TrepCamp’s real pitch: meet the people who might build with you

The most persuasive thing TrepCamp can put on a brochure is a meeting. In 2017, Alfonso de los Ríos and Maximiliano Casal crossed paths at its Silicon Valley program. They worked together in a competition, stayed connected and eventually built Nowports, a digital freight forwarder. In May 2022, that company raised $150 million at a $1.1 billion valuation. An entrepreneurship course had supplied something no slide deck can guarantee: the other person.

That is a good place to begin understanding TrepCamp, provided the billion-dollar number stays in its proper place. It belongs to one alumni company at a particular funding round. It is neither TrepCamp’s valuation nor a forecast for the next student through the door. What the academy sells is more immediate: a structured encounter with entrepreneurship, alongside people who might become collaborators.

For a student with ambition but no obvious first move, that can be an attractive purchase. For someone with a business already underway, the proposition requires a closer look. A week of inspiration and several weeks of venture development solve different problems. TrepCamp now sells both, and the difference matters more than the destination photograph.

A summer experiment becomes a business

Founder Fernando Sepúlveda’s original project grew out of the Mexico-U.S. Entrepreneurship and Innovation Council in 2013. TrepCamp’s company profile lists 2014 as its founding year; its own historical account places the groundwork a year earlier. The first pilot sent 85 people from Mexican universities to UC Berkeley for three weeks in 2014. This was education built around a temporary change of surroundings.

The academy’s account describes an expansion to 250 participants across five U.S. universities the following year. By 2016, it had added an online program attracting 10,000 aspiring entrepreneurs, with 500 selected for the U.S. experience. Those figures describe different stages of participation, but the operating idea is clear: use a broad introductory layer to reach people, then bring a smaller group together for intensive work.

The early emphasis on international connections was explicit. Speaking to Notimex in 2015, Sepúlveda described developing entrepreneurs with “una visión global” - a global outlook. Contemporary coverage placed the initiative within bilateral education and innovation efforts. TrepCamp was addressing a geographical problem as well as an educational one: promising students and experienced entrepreneurs do not automatically occupy the same rooms.

“una visión global”

Fernando Sepúlveda, describing TrepCamp’s ambitions in 2015

Choose the work before the city

The Entrepreneurial Experience is the introductory option. Its nine-day itinerary moves through purpose, mindset, innovation and execution, with workshops, mentors and group activities. Someone exploring entrepreneurship can use it to find out whether the work appeals to them before committing to a company. Madrid’s program is taught in Spanish; New York’s sessions are in English, with TrepCamp describing much of the peer interaction as Spanish-speaking.

The Entrepreneurial Simulator asks for a longer commitment: six weeks, split between three online and three in Madrid or New York. Its sequence moves from team formation and business models toward prototypes, market strategy and a final presentation. The promised destination is readiness for the next entrepreneurial step, including an accelerator application. Getting into an accelerator remains a separate decision.

An older Simulator agenda makes a useful distinction between participants who want to start something but lack a defined problem, and founders who arrive with a pitch needing validation. It describes separate preparation tracks before the groups meet in person. That is a sensible response to a classroom difficulty: a person searching for an idea needs different help from someone defending one.

The mentor role is unusually concrete in TrepCamp’s recruitment material. Mentors are asked to guide one or two teams, connect them with relevant people and prepare them for Demo Day. Investor judges evaluate projects and provide feedback. Company hosts open their doors. These are distinct jobs, and their value depends on whether a participant uses each encounter to resolve an actual question.

The scholarship has an asterisk worth reading

TrepCamp’s published Entrepreneurial Experience price is $2,500 in tuition plus $800 for accommodation, a combined $3,300. Its deposit listing asks for $250 to reserve a place, credited against the total, and labels that deposit nonrefundable. The same listing shows why the word “scholarship” deserves arithmetic: a 30 percent tuition award produces $1,750 in tuition, with the $800 accommodation charge still due.

The Simulator’s listed tuition is $3,500, with $1,350 for accommodation: $4,850 combined. These are published tuition-and-lodging totals, rather than a complete personal travel budget. The practical comparison is the amount a participant must still pay after their particular award, plus whatever travel and other expenses their offer leaves to them.

The general scholarship page advertises partial awards of 20 to 50 percent, based on an assessment and a conversation with a student adviser. Its application instructions expressly separate this process from Santander México’s scholarship route. Applicants register, schedule a call and complete the assessment before an admissions committee decides the award.

Santander’s sponsored route can be much broader. A 2026 university bulletin described 10,000 places in an introductory digital course and 30 fully funded international experiences in Madrid or New York, offered with TrepCamp and the Iberoamerican Technology Foundation. An earlier scholarship page specifies return flights from Mexico City, accommodation and a food stipend. Coverage belongs to a particular call, not to the word “scholarship” in isolation.

The room is part of the product

TrepCamp sits between entrepreneurship education, organized study abroad and preparation for startup acceleration. Its fee-paying participants buy teaching and an arranged experience. Universities and scholarship sponsors provide another route into the programs. The university partnership offer includes assessment feedback and student scholarship access, giving institutions a reason to participate beyond putting a foreign city in a prospectus.

The alternatives depend on the problem. A university entrepreneurship center may offer local continuity. An online course may suit someone who wants a method without travel. An accelerator may suit a venture seeking intensive company development. TrepCamp’s distinctive combination is a bounded international experience, a cohort and practical entrepreneurial work. A buyer should compare those ingredients, rather than treating every program with a pitch event as interchangeable.

Blackwell Global University publicly describes its TrepCamp partnership through Experience and Simulator programs, including interactive sessions, startup visits, project work and joint certification. That gives the relationship more substance than a logo on a partners wall. For a student hoping to use the experience academically, the useful next step is to establish how their own institution treats that particular certificate.

The company’s funding history is modest beside its famous alumni story. Dealroom records a $300,000 seed round in June 2014. The business described by its public offer is tuition-based education supported by institutional relationships. Nowports’ later financing belongs to Nowports; placing the two figures side by side without that distinction would turn a training company into a much stranger investment proposition.

Beyond the startup pitch

The present catalog reaches into two additional industries. Media & Entertainment Experience offers seven days in Madrid, covering storytelling, audiences, platform strategy, technology and creative collaboration. This is the same educational format applied to a different ambition: understanding how content reaches people and how a creator might work within that business.

Fashion & Retail Experience also publishes a seven-day Madrid agenda. Its topics include sustainable materials, shopping across physical and digital channels, experience design and fashion technology. The program names Zara, Gucci and Lululemon as case studies. Those are subjects for analysis, rather than evidence that the brands sponsor the course. Both specialist experiences list $2,500 tuition and $800 accommodation.

By September 2026, the website was advertising January 2027 programs, while the Simulator page listed summer 2027 dates. The broader catalog shows an expansion from startup training toward industry exploration. Its logic is recognizable: bring participants into contact with practitioners, give them something to make or examine, and use the group experience to help them decide what to pursue.

The team page gives that argument a personal dimension. Francisco Millaruelo is identified as a Boston 2018 participant; Nahim Aliss and Antonella Sossi attended New York in 2019. They now appear among the people behind the academy. Its stated culture favors feedback, open-mindedness and learning through mistakes. Alumni returning to operate the experience is a concrete expression of the community it advertises.

Copy the experiment, not the unicorn

There is a practical lesson in the Nowports founders’ account. Their relationship developed through working together in a competition, before the later freight business. A prospective founder can copy that sequence locally: choose a small problem, work with a possible partner, and see how each person handles ambiguity and disagreement. A joint task reveals things that exchanging enthusiastic introductions does not.

TrepCamp’s curriculum also offers a useful order of operations: expose an idea to feedback while changes are still manageable. The first thing worth allowing to fail is a proposition in a test. That is an application of the program’s trial-and-error approach, not a claim that every participant finds customers. A polished presentation becomes useful when the evidence behind it survives questions.

The limits follow from the product. Travel and intensive group work require time, money and a willingness to participate. Someone who needs immediate operating capital, guaranteed customers or a passive video library is seeking a different service. The person most likely to use TrepCamp well arrives with questions, tests something with other people and keeps working after the scheduled experience ends. The meeting can happen at camp. Building the company takes longer.