Startups

Founders and foundational team members who spent time in the EDS.

Quick Links: Alumni | Others | Why EDS | Advice | Podcasts | Resources

Background

Though the EDS is not a startup incubator, accelerator, venture studio, or investor, there is a legacy of future entrepreneurs and founding engineers spending countless hours of their undergraduate years with us, co-conspiring on projects.

While some worked on their startups as students, most actually started or joined founding teams after graduation. The EDS strongly endorses that latter approach, as it makes optimal use of undergraduate years to work speculatively, struggle with ungainly problems, inadvertently meet and screen future co-founders, spontaneously join projects that force you to get smart fast and deliver, gain experience and insights, do internships in the real world, and, most of all, build a muscle memory for the patterns and types of work required of founding teams that deliver big.

If in doubt, if streetCat slept on, sneezed on, or bit a founder, they are, more likely than not, part of our EDS startup family.

Alumni Startups

imagi. Beatrice Ionascu (EE, 2016) and Dora Palfi (CS, 2016) co-founded imagiLabs (later renamed imagi) after earning their master's degrees in 2018 from KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. imagi is an educational hardware and software company whose platforms build pathways for the broadest spectrum of young humans to participate in the STEM (and now AI) ecosystems. While at NYUAD, Beatrice and Dora founded WeSTEM and ran it out of the EDS. imagi has also been an outpost for many NYUAD interns and graduates over the years. Dora is also part of a tech power-couple; her partner, Anton Osika, is a co-founder at Lovable. If you're curious to know more, have Perplexity tell you about imagi's journey.

Mission Mule. Martin Slosarik (EECS, 2017), Zane Mountcastle (CS, 2018), and Dani Carelli (EE, 2018) co-founded Mission Mule to serve wildlife conservation and monitoring needs using autonomous aerial vehicles. Martin was a member of the Wadi Drone team that won the 2015 Drones for Good Competition in Dubai. Dani was a member of the reefRover team that placed 2nd in the 2016 edition of Drones for Good. After Mission Mule, Martin and Zane co-founded Picogrid with Dan Chirita to build similar capabilities for customers, using satellite data uplinks instead of drones. Dani Carelli moved to SpaceX at the end of 2018. If you're curious to know more, have Perplexity tell you about Mission Mule's journey.

Picogrid. Martin Slosarik (EECS, 2017), Zane Mountcastle (CS, 2018), and Dan Chirita (EECS, 2019) founded Picogrid in 2020 as they identified ways of delivering on complex remote sensing and communications needs across multiple industries, informed by their learnings and frustrations with Mission Mule. While at NYUAD, Dan was one of the core members of the 2018 Solar Decathlon Middle East team and contributed to numerous other projects in the EDS. If you're curious to know more, have Perplexity tell you about Picogrid's journey.

Coval. Brooke Hopkins (CS, 2018) spent a few years at Google and Waymo post-graduation, and founded Coval in 2024. Coval was part of the Y-Combinator Summer 2024 batch. They are working on Simulation & Evaluation for AI Voice & Chat Agents. While at NYUAD, Brooke ran the WeSTEM SIG, was on our winning IBM+Cognit+Etihad Hackathon team in 2016, delivered version 2.0 of the DAQS project, and contributed to a number of other efforts in the EDS, including producing some excellent graphic designs. If you're curious to know more, have Perplexity tell you about Coval's journey.

Physical Intelligence. Quan Vuong (Math, Econ, CS, 2017) earned his PhD in Computer Science from UCSD in 2022, and co-founded Physical Intelligence in 2024. Quan spent much of his time at NYUAD in the EDS, specifically working on RoadWatch that won the 2016 Dubai m-gov service award. Before heading to UCSD, he worked on commercializing a version of RoadWatch, focused on fleet management in the UAE. If you're curious to know more, have Perplexity tell you about Physical Intelligence's journey.

hexafarms. David Ahmed (CS, Math, 2019) launched hexafarms in Berlin in 2022. Hexafarms is "building the predictability layer for commercial growers" to enable "AI-powered hyper-efficient commercial food production". David worked on early versions of hexafarms while he was a student at NYUAD. If you're curious to know more, have Perplexity tell you about hexafarm's journey.

Citadel AI. Kenny Song (CS, Math, 2017) graduated from NYU Shanghai but spent a significant amount of time with us while studying in Abu Dhabi, specifically working on RoadWatch that won the 2016 Dubai m-gov service award. He worked at Google in San Francisco for a few years after graduation and co-founded Citadel AI in 2020. If you're curious to know more, have Perplexity tell you about citadel's journey.

Dismantly. Taza Sahar (CS, 2023) started Dismantly to "Redefine the Auto Recycling Industry through software" and ran it from a desk in the EDS for many of his undergraduate years. After graduation, he and Cian Blake joined the in5 Tech incubator in Dubai to work on Dismantly full-time. If you're curious to know more, have Perplexity tell you about Dismantly's journey.

Metorial. Karim "Wen" Rahme (CS, Math, Phil., 2025) co-founded Metorial in his senior year at NYUAD, and, on his second try, just as he was about to begin his Master's at EPFL, was accepted to the Y-Combinator Fall 2025 batch. Wen worked on Metorial, as well as earlier startups, DigiKraft and Valicit, while casually camped out at a desk in the EDS working on other projects. Metorial provides an agent orchestration ecosystem for AI-first organizations. If you're curious to know more, have Perplexity tell you about Metorial's journey. Wen occasionally posts entrepreneurial insights on his webLog.

Diode. Nasheed Ur Rehman (EECS, 2025) joined Diode (Y-Combinator, Summer 2024) founders, Davide Asnaghi and Lenny Khazan, as a founding engineer and has helped build Diode from the ground-up. Diode is creating new tools and workflows for PCB design and fabrication. While at NYUAD, Nasheed was a non-stop contributor to projects in the EDS, including spearheading the effort to usher in a modern era of sub-orbital, sounding rocket design with nyuad.space. If you're curious to know more, have Perplexity tell you about Diode's journey.

martini. After Koh Terai (CS, Film, 2017) graduated from NYUAD, he worked in the film industry for a few years, earned a Master's degree from the Stanford d.school, and co-founded martini in 2025 with Long Hoang to build professional video production tools that leverage generative AI. Martini was in the Winter 2026 batch at Y-Combinator. While at NYUAD, Koh worked in the EDS on the Burj Shadow project as well as his capstone, FocusEye. If you're curious to know more, have Perplexity tell you about martini's journey.

Lazyweb. Ali Abouelatta (EE, 2018) graduated from NYUAD and jumped directly into the VC side of the UAE startup ecosystem, went corporate for a few years with Duolingo, earned his master's degree from Cornell Tech in 2022, and in 2026, co-founded Lazyweb to help companies put "product growth on autopilot". While in the EDS, Ali worked on reefRover that won second place in the 2016 Drones for Good Competition. If you're curious to know more, have Perplexity tell you about Lazyweb's journey. Ali actively posts about his process and entrepreneurial ventures at "First 1000".

Standout. Witold de La Chapelle (ME, 2017), after graduating from NYUAD, earned a master's degree in Computer Science from CMU, and created a number of companies in parallel to his work in industry. He founded his most recent venture, Standout.work, in 2025 to "provide agentic Hollywood-level representation for individuals to manage and advance their careers". Standout.work was a member of the Spring 2026 batch at Y-Combinator.

Borderless. Veronica Lee (ME, 2019) and Shunsuke Kasahara (ME, 2019) founded Borderless in 2022 to connect students with international university opportunities. Veronica worked with imagiLabs for a couple years after graduation, and Shunsuke worked at WHILL, a personal mobility company, before starting Borderless. If you're curious to know more, have Perplexity tell you about Borderless's journey.

Auren Bikes. Will Young (ME, 2018) founded Auren Bikes to produce "Bespoke Titanium bikes, made to order, based on your physical geometry, riding personality and budget". While at NYUAD, Will initiated the DAQS project, in partnership and with the support of the UAE Ministry of Climate Change and Environment and the UAE Prime Minister's Office. If you're curious to know more, have Perplexity tell you about Auren's journey.

Biggerlab. Yan "Rock" Zou (Film, New Media, IM, 2015) founded Biggerlab in 2015 with the initial mission to create a physical space in Shanghai where exceptional project work could happen. He's evolved it into a youth programming education institution that combines technology, academics, coaching for competitive programmers, and university application preparations.

KOPAA. Raitis Pekuss (CivE, 2019), earned his masters from TU Delft in 2023, and founded KOPAA in 2025. He was part of the 2018 NYUAD Solar Decathlon team. KOPAA is creating computational and parametric design tools for civil engineering and architecture. If you're curious to know more, have Perplexity tell you about KOPAA's journey.

Blacksmith Coffee. Stephen Underwood (PolySci, 2014) and Rafael Scharan (Econ, 2014) co-founded Blacksmith Coffee in 2017, grown out of a Student Interest Group (SIG), also called Blacksmith. Stephen and Rafael used Matthew Karau's old office (C1-036) in the Experimental Research Building (ERB) as their home base while laying the foundation for the company. They launched Blacksmith with the unrelenting support of Ramesh Jagannathan, Owen Davis, and the team that eventually co-founded StartAD.

An email from November 20, 2013, arguably, kicked off the Blacksmith journey from SIG to business; though, all the subsequent hard work was done by Stephen and Rafael. The EDS does hold one claim to fame: Blacksmith co-founder Stephen pulled his first shot of espresso on our Rancilio Silvia machine (still alive, a la Ship of Theseus, as of 2026).

Blacksmith opened its doors for the first time in 2017 as one of the first specialty coffee operations in Abu Dhabi. The café was a resounding success from day one. However, Blacksmith, as a startup, now mostly serves as a cautionary tale. As with any new venture, rushing to take external investment, without having term sheets reviewed by competent, independent, legal counsel, can result in undesirable outcomes for the founders. Thankfully, Blacksmith remains a vibrant brand; though, Stephen and Rafael no longer have any financial or operational stake in it.

Note: For anyone in the NYUAD ecosystem who has enjoyed being able to swipe or tap their NYU ID card to pay for purchases from external vendors, you can thank Stephen and Rafael for their relentless work to unlock this mode of payment.

Startups with less direct connections to the EDS

Aiden.ai. Ling Zhang (CS, 2016) and Emil Goldsmith Olesen (CS, 2019) joined Aiden.ai as early software engineers. In 2019, Twitter acquired Aiden.ai. Both Ling and Emil stayed with Twitter for a while after the acquisition. Emil later joined Picogrid. While at NYUAD, Ling worked on RoadWatch that won the 2016 Dubai m-gov service award.

Renovate Robotics. Dylan Crow (ITP, IMA, 2019) spent time in the EDS while studying abroad at NYUAD. He's done a number of interesting things post-graduation, including co-founding Renovate Robotics in 2023 to automate roofing renovations.

Lumi Labs (Later renamed Sunshine). Will Held (CS, 2019) was one of the early software engineers at Lumi Labs, founded my Marissa Mayer. The company changed names from Lumi Labs to Sunshine in 2020 and eventually wrapped up operations in 2024. While at NYUAD, Will was part of the team that won the IBM+Etihad Hackathon in 2016, competed in the Hult Prize Competition, and spent countless hours recasting engineering course labs into machine learning problems to solve in his spare time. Will was also the executive chef, specifically obsessed with developing a recipe for a camel milk and dates ice cream for the Solar Decathlon 2018 project. Will earned his PhD from Georgia Tech in 2025 and went on to work with Open Athena on the Marin project that "is an open lab for building foundation models" to support basic science research in academia.

Why do future founders spend time in the EDS?

Excellent question. As stated above, the EDS is not an official source of advice or educational programs for future founders, so speculation on the existence of a causal relationship should be met with extreme skepticism. It's likely that neither the EDS nor any other lab, course, program, degree, or Student Interest Group at NYUAD, despite temptations to claim otherwise, singularly creates founders.

However, the EDS has been carefully crafted to foster a kind of thinking and working that often naturally aligns with being a founder. The room is a "high agency" environment, intentionally insulated from, and pushing back against, the traditional norms of academia, and these conditions seem to nourish the entrepreneurial spirit. A space like the EDS is often a natural attractor of individuals seeking a community where the default expectation is to produce exceptional outcomes while undertaking challenging, open-ended problems, with shifting constraints, where the risk of failure is, decidedly, non-zero.

In the "real" world, humans are asked to solve problems as quickly as possible. In traditional academic environments, students are incentivized to finish homework and projects as swiftly as possible. Students are rewarded for being fastest with the (merely) correct answer. When preparing for an exam, study only enough to do well on the exam. Students allow missing "pre-requisites" to limit their thinking. A Grade Point Average below 3.9999 is viewed as a failure. Students are encouraged to not waste time, filling their calendars with only "officially sanctioned" pursuits.

In the EDS, it's flipped on its head. Be less busy, more spontaneous, adaptable. Embrace learning as an inefficient process, something that cannot be forced to happen on a schedule; semesters aren't always the best time window. When a student starts working on a rocketry project, for example, the expectation is that they'll learn as much as is humanly possible about rockets, becoming infected and haunted by that pursuit of knowledge. Hopefully, this learning continues over months, years, and ideally, a lifetime. This "over-learning" is one of the most beautiful, rewarding, and necessary ways to "waste" time as an undergraduate.

By fostering unconventional pathways of thinking, ecosystems like the EDS implicitly promise that if you visit to discuss your big hairy audacious goals, you will never have a boring conversation, regardless of who you bump into.

Note: In addition to teaching the Design & Innovation course since 2010 and establishing the EDS, Matthew Karau has also served, pro bono, on the selection committee of the in5 Tech incubator since 2016 and has reviewed thousands of startup pitches from founders seeking support to establish or grow their startups in Dubai. in5 Tech is part of the in5 ecosystem (in5 Tech, in5 Media, in5 Design, and in5 Science) and operates under Dubai Holding.

Unofficial Advice (for students)

1. Clear your calendar. Make time for spontaneity and the serious wasting of time. Drop research positions. Drop on-campus jobs. Drop sports. Drop student interest groups. Drop classical concepts of "how to spend free time": brunch, beach, lattés, gaming, chilling, watching sports. Be less busy with nonsense. Own your time.
2. You probably don't need money right now. Seriously. Do the hard work that doesn't require external support and just get busy bringing your idea to life.
3. If you're excited about kicking off a monumental undertaking that you know will require money, begging for money is most certainly NOT the first (second, third, or nth) step. Again, SERIOUSLY. Do some significant work first.
4. Avoid challenges that leave no room to creatively and fundamentally reinterpret the framing of the underlying problem.
5. Undergraduate education is well understood by humans outside of academia to be about EXPOSURE TO, and not MASTERY OF, subjects covered in courses.
6. If you have a 4.0 GPA, you should consider deeply whether it came easily, or if maintaining a 4.0 is your life's mission. Founders need to know when to take a "B+", in exchange for carving out time to deliver on a passion project that no one is requiring them to work on.
7. Don't obsesss over your GPA. A 3.600001 out of 4.0 is a fun sweet spot; the lowest possible "A-minus" average lets the world know you're very smart but also have lived a little.
8. GPA is almost always used to gate-keep internal opportunities at universities. Ignore this. Start getting good a crafting your own, better, opportunities; this is especially true if you've been primed to belive that a perfect academic record is the only pathway to future success.
9. If you're surrounded by people with PhDs, you shouldn't be surprised that you come to "think" that you, too, need a PhD.
10. Stop trying to impress the "adults in the room"; no more being teacher's pet. Professors, parents, and university administrators are not your audience.
11. Don't waste 3 years of your undergraduate years kissing-up to a professor. That letter of recommendation you so desperately seek will likely be read by AI (and likely be written by AI, too).
12. Always be interviewing, and expect you're always being interviewed by, your classmates.
13. Keep a running, constantly updated, short-list and sh*t-list. Build your dream teams from your short-list. Always be ready to form a team.
14. Be "unfair" when building a team. No posters. No message blasts. No public posts. No application processes. Quietly build an amazing team.
15. Don't ask permission. Begin. The universal rule is: as long as beginning doesn't cause harm to others or damage to property, just start. Start thinking deeply while maintaining dispositional flexibility.
16. The first step isn't building. Monumental undertakings require blueprints.
17. You need to be a little bit punk, rebellious, subversive. If you've not already "unlearned" the boundaries defined for you by authority figures from age 0 to 18, get busy "unlearning".
18. If you require money before lifting a finger, reach out. We'll pay you a fair hourly wage to fill in a McDonald's job application.
19. Not all investment is good money. Be picky, and learn about the currently-favored funding structures (in 2026, SAFE Notes) that are legally and financially palatable to founders and funders for early fundraising. Learn about the bad ones, too.
20. Learn to say no to investors who will meddle more than they help.
21. Not all help is good help. It's hard, but you might have to shrink your team.
22. Not all advisors are good advisors. Some are useless. Some are worse than useless. Some are just hunting for their next 0.2% equity stake.
23. Learn how to seek and give critical mentorship, feedback, and guidance.
24. Don't pretend to seek mentorship or feedback when you only really want praise and adoration. To receive and incorporate feedback or guidance, you must want your thinking to be changed by speaking to others. You need to want your ideas to be challenged, sharpened, refined.
25. Do the most with the smallest team. One person is not a team. Two are. Every additional member better bring something. Fight to keep the team small.
26. See your team everyday. Default to seeing each other as often as possible, so that, ideally, the concept of scheduling a meeting never needs to cross your mind.
27. Do the most with the least, especially if you find yourself surrounded by ecosystems that reward doing the least with the most.
28. You likely need to more authentically understand what you're working on.
29. Stop trying to "insta-solve" everything.
30. Hackathons are for networking, not generating startup ideas. Do them. Meet and "interview" people. Deep dive into some new tech for 48-hours. Return to doing serious work immediately after.
31. A pitch competition is a fun opportunity to cosplay as a consultant. It is not likely a generator of worthwhile startup ideas.
32. Stop choosing to do only pitch competitions. Work on things that require you to deliver on and deal with the consequences of your recommendations. Steve Jobs was right about this when talking about consulting at MIT Sloan in 1992; taste the fruit!
33. You're likely not thinking big enough.
34. Become obsessed in exploring the systems and networks an idea connects to; this is long-term, valuable knowledge, so make time to authentically engage in the search for it.
35. All subjects are history subjects; yes, engineering and computer science, too.
36. If you've received an "entrepreneurship prize" from a university or local or regional government, don't use that accolade as validation that your idea is viable as a business.
37. If you've won a hackathon, don't use that accolade as validation that your idea is viable as a business.
38. If you've won a pitch competition, don't use that accolade as validation that your idea is viable as a business.
39. Don't use others' accolades as validation that an idea will be a viable business.
40. If you've mainly received traditional and blindly-supportive mentorship on an idea, don't be surprised when speaking to a more engaged mentor, that you receive an outpouring of honest feedback (that you should have received earlier).
41. You're likely imagining easy access to more customers than is reasonable.
42. If you're absolutely certain and will only accept praise from others, you're in trouble.
43. Passion and Confidence sell; narrow obsessions, inflexibility, and over-confidence produce pungent and repellant odors.
44. Your ideas need to survive brutal critique; customers, competitors, and investors don't have to (and shouldn't) be nice to your ideas.
45. Your ideas need to pass the "Enemy Test". It's simple. Just imagine the idea you love, instead of being pitched by you, is being pitched TO you, by your mortal enemy. This enemy is someone you hate. Their joy would bring you sadness. Now, imagine what you'd say to them about the idea (your idea) that they're pitching. If you, after searching for all the reasons to not like their framing of the problem and their crafting of a solution, and, after exhausting your mind in attempting to inflict damage, you have to begrudgingly admit they actually have a good idea, then you, too, might have a decent idea. But, if you imagine your attacks are landing, and they're begging you to stop being mean, your idea is a flimsy idea. Learn to do this authentically; no pretending.
46. Wanting to be rich isn't a good enough reason to start a company.
47. If you want to get rich quick, just do crime. Ill-gotten gains are the fastest way to that super-yacht lifestyle you seek.
48. Wanting to become a "unicorn" is a grift unless you have a business with products and customers. I've setup Centauricorn.com, a fictitious venture capital firm that only invests in companies that have a pre-revenue valuation of $100 billion or more (we invest $1 for one-hundred-billionth in equity).
49. Making money is a necessity for keeping a business alive, but it's not the only driver, especially in the beginning.
50. Beware of "Venture Studios" that support founders "pre-idea" and take a large equity stake. This can potentially make you uninvestable. Same energy: Mr. Show S02E05 (13:13 – 20:15): "The Recruiters"
51. You likely need a good co-founder. Ideally, their skills complement yours.
52. If you don't have first-hand, real-world, experience with the idea you're working on, your co-founder should.
53. You need a good lawyer. They're over-priced, so be sure you're getting excellent analysis and outputs from them, not just boilerplates and rubber stamping.
54. Ensure agreements and contracts are written as if you are not on speaking terms with the other party. These documents will only be enforced in a situation in which civil discourse has broken down, so you better be in a solid legal position if things go sideways. Create and keep receipts but also strive to not need them.
55. Don't seek structural advice from accountants (early on); accountancy is built on risk-aversion (and fudging the numbers). Their advice will likely not help in the foundational and early growth phases of a new venture.
56. It's an open secret that "financial projections" in an early stage pitch deck are little more than aspirational wishes; a 10-year-old can just as easily draw that hockey stick graph for you.
57. Tarpit Ideas are, by definition, exceedingly tempting and apparently easy pots of money that, confusingly, no one seems to have tapped into yet. Despite initial impressions, they are, more often than not, ungainly, nearly impossible problems that require heroic feats like boiling the oceans to tackle. They're hard to avoid without mentorship. Always be questioning if you're stepping towards or into a tarpit.
58. "You can't get blood from a stone." It's insufficient to build a product that merely contains the necessary mechanisms to extract money from customers. All successful companies will eventually produce revenue, but there needs to be a product that customers want or need to buy. Building a game with mechanisms for players to lose money, left-right-and-center, is not sufficient to attract people to play the game. Revenue will follow naturally from an excellent game. Customers pay for the "whole", not the sum of the parts (that you've devised to get rich quick).
59. You should cultivate co-conspiratorial mentor relationships, up and down, in which frankness and honesty are front and center.
60. When in a position to do so, do favors for people with no expectation of getting repaid.
61. Find or create an environment where people are doing serious work that no one told them to do; elevate others and be elevated by this.
62. Learn to play against stereotypes. Stereotypes will always exist. Knowing that, your job is to pleasantly surprise others with ideas and behaviors that make your existence hard for them to reconcile, in the very best way.
63. If your gender identity causes people to expect different things from you than they would from others, don't play this game. Don't reinforce these expectations; you will make it harder for yourself and harder for those that come after you. Just be an excellent human doing things that would be considered ambitious, regardless of gender. True for all genders.
64. Female engineering students must never accept being assigned the role of "social media manager" on a project. Avoid such roles, unless you truly want them. Also, you shouldn't want them.
65. Do excellent work that does not require qualifiers or conditionals. Seek to never hear "...for a student project" tacked on to the end of "That's excellent."
66. You probably don't need to drop out of university (especially if you are on a relatively generous scholarship).
67. If, pre-revenue and pre-investment, you haven't worked on your startup everyday for the past two months, the thing you're calling a "startup" probably isn't a startup. (see: Ideas are Cheap)
68. If the idea of working on something non-stop, with no promise of a reward, for two months seems like an eternity, then the founder life might not be for you.
69. If you believe in an aggressive life over work balance and, especially in the early days, choose not to work on your startup in evenings or on weekends, you likely need to reconsider whether being a founder fits with your life goals.
70. As a student, you very likely have an insanely generous work-life balance; it's just not evenly distributed: 1-week of Fall Break, 30+ days of Winter break, 1-week of Spring break, 90+ days of Summer break. 130+ days of holidays. Since you're only campus less than 65% of the year, do serious work with smart people, and do it in evenings and on weekends. Burn that midnight oil.
71. Work for a startup instead of searching for a corporate summer internship.
72. Work for a startup instead of searching for an on-campus summer job.
73. Be willing to work for free. This opens more doors than you might imagine.
74. Never apply for an on-campus job. Use your time wisely for something else than a pocket-money job that 1,200 other students also applied to.
75. You might not need to go to an incubator or accelerator.
76. If you go to an incubator or accelerator, be picky; only go to a top-tier program. Their fame, reputation, professional network, and access to investors is what will help you most.
77. Good incubators will kick you out once you've been incubated; if they don't, run!
78. Beware of "accelerators"; do your own due diligence to be sure they can actually do what they promise.
79. Don't "incubator/accelerator hop". This is often just a death spiral. It's also just a cynical way to take advantage of the KPIs of incubators and accelerators who are beholden to their stakeholders to demonstrate an ever-increasing number of founders passing through their doors.
80. Letters of Intent (LoI) are not contracts and mean next-to-nothing.
81. Don't build your product rigidly to only serve your first customer's hyper-specific needs; that's consulting.
82. Build something where revenue scales faster than costs; not all customers can be given a white-glove service.
83. You probably need to pivot, not because that's what everyone does, but because your idea hasn't been tested by fire.
84. You probably don't need to enroll in a bunch of entrepreneurship courses. Nearly all run similar playbooks, and you can navigate their exercises in your own time. Research: Lean Launchpad, SWOT, Business Model Canvas, Product-market fit, Market sizing, Customer Journeys.
85. Don't be the person who says "I'll start once I've finished the course". This is true for any number of projects in life; it's often better to begin thinking and working on something without unduly elevating an arbitrary certification to a monster status, needing to be slain before you can reach your goals.
86. Learn how to learn more than anyone would imagine is humanly possible about something.
87. Build a way of paying attention to the world that automatically surfaces "weak signals" and "leading indicators" to coming changes, needs, and opportunities. Track waves off-shore, not after they're breaking and frothy.
88. Your first DIY project is exceedingly unlikely to directly translate into a successful company.
89. Your 100th DIY project is exceedingly unlikely to directly translate into a successful company.
90. Your hackathon idea is exceedingly unlikely to directly translate into a successful company.
91. Your research project is exceedingly unlikely to directly translate into a successful company.
92. Your capstone is exceedingly unlikely to directly translate into a successful company.
93. Your mentor's academic research is exceedingly unlikely to directly translate into a successful company.
94. Translating an idea into a company requires just that, acts of translation and transformation (not merely the formalities of filing paperwork and wrapping a company structure around a flimsy idea).
95. Understand the essence of Conway's Law: "The structure of any system designed by an organization is isomorphic to the structure of the organization."
96. Government structures of thought and policies do not mirror what fuels entrepreneurship.
97. University structures of thought and policies do not mirror what fuels entrepreneurship.
98. Beware of "faculty startups." Faculty will often scope a "startup" to be just small enough of an annoyance to fit alongside their existing teaching and research responsibilities, allowing them to "have a startup" without having to take a sabbatical. This, almost always, represents a kind of thinking that is too small to create a scalable venture. Often, the outcome is just a faculty member parading around a research project, clumsily costumed in startup clothing.
99. At university (and in life), associate with people who "deliver" or "ship" serious projects, whose outputs are tested in real world conditions. 99% of university activities stop at the point of kludging something together well enough to write a paper about it and rarely embrace the pain of ushering a concept into practical use.
100. Be a person who can "deliver" or "ship" serious projects.
101. Learn how to take reasonable and reasonably large risks.
102. "Sure Things" are most likely copy pasta.
103. "Regionalization" is code for copy pasta.
104. Beware of copy pasta. Work on things that offer at least a semblance of novelty.
105. Annoyance plays are just that, annoying. Starting an Uber clone with the hopes that Uber will, one day, be forced to acquire you, is just tacky. Leave that kind of nonsense to others. Sure, annoyance founders become undeservedly rich; only the wrong people will care about this kind of "success". (See above: doing crime)
106. Sometimes, in fact quite often, boring-sounding, non-consumer-facing ideas are the most likely to succeed.
107. Don't be a "Wantrapreneur", an individual who only seeks the glory of a CV wherein every job title is CEO or founder, regardless of the underlying business.
108. You very likely can't make it cheaper, and you can't compete on price alone.
109. Low-cost is often code for low-quality.
110. "Making it cheaper" in a university setting is usually just an exercise in improper accounting of resources consumed while developing an idea. You can't just add up the cost of materials of a single prototype. What about all the hidden costs that kept you and your team alive, housed, and fed during development?
111. The world isn't fair; don't demand that it is.
112. Being an outsider can help you, but often only at the beginning.
113. Being an insider can hurt you at the beginning. Be aware that you're likely partially-lobotomized and blinded by legacy thinking.
114. The world probably doesn't need another startup from recent graduates of prestigious universities that advises students from the founders' home countries on how to hack the admission processes of prestigious universities.
115. Get good at working under shifting constraints.
116. A problem isn't solved better just because it's solved using something you like or something you're already good at. Problems demand to be solved by whatever is the actual best way to solve them, regardless of your personal opinion, affinity, or expertise.
117. A competitive advantage is only advantageous if it's conceptually, technically, or legally hard to copy.
118. Don't compete with a switch. Ideas are weak if they compete with a feature flag or "switch" in existing products that industry leaders or well-established players can easily "flip on" overnight.
119. You can't make a better iPhone. It's tempting to think you could, and I'm sure you have all kinds of cool ideas. However, you have no means with which to realize those ideas, and you'd be insane to try to mobilize vast resources for marginal improvements that, Apple is likely already implementing in their next iPhone release. Apply for an internship with Apple, instead.
120. Don't wait for someone to pay you to work on something you care about or believe in; doing this hard work almost always cost ZERO units of currency but does consume many units of cognitive effort (the thing you feel like you should be paid for). If you need to be paid before you begin working on something, consider applying for a minimum wage job instead of pretending that money stands in the way of your entrepreneurial success. No one should pay you for you early work. Your reward comes later; learn to not eat the marshmallow.
121. If you optimize for revenue early on, you'll likely create a "Lifestyle Startup", and that can be very challenging to transform into a company with larger growth potential.
122. Exercise your brain more than you exercise the rest of your body. No one needs to know how many reps you do at the gym; likewise, be sure you allocate time and space to do reps with your brain without an audience.
123. Understand the concept of "Cognitive Time Under Tension".
124. Don't feel compelled to start a company because of someone else's (or an organization's or government's) KPIs or goals.
125. Don't start a company just to gain the praise or adoration of others.
126. Learn why doing the harder thing is often what sets you apart.
127. Know some memes about entrepreneurship.
128. Be careful about using the word "exponential". Very few things are actually exponential.
129. Beware of standing desks, blue light filters, yoga balls, minimalist desk setups, mechanical keyboards. These easily become dependencies that morph into excuses for why you can only work in ridiculously-over-constrained conditions. Be mobile, flexible. Build ways of working that let you do excellent work, anywhere.
130. Beware of Pomodoro Timers, bio-hacking, and productivity shortcuts. Everyone tries them. They rarely help.
131. Stand up and go for a walk outside.
132. Have a coffee and talk to another human.
133. Focus your eyes on something further than 50cm from your face.
134. Stare into empty space.
135. Wandering minds and idle hands are innovation's playthings.
136. Always be interrogating the world around you.
137. Keep track of shower thoughts and other ephemeral thoughts, either on paper or by using a voice notes app. ~90% will be garbage. ~7% will be non-unique thoughts. ~3% might just help you clarify your thinking on a hard problem.
138. Aim to have thoughts worth remembering. Store them in a format you can easily revisit or search.
139. Listen to musicForProgramming();, electronic, or classical music when needing to get serious work done. Don't listen to lyric-driven pop music; this is brain candy, and you haven't earned the reward.
140. Every pitch deck, on average, is the same. Be sure your pitch has a little drama and flare. (See: Figma Seed Stage Pitch)
141. Don't request an NDA prior to discussing your idea. This is a red flag and singles you out as an insecure founder building on a weak idea.
142. Understand why people say "ideas are cheap". It's not as simple or as personal as someone saying that your idea is uniquely cheap. All ideas are cheap. Your idea might be a good one or a bad one, but with some certainty, it is cheap, in the sense that someone else has likely thought of it before, or is currently thinking of it right now. The question is: are you committed to working on it harder and faster than anyone else?
143. Beware of short lists of overly-distilled guidance or advice. You need to learn to reconcile and create meaning for yourself from the infinite number of ideas floating around you. Life's list is LONG; don't trust others to interpret reality for you.
144. This is a list of overly-distilled guidance and advice.

Interesting Podcasts

1. Acquired. "Every company has a story. Learn the playbooks that built the world’s greatest companies — and how you can apply them."
2. American Innovations. "DNA science. Artificial intelligence. Smartphones and 3D printers. Science and technology have transformed the world we live in. But how did we get here? It wasn’t by accident. Well, sometimes it was. It was also the result of hard work, teamwork, and competition. And incredibly surprising moments. Hosted by bestselling author Steven Johnson (“How We Got To Now”), American Innovations uses immersive scenes to tell the stories of the scientists, engineers, and ordinary people behind the greatest discoveries of the past century."
3. Business Wars. "Netflix vs. HBO. Nike vs. Adidas. Business is war. Sometimes the prize is your wallet or your attention. Sometimes, it’s just the fun of beating the other guy. The outcome of these battles shapes what we buy and how we live. Business Wars gives you the unauthorized, real story of what drives these companies and their leaders, innovators, investors and executives to new heights -- or to ruin. Hosted by David Brown, former anchor of Marketplace. From Wondery, the network behind Against the Odds and American History Tellers."
4. Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders. "Each week, experienced entrepreneurs and innovators come to Stanford University to candidly share lessons they’ve learned while developing, launching and scaling disruptive ideas. The Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Series (ETL) is produced by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP) and published on eCorner by STVP."
5. Freakonomics. "Freakonomics co-author Stephen J. Dubner uncovers the hidden side of everything. Why is it safer to fly in an airplane than drive a car? How do we decide whom to marry? Why is the media so full of bad news? Also: things you never knew you wanted to know about wolves, bananas, pollution, search engines, and the quirks of human behavior."
6. How I built This with Guy Raz. "Guy Raz interviews the world’s best-known entrepreneurs to learn how they built their iconic brands. In each episode, founders reveal deep, intimate moments of doubt and failure, and share insights on their eventual success. How I Built This is a master-class on innovation, creativity, leadership and how to navigate challenges of all kinds."
7. Masters of Scale. "On Masters of Scale, iconic business leaders share lessons and strategies that have helped them grow the world’s most fascinating companies. Founders, CEOs, and dynamic innovators join candid conversations about their triumphs and challenges with a set of luminary hosts, including founding host Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock partner). From navigating early prototypes to expanding brands globally, Masters of Scale provides priceless insights to help anyone grow their dream enterprise."
8. Science Vs. "There are a lot of fads, blogs and strong opinions, but then there’s SCIENCE. Science Vs is the show from Spotify Studios that finds out what’s fact, what’s not, and what’s somewhere in between. We do the hard work of sifting through all the science so you don’t have to and cover everything from 5G and ADHD, to Fluoride and Fasting Diets."
9. Search Engine. "We try to make sense of the world, one question at a time. No question too big, no question too small."
10. Reply All. "'A podcast about the internet’ that is actually an unfailingly original exploration of modern life and how to survive it."
11. Startups for the Rest of Us. "The original podcast for bootstrapped and mostly bootstrapped startups, this show follow the stories of founders as they start, acquire, and grow SaaS companies. Hear when they fail, struggle, succeed, and take you with them through the tumultuous life of a SaaS founder. If you like Mixergy, This Week in Startups, or SaaStr, you’ll enjoy Startup for the Rest of Us."
12. The Future of Everything. "WSJ’s Bold Names brings you conversations with the leaders of the bold-named companies featured in the pages of The Wall Street Journal. Hosts Tim Higgins and Christopher Mims speak to CEOs and business leaders in interviews that challenge conventional wisdom and take you inside the decisions being made in the C-suite and beyond."
13. The Next Big Idea. "The Next Big Idea is a weekly series of in-depth interviews with the world’s leading thinkers. Join hosts Rufus Griscom and Caleb Bissinger — along with our curators, Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, Susan Cain, and Daniel Pink — for conversations that might just change the way you see the world. New episodes every Thursday."
14. The Pitch. "Where startup founders raise millions and listeners can invest. Host Josh Muccio takes listeners behind closed-doors and into the room where deals are made."
15. Distributed, with Matt Mullenweg. "Matt Mullenweg, cofounder of WordPress and CEO of Automattic, embarks on a journey to understand the future of work. Having built his own company with no offices and more than 1,300 employees in 76 countries, speaking 95 different languages, Mullenweg examines the benefits and challenges of distributed work and recruiting talented people around the globe."
16. Flash Forward. "Flash Forward is a show about possible (and not so possible) future scenarios. What would the warranty on a sex robot look like? How would diplomacy work if we couldn’t lie? Could there ever be a fecal transplant black market? (Complicated, it wouldn’t, and yes, respectively, in case you’re curious.) Hosted and produced by award winning science journalist Rose Eveleth, each episode combines audio drama and journalism to go deep on potential tomorrows, and uncovers what those futures might really be like. The future is going to be weird, so let’s get ready for it together."
17. Future Perfect. "Future Perfect explores provocative ideas with the potential to radically improve the world. We tackle big questions about the most effective ways to save lives, control new and potentially dangerous technology, and address world poverty to create a more perfect future. Good Robot is a new series about AI from Unexplainable and Future Perfect."
18. Moonshot. "Explore the world’s biggest ideas and the people making them happen. Are you ready for self-driving cars, jetpacks, 3D printed food, or a trip to Mars? Moonshot talks to the people who are at the forefront of all this rapid change to find out what the future of humanity might actually look like. Hosted by Kristofor Lawson and Andrew Moon."
19. The Moonshot Podcast. "The Moonshot Podcast chronicles the untold stories of innovation - both highs and lows - from inside Google’s Moonshot Factory. In Season 2, Captain of Moonshots Astro Teller sits down with a new crop of moonshot takers exploring the next frontiers in health, biology, computing and more. From energy kites and robotic pants, to sea fuel and digital immune systems, go behind the scenes with the inventors and creators working to turn “what if” into what’s next."
20. StartUp. "StartUp is an American podcast from Gimlet Media hosted by Alex Blumberg and Lisa Chow."
21. The Unicorn Launcher. "The Unicorn Launcher is a business podcast like no other. Follow the real, raw and unfiltered lives of two Australian tech founders pulling apart and rebuilding their small company under the guidance of Silicon Valley super-coach, Matt Mochary (Coinbase, Robinhood, Reddit and more)."
22. The Product Manager Podcast. "Successful products don’t happen in a vacuum. Hosted by Hannah Clark, Editor of The Product Manager, this show takes a 360º view of product through the perspectives of those in the inner circle, outer perimeter, and fringes of the product management process. If you manage, design, develop, or market products, expect candid and actionable insights that can guide you through every stage of the product life cycle."
23. Lenny's Podcast. "Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover concrete, actionable, and tactical advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product."

Resources

(Work in Progress)