2.S977 Spring 2025
Founder's Journey:
Launching and Scaling Hardware Startups
Instructors: Ken Zolot, John Hart, and special guest Marina Hatsopolous, with Teaching Assistant Evan Rubel
Featuring guest lectures from: Colin Angle, Renuka Babu, Lowewn Cavill, Eran Egozy, Jon Hirschtick, Max Lobovsky, Davide Marini, Greg Mark, Mick Mountz, Seemantini Nadkarni, Eric Paley, Elise Strobach
Find and activate your entrepreneurial energy, with a focus on hardware technologies and startup experiences of mechanical engineers. If you’re contemplating starting a company (or joining a startup) after your studies at MIT, come give it a try in this class. You will explore real-life challenges of hardware startups, with the help of mentors and leaders from the Boston tech ecosystem. Topics include finding product-market fit, intellectual property negotiations, scaling up, addressing quality issues, and reaching strong gross margins. The class includes weekly conversations with distinguished founders (both successful and unsuccessful) in robotics, energy, 3D printing, consumer products, and other frontier technologies.
Although we will cover the basics of new venture creation, this is not a class about writing a business plan. Rather, it’s about grasping the essence of the journey of an entrepreneur and startup leader, as well as understanding the mindset required to develop and scale a hardware product. Altogether, this class provides an exploration of leadership, innovation, and creativity as seen through the lens of a hardware startup founder.