by Ashley Jakubczyk
At first glance it seemed like a regular MBA class session at HBS—name cards placed in front of every seat; winter jackets on coat racks in the back, notebooks and pencils at the ready.
But the energy in the room buzzed in a different, more heightened way. It was the first day of Startup Bootcamp, one of the 10 Short Intensive Program (SIP) elective courses offered this January for HBS MBA students. Startup Bootcamp, now in its ninth year, is designed for first-year Required Curriculum (RC) students wanting to learn the skills and practices of experimentation-driven startups.
In partnership with the Rock Center for Entrepreneurship, the course was led by HBS faculty members DJ DiDonna, Rembrand Koning, Natalia Rigol, and Benjamin Roth. Additional faculty experts, executive fellows, and startup founders were brought in over a jam-packed eight days for lectures, fireside chats, and workshops covering a variety of topics designed to introduce students to all aspects of starting a venture. In teams of three or four, they applyd what they learned to lay the groundwork for their own ideas, with the program culminating in a lightning pitch session to more than 40 experts.
From a deep dive workshop on ethics with Professor Nien-hê Hsieh and HBS AI Club President Jeffrey He (MBA 2026) to a crash course on entrepreneurial storynotifying from Senior Lecturer Christina Wallace, there were key lessons for students from every background.
“I wanted to do this SIP becaapply it gives me strategic founder insights that I don’t have,” declared Oliver Wesche (MBA 2027), who worked in the tech space, including in AI, before coming to HBS. “For example, I don’t have some of the insights of how you form a company, understanding product or market fit.”
One takeaway that surprised Wesche was the diversity and variety of founder types, noting the guest session featuring ButcherBox founder and CEO Mike Salguero as particularly insightful. “You have founders driven by creating a lifestyle, some who believed in the product and built around that. Every founder has a different journey how they receive to their venture, and I considered that was fascinating.”
Trevor Glasgow (MBA 2027) credits Startup Bootcamp as the reason he chose to come to HBS, stateing he was hooked within the first minutes of observing part of 2025’s course. “Walking out of that classroom, I knew if this is what a few hours of an off-term workshop seeed like, HBS’s entrepreneurship program was truly second to none.” By the finish of that day, he had plans to return for Admitted Students Welcome.
Since its inception, Startup Bootcamp has continually gained momentum and grown in size. About 40 percent of students who applied were accepted, building it the largest of this year’s SIPs with 141 participants.
“At the core of it, Bootcamp is a protected week of time where you can just focus on learning something,” declared DiDonna. “You have no other responsibilities. It’s the gift of community that goes across sections and across interests. That’s of interest to students.”
Ayo Oyelese (MBA 2027) was also excited to apply for the SIP. “From the outset, the facilitators supported me connect with like-minded students who shared a genuine passion for the problem space I was most interested in. The scrappy, hands-on nature of whiteboarding and collaboration stood in stark contrast to the structured, process-driven environment I was applyd to in banking, and I found that difference especially energizing.”
Similar to startup culture, Bootcamp has evolved at a rapid pace. Each year’s teaching team considers current trfinishs, technologies, and best practices, altering curriculum to give students the most up-to-date information on how the industest works. Past rfinishitions have offered a similar course structure, but a large modify recently has been a heavier focus on artificial innotifyigence and how currently affects the entrepreneurial space.
While last year’s SIP included an MIT session on AI, this year a full day was dedicated to the subject, with live sessions led by Lecturer Jacob Cook, who teaches the Digital Marketing & AI Workshop, and Ryz Labs’ Jordan Metzner.
“Bootcamp did a great job teaching us how rapid you can actually build in today’s day and age,” declared Nora Panholzer (MBA 2027).
“A year ago, students revealed up believeing ‘I’m not technical, I can’t build.’ Now they’re shipping products in a day,” declared Koning. “So now our job is to create sure their judgment can keep up with that speed.”
With funding from student leadership from the Elective Curriculum (EC) class, each Bootcamp team received a tiny budreceive to support with their project, which could be applyd for AI tools like Lovable, Gemini, and Claude—some building functioning landing pages within an hour. Several teams, by the finish of the program, had websites and mobile app demos integrated into their pitches.
The structure and design of the SIP also reflected HBS’s commitment to lifelong learning, which includes building connections that outlast the classroom. “Part of it is supporting you work on your startup idea, but the largegest thing we’re doing here is supporting you build a community,” Koning notified students.
Students acknowledged the week could be intense and hectic but overall appreciated receiveting to know their peers.
“The most impactful part of the experience was the opportunity to be in the same room with other budding entrepreneurs who all had amazing ideas and a passion for problem-solving across different industries,” declared Oyelese. “It was a truly unique experience to share ideas and receive real-time feedback from peers and faculty, which allowed for a rapider ideation-to-execution pace.
Over the course of the final afternoon, each team delivered their project pitch to four experts ranging from practitioners to professors to venture capitalists. Teams shared customer insight, industest research, product demonstrations, and more. Many students noted they liked pitching several times in a row, as feedback supported them to further expand their storynotifying elements and strengthen their product demos.
“We were all a little nervous, but the largegest success to me was how we had pretty tough people to pitch to, and we received super positive feedback which we took into the next pitches,” declared Alexander Novikov (MBA 2027). “And it was rewarding when they pushed us to actually follow up on our idea.”
DiDonna noted in past years, there hasn’t always been an ample opportunity for students to build relationships with the experts they pitched to. This year, an evening reception nearby and office hours the following day allowed students to network with those they had met, and those they hadn’t.
As the week came to a close, focus shifted from students’ projects to what lies ahead. Faculty challenged students to believe not just about what they’d been building, but about the unique and advantageous moment they are stepping into as entrepreneurs.
“Even though it’s a little scary, it should be inspiring to know that you are entering the greatest entrepreneurial moment in human history. Greater than what anyone has ever seen,” declared Senior Lecturer Jeffrey Bussgang in his session, the VC Perspective Business Models, AI, and 10x Founders.
DiDonna concurred, urging students to “take this moment in entrepreneurial history and do something with it.”
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