More than 30 universities have signed on to bring the competition to their students, and student registration opens today

COLLEGE PARK, Md.: #BeforeYouShare--xFoundry today announced Before You Share Xperience, its latest competition, and opened registration for university student teams to build digital products that help people recover the sources and missing context behind online content. More than 30 universities have already signed up to bring the competition to their campuses, with additional institutions invited to join through the xFoundry Alliance.

A clip travels without the conversation around it. A claim circulates without its source. Finding what is missing takes time. Before You Share challenges students to make that search easier, building products people choose to use and return to, without telling them what to believe.

“Students are building two things at once: a multidisciplinary team and a product people need,” said Amir Ansari, founder and Executive Director of xFoundry. “They gain real work experience by combining different skills, navigating disagreements, making tradeoffs and delivering for real users. That experience matters whether they launch a company or take those skills to an employer. Before You Share Xperience brings the rigor and stakes of real work into university life, with the opportunity to build a venture worth backing.”

Over the 18-month competition, teams will build, launch and test their products against standards for source quality, user retention and commercial demand. Teams may combine human expertise and AI as they choose; their development and operating costs are scored as part of the business case. Products must remain private and user-controlled, without advertising.

“The challenge of our times will be to enable the individual to apply the media, now essentially accessible to all, to the task of separating reality from an encroaching universe of AI slop. It’s a worthy challenge,” said Ted Koppel, veteran broadcast journalist and CBS News “Sunday Morning” senior contributor who served as an advisor on the development of this competition.

Students will form teams of three to six from at least three academic disciplines and develop products with a clear path to market.

“This competition offers the opportunity to create something meaningful to a public flooded with half-truths and misinformation. Finding a way to help citizens go to the source and verify the information they absorb is a foundation of journalism,” said Rafael Lorente, Dean of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. “Before You Share Xperience gives journalism students, engineers, designers and entrepreneurs a reason to build together, and to help build trust together.”

The winning team will enter xFoundry's six-month Xcelerate program and become eligible for up to $1 million in SAFE (simple agreement for future equity) investment from Xponential Venture Fund. Funding is subject to completion of Xcelerate, diligence, incorporation and executed investment documents. This is not a cash prize; a winner will be named only if a team meets the published criteria.

“What excites us about the competition-driven startup development process is that teams start with a defined problem and earn their way forward iteratively against measurable targets,” said Paul Kim, General Partner at Xponential Venture Fund. “We get to see both the product and multiple talented teams tested before we invest in the best and brightest. Before You Share Xperience is an effective vehicle that addresses the critical product-market fit challenge that all startups face: it tackles the problem of content without context, then asks teams to prove they can make finding that context a value proposition important enough to support a profit-generating business.”

Registration closes February 28, 2027. The Elimination Round takes place March 27 to 31, 2028, followed by final judging April 3 to 7 and results at NEXPLORE in mid-April 2028. Universities interested in participating and students ready to register can visit https://go.xfoundry.org/BYS-PR.

About xFoundry

xFoundry is a program of the Idea Factory at the University of Maryland. It redefines experiential learning through Xperience competitions that bring the rigor, intensity and stakes of real-world work into the university experience. In each Xperience, multidisciplinary student teams build and validate a product against investment-readiness standards over an extended cohort, developing and documenting career-ready skills while pursuing solutions to society's grand challenges. Teams form through ConneXions, xFoundry's team-formation platform, and the winning team enters Xcelerate, xFoundry's six-month program for turning a competition winner into an investable company. Universities across the United States and Canada participate through the xFoundry Alliance. https://www.xfoundry.org

About Xponential Venture Fund

Xponential Venture Fund is an early-stage venture capital fund with competition-driven deal flow, investing pre-seed to Series A in validated, de-risked ventures solving grand societal challenges. https://xpv.fund

Fonte: Business Wire