A perfect idea
Lock 1 exists to sharpen your problem. Arriving with questions is arriving prepared.
Eligibility
If you can commit to building, you belong here.
Foundry is open to students from every discipline, working professionals and independent innovators. What matters is a meaningful problem, a committed team and the willingness to build.
Who Can Register
Open to builders of every kind.
- Students from all disciplines — engineering, arts, science, management, healthcare, agriculture, social sciences and beyond
- Working professionals
- Independent innovators and self-taught builders
- Teams of 1 to 3 members
- Cross-college and mixed student–professional teams
Team Rules
How teams work.
Composition
- 1–3 members per team, one team leader
- Members may come from different institutions and backgrounds
- Each person may belong to only one Season 2 team
- Membership locks before evaluation milestones — keep your roster settled early
Verification
- Every member verifies their email with a one-time code
- Institutional categories are detected automatically from approved email domains
- Host-institution students may fall under internal categories, applied automatically at registration
- Identity details must be accurate — certificates are issued exactly as registered
What You Do Not Need
Clearing the imagined barriers.
A CS degree
Domain understanding is half of every strong team. Rubrics reward problem depth as much as code.
Prior hackathon wins
The journey is structured and the guides map to the rubrics. First-time teams compete on even ground.
Expensive tooling
Free tiers of mainstream AI and cloud services are sufficient for a winning Foundry prototype.
Season 2 registration is closed. The eligibility rules remain published here as a record of the programme.
Eligible? Then the only step left is starting.
Season 2 registration is closed; these eligibility rules remain as the programme record.
View Season 2