speedrun Alpha Fellowship

The Alpha Fellowship is a16z speedrun's program for highly technical students, dropouts and recent graduates who want to start building before they have a company, an idea or a team. It is built by speedrun and run in partnership with Equal Opportunity Ventures (EO Ventures), and takes place in person in San Francisco, with coworking at speedrun's new office in North Beach.

There are two tracks. The Founder Track backs individuals pre-entity, pre-idea and pre-team with up to $250K, $1M+ in credits, office hours with speedrun partners and an automatic final interview for speedrun (up to $1M). It runs 8 weeks, January 11 to March 5. The Talent Track embeds fellows in the speedrun community for 4 weeks (February 8 to March 5) to meet portfolio startups and potentially land a full-time engineering role.

Cohort 2 applications opened in September 2026. The first cohort (A001) included founders such as Natalia Kokoromyti (Cybernetic Physics) and Nathan Roll (Oruk), who went on to speedrun SR007. Speakers and mentors for the next cohort include Marc Andreessen, Andrew Chen, Chris Best (Substack) and Roland Fryer (EO Ventures).

Designed for Students, University Students, Founders, Engineering Candidates. The program is in person. Participation is generally full time.

• Software engineers only; Alpha is not recruiting other technical disciplines.
• Founder Track: technical students and recent graduates (the track card says within 1 year of graduating). No company, idea or team required.
• Talent Track: technical students and recent graduates within 3 years, who want a full-time software engineering role at a startup.
• Valid authorization to work full time in the United States.
• Students can apply, but Founder Track fellows must work on their idea full time during the fellowship, and Talent Track fellows who land a role should be ready to start full time.
• In person in San Francisco.

Apply online at speedrun.a16z.com/alpha/apply. Everyone applies as an individual; founders building together each submit their own application and name their cofounders. You can apply to both tracks.

Selected applicants complete a series of live interviews. speedrun looks for people who are deeply curious, highly technical and have a track record of building; fellows are typically exceptional students or recent graduates. About 40 fellows are expected across both tracks. Alpha has its own application: applying to the speedrun Talent Network does not count.

Founder Track:
- Up to $250K investment.
- $1M+ in credits across AWS, GCP, Azure, OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor and others.
- Automatic final interview for speedrun (up to $1M).
- Office hours and hosted sessions with speedrun partners.
- Coworking at the speedrun office during the fellowship.

Talent Track:
- Introductions to speedrun portfolio companies for a mutual fit.
- Office hours and exclusive fireside chats.
- Coworking at the speedrun office.

Both tracks: weekly small-group sessions with speedrun partners and industry leaders, curated dinners with engineering leaders and portfolio founders, and invitations to select speedrun events.

• Cohort 2 applications opened in September 2026; the page lists an application deadline of October 11 (no year printed next to the date).
• Interviews: a series of live interviews for selected applicants.
• Founder Track kickoff: January 11, with a retreat; runs 8 weeks to March 5.
• Talent Track kickoff: February 8; runs 4 weeks to March 5.
• Both tracks end with fellows presenting to the speedrun community.

The first cohort (A001) produced companies that went on to speedrun: Natalia Kokoromyti (Cybernetic Physics) and Nathan Roll (Oruk) are listed as A001 and SR007. Fellow testimonials on the official page come from Sean Wu (Attending Labs), Calvin Huang (Kalmia), Trevor Abbot (Astroform), Aauysh Gupta (Driftwood) and Filip Henriksson (Extract).