This past week culminated one of the most enjoyable and memorable projects of the year for me. Let me give you some context first.

Back in the 1980s, when I was just getting started in the computer industry and the business world, working at IBM, I was assigned to work in the extraordinarily exciting area of personal computers as it was just starting to blow up. I saw for the first time what entrepreneurship was about (there was very limited understanding of tech entrepreneurship before this), and the leaders in the field of entrepreneurship included Bill Gates (Microsoft founder), Steve Jobs (Apple founder), and Mitch Kapor (Lotus Development founder). I found it all so fascinating, but the person that I was most inspired by was Kapor because of not just his technical chops and product excellence, but also his personal values and the way he built an organization. He was my inspiration to pursue an entrepreneurial career later.

While not as well known as the others, he went on to achieve enormous success as a founder of tech companies and other related organizations, an investor, a social activist, and a community builder (he does not get enough credit for what he has done for revitalizing the Kendall Square and Oakland communities to be economically much more vibrant than they would have been otherwise, but I digress). In summary, Mitch was not just an inspiration to me but a kind of hero. While this is true, it should be noted that it did me no good when I went to him to raise money for SensAble Technologies (my second company). After I presented to him, he gave us great advice that I never forgot, but he also gave us no money. But my admiration, however, was not diminished.

So, this year, when I invited him to give the prestigious Doriot Lecture at MIT and he accepted, I joked that it might be a problem that he never graduated from MIT, where he had gone for his master’s degree from the MIT Sloan School of Management. To my surprise, he responded seriously that he was very close to graduating when he left and that he just needed two more courses to complete the requirements. Well, Mitch was not going to come back and take two classes, but he could get the equivalent credits by doing a thesis. After many iterations with the right MIT people to review options (note: MIT does definitively NOT give out honorary degrees, so this had to be earned), we settled on a thesis topic of “Impact Investing.” Working with other faculty here, I served as his thesis advisor, and I am proud to say that last week, on May 29, 2025, at the age of 74, Mitch Kapor got his master’s degree. Technically, it was not an “MBA,” as MIT did not give such degrees back when he was initially enrolled, but he did earn an MSMS (Master of Science in Management Studies), which is the equivalent.

So last week, Mitch walked and got his degree and addressed his class, and I am quite sure he was the oldest and most accomplished “MBA” graduate in the world this year. I know he and his wife, Freada Kapor Klein, were proud as it closed an open loop in his life, but I also know I was beyond proud and honored to be part of this process. It was a full circle for me as well. Life works out in magical ways sometimes. So, Mitch, welcome back formally to the MIT community, but I would argue that with your values, you have always been part of it.

Below is a summary of his very interesting thesis from NotebookLM, where I have taken out all the references and made it more accessible to the practitioner. There is also a link to the full thesis (with Mitch’s permission) for those who are interested. As mentioned above, MIT proudly and stubbornly has never had legacy admissions or honorary degrees, so even Mitch had to earn it, as you will see. Many thanks as well to the many people at MIT over the past year who helped make this amazing thing happen, including Leslie Owens, Dan Gormley, Maura Herson, Dena Patterson, Kathy Hawkes, Georgia Perakis, and Mark Gorenberg.

Understanding Gap-Closing Investing: A Practitioner’s View

Summary of Mitch Kapor’s MIT MSMS Thesis – May 2025

Gap-closing investing is presented as a distinctive model of early-stage venture capital that deliberately seeks to address systemic inequalities while aiming for strong financial returns. Developed by Dr. Freada Kapor Klein and Mitchell Kapor through Kapor Capital, this approach identifies tech startups focused on closing gaps in access, opportunity, and outcomes for low-income communities and communities of color. It integrates social impact objectives directly into the investment strategy, rather than treating impact as a secondary consideration.

The ethical roots of values-based finance can be traced back centuries through religious traditions, including Jewish principles of justice and responsibility in economic life and Protestant movements like Quakers and Methodists who established ethical restrictions on financial activities, particularly avoiding the slave trade and harmful industries. This evolved into formal Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) funds in the 1970s, driven by social movements and a desire to align investments with principles of peace, justice, and environmental care.

The term “impact investing” emerged more formally in 2007-2008 to unify approaches aimed at measurable social and environmental outcomes alongside financial returns. While SRI and early venture capital developed largely independently, gap-closing investing represents a convergence, integrating values-based goals into the private market of venture capital.

Beyond CSR and ESG: A Strategic Focus on Systemic Impact

A key distinction for practitioners is how gap-closing investing differs from Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) frameworks.

• CSR is often seen as a reputational strategy, typically involving philanthropic activities separate from core business operations3031. It tends to focus on inputs like donations rather than measurable systemic change.
• ESG integrates social and environmental factors into financial analysis, primarily as a tool for managing material risks and assessing long-term sustainability for shareholders. While more rigorous than CSR, it may not explicitly address the root causes of inequality or prioritize outcomes for historically excluded populations. Measurement focuses on corporate-level metrics (e.g., emissions, board diversity).
• Gap-Closing Investing is fundamentally focused on dismantling structural barriers and generating both financial returns and social progress for underserved communities. Impact is core to the business model and investment thesis. The focus is on community-level outcomes, such as jobs created or gaps narrowed, and it views affected groups as active co-creators. It seeks to redirect capital to overlooked areas and people, arguing that structural inequality creates market inefficiencies that can be addressed by smart, mission-driven capital.

This framework argues that gap-closing uniquely centers systemic impact as a core investment goal, challenging the perception that impact investing is inherently concessionary.

Practical Application: Mitigating Structural Barriers Through Investment

Gap-closing investing views persistent structural barriers in areas like education, employment, healthcare, and access to capital not just as social problems but as market inefficiencies where value is being overlooked. Investing in companies that directly address these barriers becomes a pragmatic strategy to unlock value.

Examples from the sources illustrate this:

• In education, companies like Numerade are supported for democratizing access to high-quality STEM education for underserved communities, addressing inequities caused by unequal funding and resource disparities in schools.
• In employment, companies addressing biased hiring processes are funded. Interviewing.io is an example that uses anonymous technical interviews to ensure candidates are evaluated solely on skills, mitigating biases related to background or pedigree, and helping to expand the talent pipeline.
• In healthcare, investing in solutions like Zócalo Health, which provides culturally tailored care to the Latino community, addresses disparities in access and outcomes.

This approach recognizes that traditional systems often fail to identify talent and potential effectively, particularly among marginalized groups, and seeks to correct these failures through targeted capital allocation.

Rethinking Talent: “Distance Traveled” and Inclusive Sourcing

A core tenet of gap-closing investing is a fundamental rethinking of how talent is assessed, challenging the “myth of meritocracy” in tech and venture capital. This myth suggests success is purely based on individual merit, ignoring systemic biases and unequal access to resources and networks. Traditional VC often relies on “pedigree” – degrees from elite universities or experience at prestigious firms – which can perpetuate existing privilege and overlook highly capable founders from non-traditional backgrounds.

Gap-closing investing prioritizes “distance traveled” instead. This metric considers the hurdles and barriers an individual has overcome (e.g., poverty, racism, isolation) as indicators of resilience, determination, and unique insight. The belief is that those closest to a problem often have the deepest understanding and the motivation to build effective solutions. Founder-market fit is viewed through the lens of lived experience and “entrepreneurial outrage” – the drive stemming from personal encounters with injustice. Ruben Harris, co-founder of Career Karma, is cited as an example of a founder whose journey overcoming barriers provided the insight and drive crucial for his gap-closing business. This concept is also gaining traction in other fields like college admissions and employment, where it’s seen as a more equitable way to assess potential than traditional metrics.

A practical application of this is the explicit rejection of relying on “warm introductions”. While traditional VCs use warm intros for vetting and managing deal flow, this practice reinforces exclusionary networks and privileges the well-connected over potentially more promising, yet less connected, founders. Kapor Capital instead uses an open online submission portal, ensuring all founders are evaluated through the same preliminary process, prioritizing the merit of the idea and team based on gap-closing potential rather than network access.

Diversity as an Outcome, Driven by Approach and Team

The sources emphasize that the high degree of diversity observed among founders in Kapor Capital’s portfolio (70% across funds, increasing in recent vintages) is not the result of setting diversity quotas or prioritizing founder identity (gender, race, etc.) as an explicit selection criterion. Instead, it is a direct by-product of the gap-closing investment approach itself.

By focusing on business outcomes that close gaps for marginalized groups, Kapor Capital naturally identifies and invests in businesses often founded by individuals who have direct experience with the problems they are solving. A stark example cited is turning down a startup with Black founders developing a robot bartender (seen as gap-widening) but being open to investing in a company, regardless of founder identity, that provides fresh produce in underserved neighborhoods (seen as gap-closing). Similarly, a women-led startup targeting affluent consumers would be considered gap-widening, despite the founders’ identity.

Furthermore, a critical factor in achieving a diverse portfolio is having a diverse investment team. Diverse teams bring broader networks, increasing the likelihood of encountering founders from underrepresented backgrounds (Broadening the Top of the Funnel). They also challenge traditional “pattern recognition” in VC, bringing different lived experiences and perspectives that help recognize non-traditional signals of potential and spot overlooked value (Pattern Recognition vs. Pattern Breaking). Finally, diverse teams can help counteract inherent biases in the investment decision-making process itself, leading to a more equitable evaluation of talent and potential (Bias Reduction).

Assessing Impact and Challenging the Concessionary Myth

Gap-closing impact assessment is embedded in the investment process, focusing on whether a company meaningfully reduces disparities for target communities. It looks for businesses with built-in impact in their products or services.

Impact is assessed before investing (who benefits, is it measurable, does impact scale?) and tracked post-investment alongside financial KPIs. Metrics vary by sector but include user demographics and outcome data (e.g., wage increases, educational attainment). Qualitative stories are integrated to provide context.

This approach directly challenges the widespread belief that impact investing is inherently “concessionary” – meaning it requires sacrificing financial returns for social good. Kapor Capital’s performance is presented as evidence against this myth. Their first fund (2011 vintage) reportedly achieved top-quartile returns among early-stage venture peers when measured in 2018, with IRRs and TVPI metrics exceeding industry benchmarks. Reach Capital, another impact-focused firm, also demonstrates strong performance with successful exits, suggesting returns and impact can be mutually reinforcing, especially when addressing large, underserved markets.

The sources argue that this performance suggests that the perception of concessionary outcomes may be rooted in biases that undervalue overlooked markets and entrepreneurs. By reframing impact as a source of strategic advantage, gap-closing investing shifts the narrative and challenges the idea of a necessary trade-off between positive impact and uncompromised returns. While more studies are needed, the data available from firms like Kapor Capital provides strong reason to question the conventional wisdom.

Each academic year, I am asked to supervise theses for students at MIT. Still, I am quite reluctant to do this because I am not a researcher, and I am much more interested in the practical application of entrepreneurship. I deeply respect good translational research that uses rigorous analysis to evaluate and guide practice.

This academic year, I had a very strong student, Billy Dale, who convinced me that his thesis topic exploring the role AI could play in the entrepreneurial process, including the entrepreneurship education context, was something that not only would be interesting but also could be concrete (considering our significant investment in the Orbit/JetPack tool). In fact, with my interests already percolating in this area, he convinced me to be his thesis advisor and got me truly excited about the work.

Last week, he turned in his thesis, and it was even better than I had hoped for, and I am delighted (with Billy’s permission, of course) to share it with you all now.

My printed-out copy of his thesis has highlights of key points and notes all over it, and I wondered how I would summarize it most effectively for you… And then I realized there was a great way to do that. Use AI as an assistant. So, attached is a summary I did in collaboration with NotebookLM by Google (if you don’t use this, you should). It is another awesome AI tool. I have also attached the full thesis for those who want more details and to see the data.

This thesis captures systematically, comprehensively, and rigorously the developments we had been seeing anecdotally over the past 18 months.

I want to give enormous credit to Billy Dale for pushing for this thesis and then following through. It is a great contribution to all important dialogue now about how to use AI in the field of entrepreneurship. Also, a huge shout-out to Doug Williams, who has been the leader in making the Orbit/JetPack platform what it is today, and who also spent countless hours with Billy getting the data. Props also to Paul Cheek and the other developers of JetPack, including but not exclusively Alfredo Garcia, Navroop Singh Sehmi, and Neelesh Bagga, who have brought Orbit/JetPack into this world and continue to help it mature to what it is today—and will be in the future.

This is also a wonderful example of the power of translational research and why we need a lot more of it in the future.

Now, without further ado, here is the summary of William (Billy) Dale’s MIT Master’s thesis:

The Effect an AI Tool (Orbit/JetPack) Has Had and Can Have on Entrepreneurship Education

Alright, folks, let’s cut to the chase. You’ve got a boatload of ideas, you’re maybe knee-deep in the trenches of building a venture, or you’re out there teaching the next generation how to do the same. You’ve heard about AI, generative AI specifically, and maybe you’re wondering, “Okay, so what’s the real story? How does this stuff help when you’re grinding through building a business?” This thesis, coming right out of MIT’s System Design and Management program, looks squarely at that question, specifically how a custom AI tool called Orbit/JetPack played out in our 15.390 entrepreneurship course, which is built around the Disciplined Entrepreneurship framework.

Now, this isn’t just some ivory tower theorizing. This is about understanding the messy, real-world interaction between people, a proven process (DE), a new technology (AI via Orbit/JetPack), and the learning environment we create. To figure this out, we looked at it like a System-of-Systems (SoS). Think of it like this: you’ve got independent parts – the students and their teams, the 24 steps of the DE framework, the Orbit/JetPack AI tool itself, and the course environment – all doing their own thing, but interacting to create something bigger than the sum of their parts. The big question is, what emerges from that interaction, especially when you throw a powerful new tool like AI into the mix?

Here’s the deal: This research dug into how students used Orbit/JetPack across three semesters, from Spring 2024 to Spring 2025, comparing how things worked with the initial version (v1) and the significantly upgraded version (v2). We looked at hard data – how many users, how many ideas, how many steps completed, how many iterations, how teams worked together – and layered that with feedback from course evaluations.

Orbit/JetPack as Your External Enabler

First big takeaway: Orbit/JetPack isn’t just a fancy chatbot. It acted as what we call an External Enabler. Academic researcher Professor Per Davidsson from Queensland University of Technology talks about how external enablers change the game for entrepreneurs by making things less “opaque” and reducing “agency-intensity”. The DE framework, while awesome, can feel daunting with its 24 steps. It’s appropriately and necessarily a bit complex. Orbit/JetPack helped reduce that opacity, making the steps clearer and more actionable. It also reduced agency-intensity – basically, the sheer effort needed to figure out how to do each step. By generating initial content or providing structure, it gave students a running start.

We saw this play out clearly when Orbit/JetPack evolved to v2. The underlying AI model got smarter (GPT-4o vs. GPT-4-turbo), and the user interface got a major facelift – more intuitive, better layout, easier tracking of changes. What happened? User adoption and activity went up. More people signed up, more people were actively using it month-to-month, and the volume of ideas generated per week increased. This wasn’t just random tinkering; the usage patterns tracked directly with the academic calendar, spiking when assignments were due. It tells you that when the tool got better (Perceived Ease of Use) and was explicitly woven into the course (increased Perceived Usefulness and Trust), people actually used it more effectively for their core coursework.

Transforming How We Learn (and Do)

This isn’t just about efficiency, folks. The research points to something bigger: a Transformation of Learning. Students weren’t just getting through the DE steps faster; they were engaging differently.

How did we see this?

• Deeper Iteration: This is huge. Especially in the v2 semesters, we saw a dramatic increase in iteration, measured by the number of versions students created for a specific DE step. The early, analytical steps like “Market Segmentation” were the champs here, with hundreds of versions created across users. This isn’t just hitting “generate” a few times; it suggests students were using Orbit/JetPack as a workspace to really grapple with and refine foundational concepts. The intensity of iterative work on these early steps was significantly higher than later steps.
• Increased Engagement with the Framework: Across the board, in the Orbit/JetPack v2 semesters, teams completed a significantly higher average number of DE steps compared to the v1 period. This suggests students were more willing and able to tackle more of the entrepreneurial journey within the structured framework, facilitated by the tool.
• Enhanced Course Experience: This is where the rubber meets the road. Course evaluations showed improved overall satisfaction and, importantly, higher ratings for whether learning objectives were met in semesters where Orbit/JetPack was used, especially with v2. This happened alongside an increase in the average number of hours students reported spending on the course outside of class. This isn’t a bug; it’s a feature. It means they weren’t spending more time because they were confused or struggling; they were spending more time because they were engaged more deeply with the material, facilitated by the tool. They were leveraging Orbit/JetPack to explore and validate their ideas more thoroughly.

This transformation is an emergent property of the SoS. It’s the student, the framework, the tool, and the course environment all working together. Orbit/JetPack, integrated into the curriculum, managing cognitive load for tough steps, and boosting students’ belief in their ability to navigate the process (self-efficacy), created an environment where this deeper engagement could flourish.

Navigating the “Jagged Frontier”

Now, let’s be real. AI isn’t magic, and this thesis doesn’t pretend it is. The transformation wasn’t uniform, and that brings us to the concept of the “Jagged Frontier”. This term describes the uneven capabilities of AI – it’s great at some tasks, not so great at others.

We saw this frontier clearly in how students engaged with different DE steps. Orbit/JetPack seemed particularly effective at supporting work on the more analytical steps, like market sizing or defining a beachhead market. These are tasks where AI can help crunch data, provide structure, or generate examples based on patterns. The deep iteration on “Market Segmentation” is a prime example.

However, steps requiring deep creativity, nuanced qualitative judgment, or synthesis of complex, messy real-world information showed less intense tool-supported iteration. It doesn’t mean students weren’t doing that work; it might mean they were doing it elsewhere (offline, team discussions, etc.) or that Orbit/JetPack’s AI wasn’t as effective at supporting that specific type of task at its current stage.

The jagged frontier also impacts different users differently. The analysis showed that students with certain self-reported “personas” engaged with Orbit/JetPack and the DE framework in distinct ways. “Founders with an Idea” averaged significantly more steps per user than “Founders without an Idea”. “Amplifiers” (focused on scaling existing concepts) showed the highest average steps per user, indicating intense individual engagement. “Investors” had the lowest, which makes sense; their goal isn’t necessarily to build out every DE step in the tool. This variability underscores that AI tools aren’t one-size-fits-all. How effectively you can leverage them depends on your starting point, your goals, and likely your own digital literacy and “AI self-efficacy”. You can’t just blindly accept AI output; you need to critically engage with it.

What This Means for You

Okay, so what’s the takeaway for entrepreneurs and educators?

For practicing entrepreneurs:

• Embrace AI as an Enabler: Tools like Orbit/JetPack, built around frameworks like DE, can genuinely reduce the friction of getting started and working through complex analysis. They can make the daunting feel doable.
• Use it for Iteration: Don’t treat these tools as magic answer machines. The real power, as the data shows, is in using them as a workspace for iteration and refinement, especially on those crucial early steps where ambiguity is high. Use it to challenge your assumptions, refine your customer segments, & clarify your value proposition.
• Know the Frontier: Be aware that AI has blind spots35…. It might give you solid analytical outputs, but it won’t replace your judgment, your creativity, or your need to talk to actual customers. Use AI to augment, not automate, the hard parts of entrepreneurship.
• Team Up Smart: The data suggests Orbit/JetPack facilitated more equitable workload distribution in teams in its later version. Leverage these tools collaboratively to make sure everyone is contributing and engaging with the framework.

For entrepreneurship educators:

• Think System-of-Systems: You’re not just adding a tool to your course; you’re integrating a new component into a complex ecosystem. Understand how the tool interacts with your students, your framework, & your overall course design. The success of Orbit/JetPack v2 was tied directly to deeper integration into the curriculum.
• AI is a Transformer, Not Just an Accelerator: The goal isn’t just getting students through the steps faster; it’s about fostering deeper learning and different engagement patterns. Design assignments and activities that leverage AI for iterative work and critical thinking, not just content generation.
• Address the Jagged Frontier Head-On: Teach students how to use AI effectively. Acknowledge its limitations. Guide them on when and how to rely on it and when to rely on their own judgment, creativity, and external validation (like customer interviews). Different students (and personas) will interact differently; consider how to support diverse needs.
• Tool Design Matters: The evolution from Orbit/JetPack v1 to v2 shows that good design (UI, model choice, features like version tracking) has a tangible impact on adoption and the quality of engagement. Push for tools that support iteration, team collaboration, and seamless integration with the entrepreneurial workflow.
• Measure Emergence: Look beyond simple metrics. How is the tool changing how students approach problems? How is it impacting team dynamics? How is it shifting overall learning outcomes beyond what you’d expect from just adding a resource?

Looking Ahead

This is just the beginning. The AI landscape is changing by the minute. Tools like Orbit/JetPack have shown they can be powerful catalysts for entrepreneurial learning, making the DE framework more accessible and fostering deeper engagement. But the “Jagged Frontier” is real, and we need to keep pushing tool design and pedagogical approaches to ensure these tools truly augment human capability, support creativity where AI is weak, and provide equitable benefits for all students.

The path forward involves continuous refinement of the tools, smarter integration into the curriculum, and ongoing research to understand these complex systems. The goal is to harness AI’s power to help more people successfully navigate the challenging, but incredibly rewarding, journey of building something from nothing. Let’s get to work.

Remington Hotchkis, a serial entrepreneur in Los Angeles (LA), California, had just seen his latest and biggest venture—Bixby Roasting, a successful D2C subscription coffee business patterned after Dollar Shave Club and Chewy.com—acquired by a much larger company in a successful exit where it could realize its full potential. He should have been celebrating and maybe even relaxing for the first time in six years, surfing at Laguna Beach, and appreciating how he had made people’s lives better by making them happy with better and more accessible coffee.

But he could not. He knew he could do more.

And then his world changed completely on January 7, 2025, when the fires of LA, specifically in the Pacific Palisades, raged out of control and caused billions of dollars of economic damage and even more emotional damage to his friends and community. Fortunately, he and his family were spared the direct devastation this caused, but it was all around him and deeply affected him indirectly. What could he do?

For some reason that is not completely clear to him, he was online and trying to think about this and came across the late January class at MIT on entrepreneurship (MIT EDP) and thought it looked interesting and might be a good distraction at this tough time. He applied, thinking he would not get in, but surprisingly, thanks to Ann Marie Maxwell and Paul Cheek, he was accepted into the program. He headed from LA, where fires were burning hot, to Cambridge, where it was a freezing winter. not sure what was next.

MIT EDP is a program that brings about 70 entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship educators from around the world for a fully immersive program where they have to create a new company from scratch in 6 days. On the first night, each student pitches an idea, and then ideas form around about 15% of the ideas proposed. Remington gave a passionate 90-minute talk about the LA fires and the economic and human toll it was taking and how something had to be done. Again, he cleared the bar, and his very general idea was chosen, and he had a team of himself and 7 others from around the world he had never met before.

Over the week, they ran through the 24 steps of the Disciplined Entrepreneurship process, and even more importantly, they were able to use the new JetPack AI Entrepreneurship Assistant to turbocharge their efforts. By the end of the week, they had a real business with customer letters of intent, investors willing to invest, and a highly motivated team.

In an emotional final presentation, the team and Remington talked about how this process, tool, and experience, combined with the human energy of his team, had taken him from being an entrepreneur whose impact was to make people’s lives better with coffee to a whole new level of actually saving their physical, economic, and emotional lives at a level he had never imagined.

I just got off the phone with Remington, and he is not only pursuing this full time with a gusto, commitment, and fulfillment he had never had before, but so is the team that he met for the first time less than 60 days ago. And he continues to use the JetPack tool every day to make course corrections.

Here is an article from Bloomberg that captures and extends this story, but it is truly an incredibly inspirational real-world example of the power that the combination of a proven entrepreneurial framework when combined with the power of AI (embodied here in the JetPack tool) can take even successful serial entrepreneurs to the next level of impact. To me, this bodes very well for the future.

Warning: If you think you are going to read about yourself in this post, let me warn you it’s highly unlikely. Doesn’t mean we do not love you but there was just an overwhelming amount of great (entrepreneur)Ship that happened in 2024.

Here are my top 10 items. It was painful to leave many things off this list.

1. EDP:  Every year starts with EDP (MIT Entrepreneurship Development Program) in January and like a fine wine, it just gets better with age. It never lets us down. Turns out that bringing dozens of great entrepreneurs from over 25 countries and regions around the world to MIT for a fully in-person immersive experience to build a business plan—if not the beginnings of a company—is simultaneously terrifying, exhilarating and life-changing. It forces us to up our game each year and get off to a fast start. If you have ever been to it, you know what I am talking about and if you haven’t, you should.
2. The passing of a Legend – Ed Roberts: In February, after the start of classes, we were hit with the heaviest item of the year and much longer. It was incredibly sad but also inevitable. The founder of the field of research-based innovation-driven entrepreneurship, Ed Roberts, passed away peacefully and quickly with his family at his side (thankfully) at the age of 88.  To say he led a full life of professional and personal accomplishment is an understatement of the highest order. He was truly a generational figure and a legend. He was also my mentor and giving a eulogy for him was such an honor and also one of the toughest things I have ever had to do but it helped the healing process. His legacy lives on every day and just grows.
3. Raise the Bar for Entrepreneurship Education:  It was also in February and March that we committed to do our best to raise the quality (or “bar”) for innovation-driven entrepreneurship education not just at MIT but more broadly. We had been working on this for a while but now we publicly put our markers down and started to deliver.  See the LinkedIn post here that kicked it off.
4. OMG, The New DE Books Launch and They Take Off:  April saw the launch of two new books (in one month doubling what we had produced in the previous 14 years). The books got exceptionally positive receptions from the community. First was the Expanded and Updated Disciplined Entrepreneurship which incorporated 10 years of lessons learned since the original as well as changes in the field, market and technology. It immediately became a multiweek national bestseller in the US, which is mind-blowing for a textbook. The second and equally exciting is MIT Senior Lecturer Paul Cheek’s book Disciplined Entrepreneurship Startup Tactics. I have taught with Paul for many years now—he also has his own course on this topic—and let me be clear, no one does it better. The book reflects his expertise and, as with the Expanded and Update DE book, there are robust online teaching materials available to help educators. DE Startup Tactics also quickly shot up the best-selling list on Amazon and continues to thrive. It will become another evergreen resource for entrepreneurs and was the first expansion in the DE series, with more to come. Releasing just one of these books in a year would have been a huge success, but having both made it an epically great year for high-quality content.
5. delta v 2024:  As spring starts, so does the delta v planning, and this year we had an exceptional leadership team with Jenny Larios Berlin, Macauley Kenney, and Ben Soltoff, as well as Stephanie MacConnell in NYC, heading up our operations there … and did they ever get it done.  Much like EDP, every year it seems like an impossible hill to climb and every year it gets done better. We had a wonderful cohort again this year and the final presentations were the highest-level quality ever.  But that was not the end, because this year an extra month was added for the teams intending to raise money, with programming focused on financial literacy and other topics. While this was the second year of the program, it reached a whole new level; the teams have been raising money at an unprecedented rate and are clearly more investor-ready.
6. JetPack Takes Off:  Maybe one of the most unexpected and profound changes that happened this year was the emergence of the Generative AI tool JetPack on the Orbit platform.  While we have been working to develop and deploy the Orbit MIT Entrepreneurship AI co-pilot for almost six years now and have achieved significant MIT student participation (over 25% of the entire student body), we still were searching for the killer app that would make Orbit an app that students would log onto daily.  The hiring of the great Doug Williams helped solve that.  Doug worked with Paul Cheek to figure out how to use GenAI and our well-structured and proven DE content to create JetPack tools to guide students, or really any entrepreneurs, through the process of creating a first draft business plan in hours rather than weeks or months.  We were using this in class but it really blew up when Shari Van Cleave posted a video on how she was using it for her startup.  While this story started years ago, it exploded this year. It definitely will change the future of entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurship in general in ways that we can’t even fathom yet. Stay tuned for much, much more.
7. Complete Revamp of Introductory Entrepreneurship Course for MBAs (15.360): While I love all of my courses, the one course that stood out in 2024 to me was the overhaul of the introductory entrepreneurship seminar for MBAs at MIT Sloan. For years, this course has been a problem, and it was believed it could not be fixed. The target customer taking the class in the first semester was just too broad and we did not have enough time to really deal effectively with all the different constituencies in it. Well in 2024 we took this challenge head-on and used our own techniques. Tons of primary market research. Lots of brainstorming new potential solutions. Experimentation. While the final product was far from perfect, we started everyone off together and then offered alternative paths in the second half of the semester. We incorporated the aforementioned JetPack, Orbit, and other AI tools to help. The class had a record 200 students in it (half of the MBA class at MIT Sloan) and while it was messy at times, I am confident that we have a new blueprint to succeed going forward and we are definitely trending in the right direction.  This is a bit of inside MIT Sloan baseball but those in the course know and it is important to integrate the valuable MBAs with the other entrepreneurial resources at MIT.
8. Serbian Workshop:  While I rarely do workshops abroad anymore, when the Chief Innovation Officer at MIT requests me to do it, I listen and respond. Anantha Chandrakasan hosted a team from Serbia interested in ensuring their major investment in biotechnology would have positive economic and other types of impact so their minister requested a week-long onsite workshop. Honestly, I did everything I could to get out of this but in the end, gave in reluctantly. I must say, it was a lot of work but one of the highlights of the year.  To go to a new place under a lot of pressure to deliver was a big challenge. They had the technical expertise but business commercialization was not at the same level.  We got off to a bit of a rocky start but by the end of the week, our team had made huge progress and feel that there will be a new generation of entrepreneurs in Eastern Europe that will pay lasting dividends. Plus, it was fun because it was during the heat of the Olympics, and the US and Serbian basketball teams were the two best and going head-to-head against each other. It also showed the power of our community in Europe to come together. See a link here for more and some other thoughts at the Summer Solstice.
   

   

9. CCNY: As economic disparities in our society grow and social mobility and access to opportunity decrease, it creates more and more frustration for someone like me to see this taken away, because it is exactly how I got to where I am today.  Being able to get a great education, including in entrepreneurship and AI, seems to be something we should not limit but make more available to all. Towards this end I could not be more proud of what we are doing with CCNY and what we announced this year. Two great but highly complementary institutions coming together to help solve a problem.  Like other items above, this will have long-term ramifications and profoundly change many young people’s lives for years to come.  Huge kudos to Vince Boudreau, Georgia Perakis, Anantha Chandrakasan, Stephanie MacConnell, Chris Bobko, and Will Blodgett as well as the many others who helped make this inspirational program happen.
10. Climate and Clean Energy Entrepreneurship: This has been an area of focus since I started at MIT in 2006 but recently with the addition of Ben Soltoff as an EIR focused on this area, we have been able to make enormous progress and it just keeps growing exponentially.  It also helped to have Tod Hynes join us as a Senior Advisor. This year saw the fruits of this labor. The TEX-E program became an established juggernaut with the fabulous David Pruner at the helm. It was a year marked by better integration of the MIT Climate and Clean Energy student efforts, not just with TEX-E (Fellows and Internship programs) but also internally at MIT with a new high point for the MIT Clean Energy Prize and poised for another in 2025.  The year ended with an announcement on how our center was reestablishing our connections to Greentown Labs (which spun out of the Trust Center originally) to grow the tree’s roots deeper to make it bigger going forward.  Watch this space with a lot more to come including a new “Disciplined Entrepreneurship for Climate and Energy Ventures” book in 2025.

Those are the top ten from my perspective. I had to leave out a lot unfortunately like the Faculty Founder Initiative Cohort 2, our exciting growing relationship with the Deshpande Center to improve Lab to Market process and outcomes, the emerging Global Entrepreneurship Educators Network launching in January 2025, work with Jaylen Brown and Jrue and Lauren Holiday to improve entrepreneurial outcomes for underrepresented groups in Boston, helping host and participate in GCEC with old friend Donna Levin in Boston this year (including talks by Daniela Ruiz Massieu and Paul Cheek), great trips to Notre Dame with Chuck Kane, Milan Polytech with Alex Fracassi, talk in New Hampshire to 603 Business, all the classes and all the people and so much more… But don’t get mad, just remind an old guy what he forgot below.

But now, on to 2025. Happy New Year everyone and best wishes for a healthy, prosperous, and fun year and let’s make more Good Ship Happen!

Great ideas regarding entrepreneurship come out of Silicon Valley.  After all, it is one of the key centers of innovation-driven entrepreneurship, however, the product is often specific to that context.  The entrepreneurial process should be studied.  You can learn from anyone, but it should not be thought of as unassailable or the only way.

In fact, I have seen firsthand that when Silicon Valley Entrepreneurship models like “Blitzscaling” (it is not the only one!) are transported to other regions, they can be toxic to the entrepreneur. Fortunately, there are other models, and they need to be taken seriously for entrepreneurs and regions that do not have the resources of Silicon Valley, which is just about every place else in the world (even within Silicon Valley).

In this light, I was ecstatic to see a new piece of work, released by brothers Ben Hallen and Ed Hallen, called “The Mighty Middle” which is a new model that is relevant to many entrepreneurs across diverse regions. Ben, a highly accomplished academic in the field of entrepreneurship, graduated from University of Virginia, holds a PhD from Stanford, and is currently a Dempsey Endowed Professor at the University of Washington.  His brother, Ed, is a seasoned practicing entrepreneur who co-founded Klaviyo and co-led it for 13 years – it is now a publicly traded company worth over $7.5 billion. This is a fabulous partnership of research and practice, which we need to see more of.

In their Harvard Business Review article and in a LinkedIn Post by Will Rush, an entrepreneur who is actively practicing, they illustrate a noble and appropriate entrepreneurial path accessible and adaptable to all. This approach would build stronger regional, national, and global economies.  In my mind, it is very clear that it would also create a more harmonious society due to a decrease in income inequality and economic fluctuations – imagine that! So many benefits. And, there is a good rough analogy for this model which has created enormous value and has been the foundation of the German economy for decades—”Middelstands”.

Entrepreneurship is a mindset, skill set, and way of operating that should not be confined to only one journey. Every entrepreneurial journey is unique, embodies a variety of different species, which is a positive aspect to the process. We need to have more than one model for entrepreneurship. We can do this and we will do this!

MIT delta v 2024 (the 13th cohort) is now in the books and here are all the videos of the different teams who graduated from it along with some musing about this year’s edition.

The Videos of the Presentations

Probably what you all want to see the most is the videos of the teams that presented and here they are.  It is the proof that the process works.  These students started one year ago at zero miles per hour (most did not have an idea let alone a team) and worked their way up to what you see in these videos.  Even after 13 years, it blows my mind.

Everything AI

Including the tools to build the companies: In 2011, Marc Andreessen said software was going to eat the world.  It certainly has.  Now AI is going to eat the world and be pervasive.  It is already happening.  This year’s cohort is absolutely pervasive in its use of AI.  This was also the first year that the DE JetPack AI assistant was used in the program.  The JetPack certainly contributed to raising the floor of the cohort and allowing teams to iterate more.  AI is here not just as a fundamental part of new companies today but also as part of the process of entrepreneurship.

Impressive Group of Lab to Market

One of the great desires of universities, corporations, governments and society is to improve the quantity, quality and speed of moving discoveries in the lab from research into the real world where they have positive impact.  This year had a robust group of students working with inventors who did just that.  It feels like we get better at this every year.  Here are five examples from the cohort: Continuity, Helix Carbon, Lyme Alert, OGMA, Vertical Horizons.

Pattern of Women CEOs Remains Strong

By my count, half the CEOs are women again this year, which as we know, pretty well reflects the population.  This tells me that when you provide a welcoming and fair environment, entrepreneurs are everywhere and not limited to a single group.

The Ceiling Keeps Rising

What is clear is that each year, the process gets better and better.  This year, every team that was in delta v made it to the goal line, that is to present in Demo Day.  That is not a given.  The program is not easy or just passes everyone through because it is designed to create the actual conditions of being an entrepreneur. Also, not only did each team present at Demo Day, they are all “running through the tape”.  That means Demo Day is the last you will hear of the new ventures.  They all intend to continue forward as real companies.  It has been a long time since either of those were true and it is a testament to the program being able to lift up everyone at this point.

Extraordinarily Diverse Portfolio of Industries Addressed

In our selection process, we choose the people not the ideas or technologies. We don’t create an investment thesis on what industries or technologies are hot and have the most opportunity.  We strictly choose on the quality and commitment of the people applying.  This can lead to concentration in certain areas – like robots or healthcare – but we don’t make adjustments for this.  This year’s cohort was extraordinarily diverse in the industries and problems it chose to address, from pet adoption and haircare to the most technical aspects in ClimateTech of moving from brown molecules to green – plus many things in the vast area in between.  The businesses were more evenly spread across these industries, technologies and types of problems to solve.  Not sure why, but just an observation.  Interestingly, the same basic principles of entrepreneurship still applied to all these teams, no matter the vertical.

It is always such a rush of adrenaline each summer for three months for the delta v program and then it goes to a whole new level for Demo Day, but it is important to note, the work started well before the 90 days of delta v.

delta v is a capstone program expertly led this year by the incredible team of Ben Soltoff, Jenny Larios-Berlin, Macauley Kenney and Stephanie MacConnell, with the invaluable and tireless help particularly of Amu Killada, Ylana Lopez, Greg Wymer, Maya Freed, Lucia Solorzano, Susan Neal, and the rest of the Trust Center team.

Nor does the Trust Center do it alone; we do it with our many cherished partners across the MIT campus and beyond.  It takes a village to create entrepreneurs and they need to find their own unique mix of resources because every journey is unique.

Finally, a huge shout out to the long list of mock board members listed on page 58 of our Demo Day program, the other members of the entrepreneurial community in Boston and NYC who volunteered their time, the many financial supporters who opened their wallets to provide crucial support (page 60) and the amazing group of delta v alumni who continually give back to make this community so special (page 61).

delta v 13 is now in the books and it is on to delta v 14, continuing to raise the bar.

If you have any comments on the teams or the programs, we would love to hear them.  Always want to help our students and always know we can and want to get better.

In my new Disciplined Entrepreneurship: Expanded and Updated book, the example I use to track all the steps in the book through in a continuous manner is a company that was called Bloom in the book—but has emerged as a real company now called Livvi.

I chose this example because it started from an idea that was brainstormed in our class with Anisha Quadir, Madeleine Cooney and Sarah Malek.  Anisha and Madeleine stayed with the project after class and continued to work on it in delta v and it has since become very real as you will see below.  It was an opportunity to see the full cycle from ideation to saleable real business for an idea that was not dependent on some hard-core technology from an MIT lab. It was an idea that anyone could have done anywhere in the world and just leveraged generally available technology.  It really shows off the process. Plus Anisha and Madeleine are special but are all of our students?

Well, why I write today is with an update on Livvi but also with more pride on how they have worked to make a real tight story about their company and utilized probably the most currently effective customer acquisition strategy to get new customers, TikTok. Here is Anisha’s LinkedIn post: https://bit.ly/4dADYO0

First of all, so proud of them for pursuing their passion and making a successful new venture in something they so deeply believe in.  This is a great case of a very strong “Raison D’Être” for a new venture.

Secondly, I am now going to use it as an example of how to efficiently and effectively tell the story of your business in 1 minutes.  I have been using the Dollar Shave Club original youtube video for years and it will be great to have something home grown now and more recently (and less frat bro-ish).

Finally, I think it is a great example of GTM where getting customers can be done in an intelligent and cost-effective manner if you really know your customer.

Congrats Anisha and Maddie. You continue to make us proud and carry the flag of DE!