In 2005, I wrote a post titled ADPrentice that talked about a weekend event I did with a number of the undergraduates in my MIT fraternity (ADP). In the post I described the entrepreneurship education event I helped put on with Sameer Gandhi (Accel Partners – then at Sequoia Capital) and Mark Siegel (Menlo Ventures). It was an awesome weekend – we held an event modeled after the Apprentice TV show (without the bad hair) that had three challenges: (1) Marketing, (2) Hiring / Interview, and (3) 5-Year Plan & Budget. In between events, Mark gave a talk titled “How Does Venture Capital Work”, Sameer gave a talk titled “Business Plan 101”, and I gave a talk titled “Do You Have The Balls To Start A Company?”
A few months ago I wrote a post titled Startups at 351 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, MA detailing the rich history of startups from ADP that happened around the time I was living there. After some back and forth, a handful of folks decided to mobilize another ADPrentice event for the undergraduates living in the house. Mark, Sameer, and I have committed to participate again and we’ are trying to rope in a few of the other successful MIT ADP entrepreneurs from over the years.
In the mean time Alex Moore, the founder of Baydin (TechStars Boston 2009) who also lived at ADP (although much more recently) sent me a list of the various companies that have come out of folks that were at the ADPrentice event. Not surprisingly, it blew my mind!
- Josh Runge ’07 and Zach Clifford ’08 are working furiously on a task management/task optimization startup called Lazymeter.
- Ruben Rodrigues ’04 and Josh Ouellette ’04 are starting Loci Technologies, a voter targeting system that incorporates real-time, location-aware feedback into campaign calls.
- Patrick Hereford ’05 and Adan Gutierrez ’04 are starting Huddlehub, a fantasy sports aggregator and recommendation site that launched at SXSW and was mentioned on Jimmy Fallon’s late night show.
- Steve Chait ’08 is working on interactive flashcards and learning-based games.
- Xavi Ramirez ’07 and a coworker are starting a company part time and are still defining their first product.
- Alex Moore is am working on Baydin with a partner from Dartmouth, making email clients smarter and more useful.
These are the active companies. Two others were started that didn’t succeed, but that’s part of the entrepreneurial cycle! It’s just awesome to see the outcome of something like this – it reminds me how powerful spending time with college kids is. They are clearly the future – and we want more of them to be entrepreneurs. Congrats to all of you – you make me proud to know you.