Tangent is an incubator for unconventional entrepreneurship
Upcoming 2026 cohorts: 13/7 → 7/8 (full) | 31/8 → 25/9 (full) | 19/10 → 13/11 (spaces available)
Applications open for 2027: 18/1 → 12/2 | 15/3 → 9/4 | 14/6 → 9/7 | 16/8 → 10/9 | 18/10 → 12/11
Tangent is for those who want to build something able to provide them a good living. No technical background or prior experience needed.
Tangent is a 4-week, in-person incubator programme that gives young entrepreneurs time, funding, tools, and human support to make their ideas real.
Participants retain 100% of their equity; Tangent does not charge fees or seek any other form of compensation for participation in the 4-week programme.
Who Tangent is for
You don’t have to be technical or an experienced entrepreneur — but you do need to have the desire to build something worthwhile that can make you a good living.
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If you keep coming back to an idea you haven't had time to properly try — or you know you want to build something, you just haven't landed on what yet — you know the feeling. Most programmes want a polished pitch. They're for people who already look like conventional founders.
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"Unconventional" doesn't mean bad grades. The right person for Tangent might have excellent grades, average grades, or no grades at all. What we're looking for can’t be glimpsed through an academic transcript.
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We think of entrepreneurship very broadly. For us, it means creating something that generates its own value, whatever your definition of that may be. It can be a business, a not-for-profit, a social enterprise, a product, a service, a practice in any field.
If you're trying to build something real that can eventually sustain you, that's entrepreneurship. In any sector, any format.
Your four weeks with Tangent
Tangent is an in-person four-week programme. We customise the support we provide for each cohort and each participant. There is no standard set of courses or assignments. We expect you to define what you’ll do in the four weeks and then get on with doing it.
What you get:
$1,000 stipend for the four weeks
Access to AI tools and support in using them well
Human guides, available when you want them — we’ll be there to help you decide what to do, not tell you what to do
Control over how you spend your time
At the end of four weeks, show us what you did. Your obligation to Tangent ends there, but if you want to continue into further incubator or accelerator programmes, you can use your work output from these four weeks to pitch for them.
Cohorts will run multiple times each year. Join us during your school holidays, after ORD, or whenever you have a month free. You can apply individually, or as a group.
We figure it out together.
We figure it out together.
Tangent is privately funded. We don’t report to a government ministry and aren’t bound by strict KPIs. There’s no committee running Tangent with a pre-defined idea of what “success” looks like.
We’re trying to find out what happens when unconventional people get a real chance to go off the conventional path, so we can admit to not having all the answers yet. We have a feeling for who we're looking for and what we want to give them. We don't know what will come of it. So Tangent’s programme will learn and keep changing over time.
If you join Tangent early, you’ll help shape what Tangent becomes.
To join Tangent
Click on the button below to apply.
Age range: 18–30 years old. If you're above the age range but remain strongly interested, we'd still like to hear from you.
Applying takes less than ten minutes.
Know someone who should be in Tangent?
You probably know someone who is capable and motivated in unconventional ways. They think sideways. They have an idea they can’t stop talking about. They’re quietly building something without anyone asking them to.
We want to meet them.
Tell us who they are, what they care about, why you thought of them, and how we can reach them. The more you can tell us, the better.
Want to help?
We’d love for you to be a Tangent guide. All we ask for is a two-hour commitment to being present in the programme space during a 4-week cohort whenever you’re available.
There is no formal agenda, and no assigned advisees. You show up; they approach you if they want to. That's all we ask, but we hope you’ll want to do more.