--- title: Beyond the pitch: The founder’s journey | daily.dev description: MIT's Mechanical Engineering department launched a course called Founder's Journey: Launching and Scaling Hardware Startups, featuring alumni founders sharing... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/beyond-the-pitch-the-founder-s-journey-j94r63ffi twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Beyond the pitch: The founder’s journey | daily.dev og:description: MIT's Mechanical Engineering department launched a course called Founder's Journey: Launching and Scaling Hardware Startups, featuring alumni founders sharing... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/beyond-the-pitch-the-founder-s-journey-j94r63ffi og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/J94R63FFI.png og:image:alt: Beyond the pitch: The founder’s journey og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Beyond the pitch: The founder’s journey **[MIT News](https://daily.dev/sources/mit)** · 8 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary MIT's Mechanical Engineering department launched a course called Founder's Journey: Launching and Scaling Hardware Startups, featuring alumni founders sharing real experiences building hardware companies. Guest speakers included Colin Angle (iRobot), Elise Strobach (AeroShield), Max Lobovsky (Formlabs), and Jon Hirschtick (SolidWorks/Onshape). Each shared lessons on fundraising, team building, and navigating uncertainty — from Lobovsky's accidental pitch to Mitch Kapor at a restaurant that launched Formlabs' first funding round, to Strobach's aerogel breakthrough from her PhD research. The course aims to demystify entrepreneurship and inspire MIT students to pursue hardware ventures. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. 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