind the aforementioned scholarship program, per information shared with AFROTECH™.

Breakthrough Ventures

Together, Scott, Nafi, and head of the accelerator Raihan Ahmed have teamed up to support other founders by helping them access capital, TechCrunch reported. In 2024, they launched Breakthrough Ventures, an accelerator program for students, inspired by a shared vision to create a showcase for student founders. The program began after they hosted several Demo Days at Stanford while they were students, the outlet noted.

The timing was significant as 84% of Gen Zers aspire to launch a company, according to Forbes. Still, securing funding is challenging when 52% of venture capital dollars go to more seasoned founders, according to Tech Funding News.

Breakthrough Ventures aims to shift venture capitalists’ mindset and has attracted support from more than 500 investors after sending cold-call emails to attend their 2025 Demo Day, according to information shared with AFROTECH™. Notable supporters include a16z, Sequoia, Accel, and Jeff Dean, head of Google AI. The event became one of Stanford’s largest Demo Days, AFROTECH™ also learned by email.

As a result of Breakthrough Ventures’ efforts, 40 student founders have raised $61.5 million (at the time of this writing) from investors, according to Scott and Nafi’s PR firm. Success stories include Zoe Lynch, the founder behind Variant, an AI-native social platform for playable content. Lynch landed a $1 million investment from a16z 15 minutes after a 15-minute pitch, according to information shared with AFROTECH™. Four Breakthrough Ventures alumni were also admitted into Andreessen Horowitz’s Speedrun program, which accepts 50 companies from a pool of 14,000 applicants, a press release noted.

“Many traditional VCs told our founders, ‘You need more work experience,’” Scott said in the news release. “We gave them what they actually needed: access to top investors, resources, and a platform where VCs would take them seriously. They raised $60 million. The talent was always there.”

Nafi commented, per the release:

“Our generation doesn’t wait for institutions to change. When traditional VCs wouldn’t take student founders seriously, we didn’t ask them to reconsider: we built our own infrastructure. We recruited mentors directly, secured resources directly, and created our own validation mechanism.”

$2M Raise

Breakthrough Ventures wants to expand its efforts beyond Stanford and will be able to do so in light of a $2 million raise in dilutive and non-dilutive funding, the press release stated. This would unlock opportunities for student founders to gain support from Mayfield, J.P. Morgan, Collide Capital, Gunderson Dettmer, and Silicon Valley Bank, per the release.

Additionally, it would allow students nationwide to benefit from accelerator perks such as up to $10,000 in non-dilutive grant funding and the chance to receive a separate $50,000 investment in addition to up to $350,000 in compute credits through NVIDIA Inception and Microsoft, legal counsel support from Gunderson Dettmer, and mentorship from companies such as Waymo and venture capital firms, the press release noted.

“Breakthrough Ventures is building a platform for student founders and empowering the next generation of innovators,” Irving Hsu, investor at Mayfield, said in the press release. “In an industry still shaped by established networks, Breakthrough takes a differentiated approach to discovering and backing young talent and leaders. Mayfield is proud to partner with Breakthrough to expand access to venture capital for resilient, industrious founders.”

Apply Today

For students looking to participate in Breakthrough Ventures’ next Demo Day, you can apply today and learn more by visiting breakvc.com.