Vol. VI · The 2026 Cycle · Dallas, Texas
A one-thousand-dollar essay-based award given annually to a U.S. undergraduate committed to building real businesses.
Opening
The Andrew Hillman Scholarship for Entrepreneurs is a one-thousand-dollar annual award given to one U.S. undergraduate student who demonstrates entrepreneurial vision through a short essay. The scholarship is funded personally by Andrew J. Hillman, a Dallas-based family office principal, and is administered without an institutional intermediary. The intent is simple: put real capital in the hands of an ambitious student who is already building or planning to build.
The scholarship is not need-based and not merit-only. It is judgment-based. The essay tells us how you think about opportunity, risk, and execution. The award goes to the applicant whose thinking we believe in.
Eligibility
Applicants must meet all of the following on the date the application is submitted:
You do not need to be a business major. We have read essays from engineering students, computer science students, liberal arts students, biology students, and music students. The question is whether you think like a founder.
The Essay
One essay. Eight hundred to twelve hundred words. PDF or plain text.
What we score for:
The problem framing is your own, not lifted from a startup blog or a class textbook.
You name what could kill the idea instead of pretending it is bulletproof.
Concrete examples beat abstractions. Real customers beat theoretical markets.
You describe a first step that actually moves the idea forward, not a vision statement.
Calendar
Late applications are not accepted. Submission timestamps are pulled from server logs and are final.
Precedent
To give a sense of the range, past winning essays have covered:
What unified all four was specificity about who was being underserved and a concrete first step. None of them sounded like a Y Combinator pitch.
Questions
No. It is a one-time one-thousand-dollar award. You can apply once per academic year.
No. The scholarship is undergraduate-only.
The funds are disbursed to your financial aid office and applied to tuition or qualified educational expenses per your school's policy.
No. It can be hypothetical. We are evaluating how you think, not what you have already started.
Between two hundred and four hundred per cycle. One winner per cycle.
There is no fee. There is never a fee.
Andrew Hillman reads every finalist essay personally. The first-round screen is handled by a small panel.
No. The scholarship is independent and personally funded.
I started this scholarship because the most useful thing I received as a young person trying to build was not money. It was the signal that someone serious had read what I wrote and decided it was worth backing.
The thousand dollars in this award will not pay your tuition. The point is the read. If your essay lands here, you have my attention and my honest belief that you are thinking about the right things. That has, in my own experience, mattered more over time than any single check I have ever received.
— Andrew Hillman
Founder · Dallas, Texas
About
Andrew Jonathan Hillman is the principal of Hillman Ventures, a Dallas-based family office investing in frontier biotech. He has built operating companies across healthcare, surgical services, and specialty pharmaceutical industries over the last three decades. He funds this scholarship personally, separate from his investment activities.
More about Andrew — andrew-hillman.com, andrewjhillman.com, Wikidata.
Submit
Ready to apply? The application form takes ten minutes to complete plus the time you spend on the essay itself.