If the next great business proposal comes from the Farm, Stanford Student Enterprises (SSE) is establishing a new division to fund it — SSE Ventures.

SSE Ventures, whose mission is “to be the premiere destination for student entrepreneurs looking for financial backing, as well as the resources critical to every start-up company,” will evaluate applications for business proposals from teams composed of Stanford graduate and undergraduate students.

After an initial cut, remaining proposals will be evaluated by an advisory board of prominent figures within the venture capital community. These include SSE Ventures’ corporate partners Charles River Ventures and the Founders Fund, and noted “angel investor” and Computer Science Prof. Rajeev Motwani.

SSE aims for the division to establish ties with the venture capital community.

“We want to provide a tangible connection to the [venture capital] community,” said SSE CEO Matt McDonald ‘05. “This will allow student entrepreneurs to have their ideas exposed to them.”

SSE will invest its available resources in a small number of ideas, with as much as $50,000 or $100,000 devoted to each proposal, depending on the needs of the final selections.

“We want to have high-impact funding,” said SSE COO and incoming CEO Matt McLaughlin ‘08. “We want to throw more than the typical $5k to $15k at these ideas and invest much more in two or three proposals.”

“We want to fund the ideas that are the best of the best,” he added.

The division will also provide students with a measure of support and guidance in taking their ideas into the business world.

“Students usually try to go out to try to get seed money directly from professional investors,” Motwani said. “This will provide initial support from inside of the campus to help move concepts to something fundable. It should help ease the pain of transitioning from on-campus to off-campus.”

Though SSE Ventures aims to support the student body, decisions for funding the projects still will be approached with a business-oriented mindset.

“We’re treating these ideas like investment vehicles,” McLaughlin said. “We will provide the seed money and, in looking at applications, we’ll be providing a realistic assessment of whether the idea is going to fly.”

SSE Ventures comes after prior SSE initiatives, including the Business Leadership Program and custom products division. After months of work, details for Ventures were finalized in January 2008.

“People at SSE were thinking of what would be a good new idea for the student body, and this came up,” McDonald said. “This had been thought of in the past but never implemented, to have this kind of incubator program.”

The team will be making itself available for consultation prior to the first-round Apr. 27 application deadline.

“We hover around our email,” McLaughlin said. “We pride ourselves on being responsive, and we’re open to meeting with people to discuss their ideas, though there won’t be any set information session.”

Promotion of the new division will begin this week, with the intent of raising awareness on campus.

“We’re in this for the long-term, and there’s a real focus on long-term branding,” McLaughlin said. “We want everyone to be familiar with our name, and to introduce ourselves to the Stanford community. We’re here to stay.”