01
Sustained use
People
come back.
come back.
Show voluntary, sustained use. Build something that makes people return.
An xFoundry Xperience competition
October 2026 — April 2028A fragment isn’t the full story.
Before you
Xperience
An xFoundry Xperience competition
October 2026 — April 2028A fragment isn’t the full story.
Xperience
The competition at a glance
Build a product that brings the source back into view, leaves the judgment to the user, and supports a viable business.
Competition cycle
Teammates
Disciplines represented
Conditional SAFE investment
A narrow subcategory • A single retailer • An hourly ranking
The claim may be accurate. The frame still matters.
A product tester • Explaining their process • Test before recommending
The words didn’t change. The meaning came back into view.
A small baseline • A self-selected sample • No established wider trend
Same increase. A clearer view of the baseline and the sample.
The problem
A 30-second clip from a two-hour hearing. A headline without the article. A convincing statistic with no source.
Getting the full story can mean digging through links, articles, and endless tabs. Most people won't go that far, leaving them with only part of the story.
Give people a simple way to see where a clip, claim, or statistic came from, and let them decide what it means.
The numbers tell a story
41%
of U.S. teens surveyed reported seeing real images or videos presented in misleading ways.
Common Sense Media2025 reportU.S. teens ages 13–18, surveyed March to May 2024. Measures reported exposure, not whether respondents believed the content.
77%
of news influencers studied by Pew had never been affiliated with a news organization.
Pew Research CenterNovember 2024Pew studied 500 news influencers with 100,000+ followers. Affiliation includes past or present employment or regular freelance work with a news organization.
40%
of respondents across surveyed markets said they sometimes or often avoid the news.
Reuters InstituteDigital News Report 2025Up from 29% in 2017, matching the 2024 record high. News avoidance has many causes and cannot be attributed to missing context alone.
See how easily a clip or claim can lose its original meaning. Before You Share challenges multidisciplinary teams to build digital tools that recover sources, reveal missing details, and help people reach their own conclusions. Over 18 months, teams develop and test their products, with a proposed SAFE investment of up to $1 million available to one qualifying winner, subject to investment conditions. Registration is now open through ConneXions.
Build a private, user-controlled digital product that helps people recover the source and missing context behind what they see, judge it for themselves, and keep coming back; then build the business that sustains it.
Your product will
Connect posts, clips, and claims to the original material they came from.
Identify who's speaking, compare relevant sources, and explain what we know and what we don't.
Help people understand the evidence and reach their own conclusions. Keep the experience private and user-controlled.
Show voluntary, sustained use. Build something that makes people return.
Connect people to reliable sources. Explain what is missing, and be honest about the limits.
Show paid demand and credible economics. Prove there is a business behind the product.
Protect privacy, and help people make their own informed decisions.
Build a real product, work with a team, and gain hands-on experience before graduation. A qualifying winning team could advance through Xcelerate and launch a venture.
A SAFE investment from Xponential Venture Fund for one qualifying winning team’s company.
*This is a proposed, conditional investment. Not a cash prize or guaranteed funding. It requires completion of the six-month Xcelerate program, a signed fund commitment, diligence, incorporation, sufficient IP rights, and executed investment documents. Amount and funding terms are subject to diligence. If no team qualifies, no winner is named.
Here's how qualifying teams are scored.
Source-Array Discipline means making fair comparisons, preserving important qualifications, and acknowledging gaps. Teams must also meet all required milestones, retention and paid-demand standards, and product safeguards. Official Rules govern.
Who can participate?
Registration closes February 28, 2027.
Before You Share is a bold experiment to engage college students to collaborate, compete, and provide a marketable means to place messages and their sources in a larger background.
You’re doing fearless innovation. You’re going to change the human condition.
It is critical that you interact with broad disciplines in order to solve problems.
We are drowning in information but starving for context. In an era of endless data, the real challenge is understanding what matters, why it matters, and how it all connects.
At xFoundry, we build bridges where none exist: industry to academia, students to the startup world, ideas to impact. With BYS, I look forward to seeing students build bridges across information itself and change how we inform ourselves as a society.
No. You can register individually and find teammates through ConneXions. Your eventual team will need 3–6 people representing at least three academic disciplines, but you don't need everything figured out to get started
No. You can use AI, human research, or both. As long as your digital product meets the requirements, how you build it is up to you.
You'll receive program guidance, the Mission Plan, mentor matching, and access to technical, research, and venture resources. Specific mentors, customers, partnerships, and investments are not guaranteed.
xFoundry claims no ownership of team-built intellectual property. Your university, employer, or prior agreements may affect ownership, so check early. Before investment closes, your company must hold sufficient rights to the product.
Complete the required gates and milestones, follow every hard rule, and satisfy the published Schedule A standard.
The current standard includes 20% four-month retention from at least 100 activated users, plus either $1,000 in cumulative recognized revenue from at least 50 distinct paying users, with at least half retained at four months under the payer rule; or a paid institutional or adult-family pilot of at least $5,000 with a named buyer and written scope. A letter of intent does not qualify.
A human panel then scores qualifying teams. If no team qualifies, no winner is named. The published Official Rules and Schedule A govern.
No. It is a proposed SAFE investment of up to $1 million from Xponential Venture Fund for one qualifying winning team’s company. A SAFE is a simple agreement for future equity. Funding is conditional on Xcelerate completion, a signed fund commitment, diligence, incorporation, sufficient IP rights, and executed investment documents. Winning alone does not deliver capital.
The Official Rules, Mission Plan, and participation agreements are scheduled for publication by November 30, 2026. This page is an overview; those documents govern eligibility, deliverables, evaluation, and investment conditions.
Share the competition with students, help them connect across disciplines, and encourage them to build and test their ideas. Universities and prospective partners can contact xFoundry to discuss participation and support.
