Barry Eggers in front of UCLA’s Royce Hall. The iconic twin-towered building features Romanesque architecture with arched windows and decorative brickwork. The right side of the background is replaced with a solid blue color, creating visual contrast.

Barry and Meredith Eggers make pledge to boost Bruin entrepreneurship at UCLA

The commitment will fund new startup-themed Cluster and Fiat Lux courses

Barry Eggers in front of UCLA’s Royce Hall. The iconic twin-towered building features Romanesque architecture with arched windows and decorative brickwork. The right side of the background is replaced with a solid blue color, creating visual contrast.

composite by Trever Ducote/UCLA
For alumnus Barry Eggers, UCLA’s unique Clusters and Fiat Lux courses offered a powerful opportunity to reach more students earlier and overall to gain exposure to and experience with entrepreneurship.

By Jonathan Riggs | November 4, 2025

All successful entrepreneurs know great ideas and innovation don’t happen without risk-taking.

Certainly, leading Silicon Valley venture capitalist and UCLA economics alumnus Barry Eggers has always believed this — and he wants to give more UCLA undergraduates the chance to learn it for themselves.

So he and his wife Meredith have pledged the funding that will enable the UCLA College to establish the Barry and Meredith Eggers Innovation and Entrepreneurship Initiative to support a five-year pilot program of new Fiat Lux and Cluster courses focused on entrepreneurship that will launch over the next two academic years.

“We are enormously grateful to Barry and Meredith for ensuring that the largest number of Bruins to date will gain a creative, comprehensive grounding in entrepreneurship right from the beginning of their college careers,” said Adriana Galván, dean and vice provost of undergraduate education. “It’s truly inspiring to imagine the ripple effect this investment will empower our students to set in motion for the benefit of all.”

This new gift will build upon UCLA’s vibrant campuswide entrepreneurship ecosystem, which includes Startup UCLA, the Price Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and an entrepreneurship minor offered through the UCLA Anderson School of Management. It will also explore an opportunity to reach more students — and reach them earlier — thanks to two special types of courses unique to UCLA.

Clusters and Fiat Lux courses engage students in the first year of their undergraduate careers and help fulfill general education requirements while offering a lens on topics that students can apply to all their courses and future plans.

Clusters are year-long, interdisciplinary courses, while Fiat Lux seminars inspire discussion and connections between faculty and students in small settings of around 15 participants. Entrepreneurship as an umbrella theme will allow for a variety of interpretations and explorations by students and faculty, and will ensure that students can experience a broad launching pad from the beginning of their university experience.

“I’ve known Barry for more than 40 years, since our residential days at Hedrick Hall. He has consistently been someone who can identify opportunities — for products, businesses, talent and for important institutions like UCLA,” said Terry Kramer, faculty director of UCLA’s Easton Technology Management Center and a member of the advisory committee for the Cluster courses. “He has used his professional success to give back to UCLA’s students and faculty in the most critical areas, including entrepreneurship, which will continue to be a huge source of economic growth, employment opportunities and societal well-being.”

These new courses will not only expose more students across campus earlier and more consistently to entrepreneurship, but they also will enhance opportunities and inspire students to get more involved with them — a key priority for Barry Eggers.

Inspired by his own Bruin years, including experiences on the water polo team and in the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity, Eggers made a commitment to remain involved on campus. He resolved to offer advice and resources to students as well as leadership to strengthen the university’s impact on budding entrepreneurs at every stage.

The couple has long supported Startup UCLA, where they provided the funding that made it possible for UCLA to establish the Barry and Meredith Eggers Entrepreneurial Seed Funding Prize for Bruin startups. They also host an annual barbecue where student entrepreneurs pitch their startup business ideas to Bruin alumni and investors.

“With this gift, students will encounter entrepreneurship as an academic discipline right when they arrive on campus and see it come alive through Startup UCLA’s accelerator and other experiential programs,” said Robert Jadon, co-founder of Startup UCLA. “Barry’s longstanding support of Startup UCLA has been instrumental in shaping our work, and we’re grateful to have his and Meredith’s support as we implement what we believe will be a powerful way to support our students who dream of launching businesses.”

An exciting outcome, Barry Eggers believes, is that other UCLA supporters may see the value of funding undergraduate education curriculum such as Clusters or Fiat Lux courses with a variety of themes to continue the tradition of Bruin students exploring beyond their majors.

He’s especially excited about the opportunity that more UCLA undergraduates will have to explore an interest in entrepreneurship and to see where their own creativity, conviction and courage can take them. In his work as a founder of Lightspeed Venture Partners — the first venture capitalist to invest in Snapchat — Eggers has witnessed firsthand what’s possible when young entrepreneurs have the resources, support and opportunity to take risks and pursue their dreams.

“I work closely with Startup UCLA, and I’ve seen a lot of smart, entrepreneurial kids come through, but there’s a whole bunch more that we’re not yet reaching,” said Eggers. “Let’s give these opportunities to as many kids as possible as early as possible.”

Read a Q&A with Barry Eggers on UCLA Newsroom.