https://www.instagram.com/ceuunifei/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/ceu-unifei/Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei – CEU (Unifei Entrepreneurship Center) is a place created in 2012, which it is not just a physical space, but it’s a place for personal development and a movement to spread the entrepreneurship culture throughout the university and our ecosystem in Itajubá (the Itajubá Hardtech Ecosystem). Our center is made by young students and volunteers from the university who, through creative and innovative actions, encourage entrepreneurship in our community. During the journey of the members in the project, we are encouraged to be proactive, through our own culture, called “VLEF” (Vai Lá E Faz – Do It By Yourself). Every year the Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei engages around one thousand and five hundred people in our community, through events, hackathons and programs. Our mission is to create a welcoming space for our community, from the students and researchers from the university to the external community, made by the members of our ecosystem, where the entrepreneurs and students can feel safe to test their ideas, to perform a journey full of innovation, to use their creativity and to make connections and networking. During 8 years of pre-accelerations, more than 50 startups were created and more than 100 founders were qualified. These companies were invested with more than R$80,000,000 in early stage investments. In all these years, CEU was awarded with a lot of awards, like the Entrepreneurial Education Award Brasil in 2014 and in 2024 CEU was elected the best innovation hub in Brazil because of the interaction that we do in our community among startups, companies and academic institutions, and our university, Universidade Federal de Itajubá, is considered one of the best Entrepreneurial Universities in Brazil.
Finalist
Community Engagement Initiative of the Year Award
Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei
Finalist Community Engagement Initiative of the Year Award
Universidade Federal de Itajubá - Brazil
"Create the future "
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Summary
Key People
Ana Clara da Costa Caetano
Innovation Agent
Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei
Ana Júlia Alvarenga e Silva
Innovation Agent
Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei
Ana Sofia Castro Leite
Innovation Agent
Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei
Andréa Aparecida da Costa Mineiro
Innovation Agent
Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei
Aphonso Cavenaghi Esperança
Innovation Agent
Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei
Bárbara Magalhães Vicentini
Innovation Agent
Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei
Bianca Dantas Soares
Innovation Agent
Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei
Caio Chaves Guimarães
Innovation Agent
Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei
Clara Francisca da Silva Duarte
Innovation Agent
Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei
Davi Ferreira Tase
Innovation Agent
Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei
Diogo Moraes Campos
Innovation Agent
Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei
Felipe Augusto Souza Barbosa
Innovation Agent
Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei
Gabriel Castanho Barreto
Innovation Agent
Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei
Gabriel Pereira Ganam
Innovation Agent
Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei
Gabriel Santos do Amaral
Innovation Agent
Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei
João Eduardo Mancilha Matos
Innovation Agent
Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei
João Guilherme Ferreira da Silva
Innovation Agent
Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei
João Marcelo Lemes Vilhena
Innovation Agent
Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei
João Victor Gonçales Cortez
Innovation Agent
Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei
Joyce Eduarda Maia da Costa
Innovation Agent
Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei
Juliana Caminha Noronha
Innovation Agent
Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei
Julia Reis Pereira
Innovation Agent
Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei
Letícia Rodrigues Sanches
Innovation Agent
Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei
Luis Ricardo Albano Santos
Innovation Agent
Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei
Maria Eduarda Cimadon Martinez Cervantes
Innovation Agent
Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei
Maria Eduarda Leite Lauer
Innovation Agent
Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei
Maria Eduarda Ribeiro Menezes
Innovation Agent
Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei
Mariana Amorim Santos
Innovation Agent
Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei
Mateus Augusto Borges do Bonfim
Innovation Agent
Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei
Mateus de França Camurça
Innovation Agent
Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei
Melissa Ribeiro Moura
Innovation Agent
Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei
Patrícia Kelli Silva de Oliveira
Innovation Agent
Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei
Pedro Henrique Duarte dos Santos
Innovation Agent
Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei
Pedro Henrique Mendes da silva
Innovation Agent
Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei
Rafael Comunian Pereira
Innovation Agent
Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei
Raphael Messias Moreira Azevedo
Innovation Agent
Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei
Raul Trevisan
Innovation Agent
Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei
Sara Martins Lima
Innovation Agent
Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei
Sofia Silva de Almeida
Innovation Agent
Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei
Thiago Lago Scomparin
Innovation Agent
Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei
Vinícius Guilherme Pedrezzini de Paula
Innovation Agent
Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei
Vitor Cintra Dangelo
Innovation Agent
Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei
Vitor Faria Chagas
Innovation Agent
Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei
Vitória Masseli Machado
Innovation Agent
Centro de Empreendedorismo da Unifei
Acknowledgements
Our acknowledgement goes to a lot of institutions, like our university, Universidade Federal de Itajubá, which is one of the main reasons why CEU exists and can impact and develop a community.
For CEU to engage a community we have some institutions which help us deliver activities and actions to all people. Some are big companies, like tech4humans, Advantech, Thysenkroupp, Samsung, Flex, Honeywell, Nestlé and Inovai. We also have government institutions, like our state government (Governo de Minas Gerais), the City Hall of Itajubá and MCTI (Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação) and we have local companies which help us.
Another acknowledgment is for Sebrae, an organization which helps the development of entrepreneurs, being a partner of our actions and we also have some organizations who have awarded us, like Anprotec, Vortex and Sebrae also.
Images
CEU TEAM 2025
BEST INNOVATION HUB IN BRAZIL 2024
ENTREPRENEURIAL EDUCATION AWARD 2014
STARTUP BUS 2015
STARTUP WEEKEND 2024
NASA INTERNATIONAL SPACE APPS CHALLENGE 2019
STARTUP WEEKEND 2023
MAKER HACKLAB 2019
COWORKING SPACE
SUPER CEU (OUR NEW SPACE)
IMPACT STORY
Impacting lifes
It would be very difficult to say just one impact story, so we decided to show you 3 examples:
Mariana Vasconcelos: She participated in our first techstars Startup Weekend edition, in 2013, which she won, with the startup Agrosmart. Since that, she was elected Forbes Under 30 and MIT under 35, elected as one of the youngest people capable of changing the world
with technology.
Ana Raquel Calháu: She was an innovation agent at CEU from 2017 to 2019, which, in those years, she co-founded Laticin, which worked from 2018 to 2021 and, also in 2018, she became the CEO of NexAtlas, a startup from Itajubá. Since then, she was awarded with a lot of prizes and, in this year, she won the BRICS Women's Startup Contest in the category of Digital Transformation.
One last example is three people, Fernando De Lucca, Lucas Gewehr and Bruno Vitiello: they co-founded Ceres Seeding in 2022, and since that, they accomplished a lot of things. Nowadays they participate in some international Conferences for Climate change and they are being accelerated by Google for Startup.
After all this, they exercise the give Back culture, helping the development of new entrepreneurs in our community, strengthening our ecosystem and they impact the society, as AgroSmart focus in tropical agriculture, NexAtlas focus in flight safety and Ceres Seeding focus in reforestation.
LEARNINGS
Lessons learned
We start from the idea that entrepreneurship is not a process, but it's a method. With this approach, entrepreneurship is worked with five practices:
The first one is the ability to “play”, which helps us think, expanding the vision of opportunities and possibilities.
The second one is “experitation”, which means to act to learn.
The third practice is “empathy”, so putting yourself in the other's place and understanding his feelings, the context and needs.
The fourth one is “creativity”, being open to the world and developing creativity to solve problems, create and find opportunities.
The last one is “reflection”, which encompasses all the actions from the other abilities, It's an action, so it's the most important ability.
In 13 years of execution we learned a lot, things which helped us be what we are.
The first value we learned is "desirability”. We always need to work in tune with our community, creating the best experiences possible for them;
The second value is “lean thinking”. We have to work in a sustainable business model, mixing startup thinking with long term vision;
The third value we learned and have been using is “hacker spirit”. We need to think in other possibilities than the ones we have, defy rules (which can be broken);
The fourth and last value is “be maker”. He has to put our hands on in every initiative we do.
FUTURE PLANS
What's coming?
Imagine engaging 1500 students per year in a university with 7000 students, impacting almost 25% of the university. All this in just a hall, yes, a hall in the university. Now imagine what could be possible with a whole building for us! This is our future plan.
Another plan is to grow the internationalization from our organization and from our university as well, expanding, in the end, our community globally, creating exchange programs for students to CEU and opportunities for companies.
And another vision for the future is to create more proposals for the graduate studies with events, programs and important connections for the creation of Deep Techs and regenerative business.
In 2021, our university (Universidade Federal de Itajubá) started to build a new space for us, called “Super CEU” (Super Entrepreneurship Center), a building focused on entrepreneurship activities. This new space will be used by our community, from the students of the university, to the entrepreneurs of our ecosystem. Our plan is to have this building working in the next 2 or 3 years. With the areas inside the “Super CEU”, we will be able to organise more big events during the year and we will be able to help more startups in their journey, consequently, we will be able to have more participants and more impacted people in the future.
