Since its launch in April 2025, over 1,000 students have already graduated from the SG Founders School program, paving the way for the next generation of innovators.
The country’s first free founders’ school has reached a significant milestone, as it has now enrolled over 1000 students. SG Founders School, launched in April 2025, as the country’s first free academy for entrepreneurs is following the lead of the national reforms and showcasing that young Uzbeks are embracing entrepreneurship at a scale not seen before.
Students across Uzbekistan carry bold ideas and big ambitions, but too often they lack the pathways to turn them into real ventures. With Founders School, Startup Garage is working building a community where investors, entrepreneurs, and aspiring founders can share ideas, collaborate, and develop their projects together. By connecting young people to this network, the program is giving them not just education, but the ecosystem they need to grow into true founders.
This comes at a time when the Ministry of Digital Technologies is putting serious weight behind the country’s tech ambitions. IT Park Uzbekistan, established under the ministry, already counts over 2,800 companies, including more than 730 foreign firms, and has been rolling out incentives like IT-Visa and Zero Risk to pull talent and capital into the country. Just recently, the Digital Startups Program was launched, offering co-funding and acceleration to early-stage ventures — a move designed to make sure promising ideas don’t die on the drawing board.
Where IT Park builds infrastructure and policy, SG Founders School is working on people. Its target is bold: 50,000 trained students by 2030. If even a small fraction go on to build companies, Uzbekistan could see thousands of startups created within the decade — with all the knock-on effects that brings: jobs, innovation, and billions in enterprise value.
“Reaching 1,000 students matters because it shows our young people aren’t waiting, they’re ready,” said Mukhammad Khalil founder of Startup Garage. “The combination of free access to training and the ministry’s ecosystem support is turning entrepreneurship from a dream into a career path.”
With nearly two-thirds of Uzbekistan’s population under the age of 35, the momentum is significant. What’s emerging is a startup scene that’s not just a side story to the economy but increasingly central to it. And if the trajectory holds, the phrase “nation of founders” may not sound so far-fetched in the years ahead.
