The path to launching and growing a startup can be full of twists and turns. For a budding entrepreneur, gaining perspective from those who have already experienced the journey can be incredibly valuable, and highly inspirational.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are so many amazing entrepreneurial stories among our alumni. We want to bring those stories to our students and our community and build networks with our incredible alumni founders,\u201d says John Hart, the Class of 1922 Professor and head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering (MechE). \u201cThrough the Founder\u2019s Journey class and other new programs, we want to cultivate interest in entrepreneurship among our students and expand opportunities to bring MechE-born technologies to the world.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to a 2015 report on MIT\u2019s global entrepreneurial impact, there are more than 30,000 active companies founded by MIT alumni worldwide, employing some 4.6 million people.\u00a0Marina Hatsopoulos SM \u201993, founding CEO of Z Corp., an early market leader in 3D printing, said one of the aims of the course was to show students they don\u2019t need to reinvent everything. \u201cSo much of this has been done before. I want them to understand that this is a well-trod path.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Class 2.S977\/2.S979 (Founder\u2019s Journey: Launching and Scaling Hardware Startups) explores real-life challenges of startups focused on building and scaling hardware technologies. First held in spring 2025, the inaugural class invited students to \u201cfind and activate their entrepreneurial energy\u201d through the lens of challenges faced by founders and their teams at various stages in development of new hardware-focused companies \u2014 ranging from fundraising to supply chain development, and much more.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Each week of the class was structured around a key challenge faced during the development and growth of a hardware startup, presented by the instructors and guest speaker.\u00a0The speakers were founders of companies in robotics, energy, 3D printing, consumer products, and other frontier technologies. Students engaged through preparing questions for the speakers and participating in follow-on discussions and reflective exercises throughout the semester.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ken Zolot, senior lecturer at MIT, and Hatsopoulous co-led the class and developed it along with Hart. Hart, who was among the alumni speakers in the course\u2019s first iteration, also spoke to the class about his experience as a co-founder of VulcanForms, which began through collaboration with fellow co-founder Martin Feldmann MEng \u201914.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The other alumni speakers included Mick Mountz (Kiva\/Amazon); Jon Hirschtick (Solidworks\/Onshape); Max Lobovsky (Formlabs); Elise Strobach (Aeroshield); Greg Mark (Markforged); Seemantini Nadkarni (Coalesenz); Eran Egozy (Harmonix); Renuka Babu (DOTS Technology); Davide Marini (Inkbit); Loewen Cavill (Amira); and Colin Angle (iRobot).<\/p>\n
Colin Angle \u201989, SM \u201991, co-founder of iRobot<\/strong><\/p>\n Colin Angle \u201989, SM \u201991, co-founder and former CEO of iRobot, now CEO and co-founder of Familiar Machines and Magic, identified a passion for building things early on.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis idea that you can create something from nothing, that you can have an idea and not just draw it, but build it and make it real, is something I\u2019ve always loved,\u201d he says. \u201cMIT had such a strong, hands-on ethos, and that really, powerfully resonated.\u201d<\/p>\n While living in the Alpha Delta Phi Fraternity house at MIT, Angle watched several companies get their start (by his count, five multimillion-dollar companies were started by his fraternity brothers during his time in the house). Seeing others do it helped to demystify the process.\u00a0<\/p>\n He started iRobot in his living room, beginning at first not with a product concept, but a grand vision. \u201cWe\u2019re supposed to have robots. So, if not us, who? And if not now, when? It was a magical day.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n iRobot may be best known for the Roomba, an autonomous robotic vacuum cleaner, but through the years the company also sent robots to Afghanistan (saving thousands of lives with the Pack Bot tactical mobile robot) and explored the Great Pyramid in Giza live on National Geographic.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe joy I have taken from my entrepreneurial journey has been the ability to build bigger things, from building teams to building a company capable of building something far beyond what I could have ever imagined doing myself \u2026 we created inventions that no one thought possible, simply because we believed we could.\u201d<\/p>\n Elise Strobach SM \u201917, PhD \u201920, CEO and co-founder of AeroShield<\/strong><\/p>\n Elise Strobach SM \u201917, PhD \u201920 is CEO and co-founder of AeroShield Materials. The company, co-founded with Kyle Wilke PhD \u201919 and Aaron Baskerville-Bridges SM \u201920, MBA \u201920, develops super-insulating transparent window inserts with technology based on transparent silica aerogels developed by Strobach while she was completing her PhD in Professor Evelyn Wang\u2019s lab.<\/p>\n \u201cI wasn\u2019t thinking of myself as an entrepreneur at that time, but looking back, that\u2019s definitely where that seed was planted,\u201d says Strobach. As entrepreneurs, she says, \u201cWe have the \u2026 freedom to find the best problem to solve and to continue to\u00a0seek the best way to solve that problem.\u201d<\/p>\n Aerogels, which were first invented almost 100 years ago and were first commercialized by NASA to insulate equipment in space, had a hazy blue tint that limited their use in certain applications. The aerogel material created by Strobach and her team is completely see-through, creating a variety of new everyday applications. The company recently achieved another milestone, with their work on display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington.<\/p>\n \u201cYou don\u2019t have to know everything to start. You just have to know that this is what you want to do and just get started.\u201d<\/p>\n Maxim Lobovsky SM \u201911, CEO and co-founder of FormLabs<\/strong><\/p>\n Maxim Lobovsky SM \u201911 was already working on 3D printers when he came to MIT to study at the MIT Media Lab. As he was finishing his master\u2019s degree, he saw an opportunity to build something new.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Lobovsky, with fellow Media Lab graduates David Cranor SM \u201911 and Natan Linder SM \u201911, founded Formlabs, a developer and manufacturer of 3D printing technology. The trio set out to build a professional-level 3D printer, but a significant cost reduction and one that would be easier to use than what was then available on the market. At a time when 3D printers could cost $100,000 or more, Formlabs\u2019 product started around $3,000.<\/p>\n \u201cWe definitely built Formlabs in a classic, disruptive innovation path,\u201d Lobovsky says. They achieved the cost reduction through several different ways, including replacing technology developed in the 1980s with modern consumer electronics components like the laser diodes that were developed for Blu-ray Disc players, and with \u201cjust a lot of clever engineering.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n It was a long grind to raise the first round of funding, he says. The team participated in MIT\u2019s 100K competition and pitched their idea to many potential investors (with limited success, initially). Their big break came in the form of an overheard conversation.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAs someone who is naturally introverted, shy engineer \u2026 a really important lesson [was] that, sometimes, you can get lucky,\u201d he says. \u201cSometimes talking loudly at a restaurant is actually a good way to get things going.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Lobovsky and one of his co-founders were having dinner with a potential investor at Legal Seafoods in Harvard Square. The pitch to the initial investor didn\u2019t go well, but Mitch Kapor, the founder of Lotus Software and an early pioneer in the PC industry overheard the conversation, and he ended up leading Formlabs\u2019 first round of funding.\u00a0<\/p>\n Today, Formlabs is the largest supplier of professional stereolithography and selective laser sintering 3D printers in the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n Jon Hirschtick \u201983, SM \u201983, co-founder of SolidWorks and Onshape<\/strong><\/p>\n Jon Hirschtick \u201983, SM \u201983, co-founder of SolidWorks and Onshape, says the first time he can remember thinking about starting a company was when he was an undergraduate.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI had heard about startups, and it sounded like a lot of things that I was drawn to \u2026 a sense of being able to realize your vision, express yourself; a sense of excitement, of making money, and even the idea of a chaotic environment,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n Hirschtick has spent over four decades building computer-aided design (CAD) software, starting as an intern at MIT in 1981 and continuing that work today. \u201cI thought, \u2018hey, the world could use this software.\u2019 It\u2019ll be a better place with the software that I envisioned.\u201d<\/p>\n He refers to CAD as a meta product design. \u201cWe\u2019re designing a product that other people use to design products, and that\u2019s just really cool to me.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI think startups just fit me,\u201d he says. \u201cThe excitement, the idea of trying to solve a lot of problems at the same time. MIT is a place of problem-solving … and a startup is a place where there\u2019s lots of problems to solve.\u201d He adds that a lot of big companies are doing new things, but \u201cstartups are always doing things.\u201d<\/p>\n He says most anything today that is a manufactured product is modeled in CAD first. \u201cIf you\u2019re interested and excited by product development, then building a CAD system lets you get involved in the world\u2019s product development.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNobody knows for sure when they start a company whether it\u2019s going to be successful or not.\u00a0If it were, if there was a way of knowing for sure, then there wouldn\u2019t be all these classes in\u00a0entrepreneurship. They\u2019d just tell you the secret. There\u2019s always risk. Visions and hallucinations, they look and feel the same.\u00a0You only find out which is which once you really try to realize them.\u201d<\/p>\n