Key Takeaways
- MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering launched the “Founder’s Journey: Launching and Scaling Hardware Startups” class (2.S977/2.S979) in spring 2025 to expose students to real‑world hardware entrepreneurship.
- The course blends instructor‑led challenges with guest talks from successful alumni founders, encouraging students to ask questions, reflect, and see entrepreneurship as a learnable, iterative process.
- Alumni speakers highlighted diverse paths: from iRobot’s Roomba and defense robots to transparent aerogel window inserts, disruptive low‑cost 3D printing, and CAD software that shapes modern product design.
- Common themes among the founders include leveraging MIT’s hands‑on culture, embracing uncertainty, finding early validation through networking or serendipity, and focusing on solving clear problems rather than reinventing existing technology.
- The initiative aims to grow MIT’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, translate lab‑born technologies into market‑ready products, and strengthen networks between current students and accomplished alumni founders.
Overview of MIT MechE Founder’s Journey Class
The Founder’s Journey class emerged from a desire to bring the wealth of entrepreneurial experience among MIT mechanical‑engineering alumni directly to students and the broader community. John Hart, the Class of 1922 Professor and head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, explained that the program seeks to cultivate interest in entrepreneurship while expanding pathways for MechE‑born technologies to reach global markets. Supporting this effort, a 2015 report on MIT’s global entrepreneurial impact noted that more than 30,000 active companies founded by MIT alumni worldwide employ roughly 4.6 million people. Marina Hatsopoulos, founding CEO of Z Corp. and an early leader in 3D printing, emphasized that the course is designed to show students they do not need to “reinvent everything”; instead, they can build on a well‑trodden path of prior innovation.
Class Structure and Guest Speakers
Each week of the semester‑long course concentrates on a specific challenge encountered when launching and scaling a hardware startup—topics ranging from fundraising and team building to supply‑chain development and market validation. The format combines brief instructor presentations with guest speakers who are founders of companies operating in robotics, energy, 3D printing, consumer products, and other frontier technologies. Students prepare questions in advance, engage in live discussions, and complete reflective exercises that help them internalize lessons. The class is co‑led by senior lecturer Ken Zolot and Marina Hatsopoulos, with Hart contributing both as an instructor and as an alumnus speaker who shared his experience co‑founding VulcanForms with Martin Feldmann.
Colin Angle: From Fraternity House to iRobot
Colin Angle (SB ’89, SM ’91), co‑founder and former CEO of iRobot, recounted how his entrepreneurial spark ignited while living in the Alpha Delta Phi Fraternity house at MIT, where he observed several fraternity brothers launch multimillion‑dollar ventures. This exposure demystified the startup process for him. Angle began iRobot in his living room, not with a concrete product but with a bold vision: “We’re supposed to have robots. So, if not us, who? And if not now, when?” Though iRobot is best known for the Roomba autonomous vacuum cleaner, the company also deployed Pack Bot tactical mobile robots in Afghanistan—saving thousands of lives—and explored the Great Pyramid of Giza live on National Geographic. Angle highlighted the joy of scaling impact, noting that building teams and a company enabled him to create inventions far beyond what any individual could achieve alone.
Elise Strobach: Transparent Aerogel Innovations
Elise Strobach (SM ’17, PhD ’20), CEO and co‑founder of AeroShield Materials, described how her PhD research in Professor Evelyn Wang’s lab on transparent silica aerogels planted the entrepreneurial seed, even though she did not initially identify as an entrepreneur. Aerogels, first invented nearly a century ago and later used by NASA for space‑insulation, traditionally possess a hazy blue tint that limits everyday applications. Strobach’s team developed a completely see‑through version, unlocking uses in windows, skylights, and other transparent surfaces where high thermal insulation is desired without sacrificing clarity. The company’s technology earned a spot at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, underscoring its significance. Strobach advised aspiring founders that deep expertise is not a prerequisite; rather, a clear commitment to solving a problem and the willingness to start are the essential ingredients.
Maxim Lobovsky: Disrupting 3D Printing with Formlabs
Maxim Lobovsky (SM ’11), CEO and co‑founder of Formlabs, arrived at MIT already tinkering with 3D printers while pursuing a master’s degree at the Media Lab. Seeing a gap between expensive industrial systems ($100,000 +) and the needs of designers and engineers, Lobovsky teamed with fellow Media Lab graduates David Cranor and Natan Linder to create a professional‑grade yet affordable printer. By replacing outdated 1980s‑era components with modern consumer‑electronics parts—such as laser diodes sourced from Blu‑ray Disc players—and applying clever engineering, the team drove the price down to roughly $3,000. Lobovsky characterized this trajectory as a classic disruptive‑innovation path. Early fundraising proved challenging; after limited success in MIT’s 100K competition, a serendipitous overheard conversation at a Legal Seafoods dinner led Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus Software, to lead Formlabs’ first funding round. Today, Formlabs stands as the world’s largest supplier of professional stereolithography and selective laser sintering 3D printers.
Jon Hirschtick: CAD Pioneer and Entrepreneurial Mindset
Jon Hirschtick (SB ’83, SM ’83), co‑founder of SolidWorks and later Onshape, traced his entrepreneurial inclination back to his undergraduate years at MIT, where he was attracted to the idea of realizing a vision, expressing creativity, and thriving in a dynamic environment. After an internship at MIT in 1981, Hirschtick devoted over four decades to developing computer‑aided design (CAD) software, which he describes as a “meta product design”—a tool that enables others to design products. He believes startups align naturally with MIT’s problem‑solving culture, noting that while large corporations also innovate, startups are uniquely positioned to continuously pursue new ideas. Hirschtick emphasized that nearly every manufactured product today begins as a CAD model, making CAD a gateway to influencing global product development. He also reminded students that the line between a vision and a hallucination is only revealed through action; uncertainty is inherent, and entrepreneurship education exists precisely because there is no guaranteed formula for success.
Other Notable Alumni Speakers
Beyond the four highlighted founders, the class featured a roster of distinguished alumni who shared insights from varied sectors: Mick Mountz (Kiva/Amazon) on logistics and social impact; Max Lobovsky (Formlabs) already discussed; Elise Strobach (Aeroshield); Greg Mark (Markforged) on continuous‑fiber 3D printing; Seemantini Nadkarni (Coalesenz) on fluid‑handling technologies; Eran Egozy (Harmonix) on music‑gaming entrepreneurship; Renuka Babu (DOTS Technology) on medical diagnostics; Davide Marini (Inkbit) on vision‑guided 3D printing; Loewen Cavill (Amira) on medical‑imaging AI; and Colin Angle (iRobot) on scaling hardware ventures. This diversity underscored the breadth of hardware‑focused opportunities available to MechE graduates and reinforced the course’s goal of demonstrating that entrepreneurial success can arise from many different technological domains.
Conclusion and Impact
The Founder’s Journey class exemplifies MIT’s commitment to translating academic research into tangible societal impact. By framing each session around a concrete startup challenge and inviting seasoned alumni founders to narrate their experiences, the program equips students with both pragmatic tools and an entrepreneurial mindset. The recurring lessons—embracing MIT’s hands‑on ethos, leveraging existing knowledge rather than reinventing, persisting through early funding hurdles, and recognizing that success emerges from iterative problem‑solving—offer a roadmap for aspiring hardware entrepreneurs. As MIT continues to nurture this ecosystem, the initiative not only enriches student learning but also strengthens the global network of MechE‑founded companies that drive innovation, create jobs, and address pressing technological challenges.