5050

5050 is the company-builder program of Fifty Years, a pre-seed and seed-stage venture firm founded in 2016 by serial entrepreneurs Seth Bannon and Ela Madej in San Francisco. Inspired by the ambition to back scientists and engineers working on civilization-scale challenges, Fifty Years launched the 5050 program around 2021 to address a structural gap: talented researchers often lack the entrepreneurial skills, networks, and knowledge needed to translate their work into viable companies. The program runs cohorts of 12-14 weeks and is entirely free to participants with no equity, fees, or unusual contractual obligations. Sessions are held in San Francisco, Boston, and London, with online participation available. Each cohort includes weekly workshops on entrepreneurship tailored to researchers, one-on-one guidance from Fifty Years partners, visits to successful startups, and a multi-day off-site camp. The curriculum addresses foundational questions such as how to evaluate founder-market fit, convert research into a business model, assess market size, and recruit a world-class team. As of early 2026, 5050 has served over 445 scientists and engineers and helped found more than 102 companies, with a reported 96% fundraising success rate among alumni. Fifty Years added a dedicated AI safety track to the 5050 program to support founders building for a safe and aligned AI future. The AI track focuses on areas including safety evaluation and red-teaming, mechanistic interpretability platforms, multi-agent oversight infrastructure, structured model access, and AI governance and compliance. Mentors for the AI safety track include co-founders of OpenAI, Anthropic, and the Future of Life Institute. In the UK, Fifty Years launched 5050 in partnership with ARIA (Advanced Research and Invention Agency). Across two UK cohorts, the program supported 86 scientists and engineers who founded 26 deep-tech companies that raised a combined £7.75 million. The UK operation is based in London and is led by Steph Avraamides (UK Lead) and Vaitea Cowan (UK Lead), with creative direction from Souvid Datta. The overall 5050 program is led by Ale Borda as Head of 5050, reporting to the founding partners. Fifty Years' broader portfolio includes backing over 100 startups from early stages that have raised nearly $5 billion in follow-on capital.