Mistletoe Foundation Information

The Mistletoe Foundation is the philanthropic partner of Mistletoe, Inc., the social venture community founded by Japanese serial entrepreneur, Taizo Son. Founded in 2017, the mission of the Mistletoe Foundation is to build bridges between the academic, entrepreneurial, and civil communities to create a more human-centered and sustainable future through technology. The foundation makes no investments; it is a California nonprofit public-benefit promoting social entrepreneurship by initiating philanthropic programs and research partnerships that help researchers and startups advance the state of science and technology for the public good. The Mistletoe Foundation's flagship program, which is in its inaugural year, is the Mistletoe Research Fellowship, open to postdoctoral fellows and advanced PhD candidates at partner universities. Fellows receive a 10k unrestricted grant for their own research activities, including conference travel. Fellows also join an extracurricular professional development program in which they have the opportunity to train and collaborate with frontier tech startups developing products with high potential for social and humanitarian impact.