MIT Bootcamps Podcast

AI is a fundamental, transformative technology like the microprocessor or the Internet. In the coming decades it will impact nearly all aspects of business. Unfortunately, few good resources exist for our future business leaders to learn about practical AI solutions and how to integrate them into their businesses. In this E-Seminar, Kevin Dewalt of Prolego will teach individuals how AI can generate revenue in business applications, how to identify and develop AI use cases within your business environments and how to mitigate risks on any new AI initiative. You will be able to put these new skills to immediate use at your company or startup. This is a business skills training and not a technical training. You won’t learn how to build a neural network or perform feature engineering. Instead, they will learn how to use fundamental AI concepts such as training data, machine learning, deep learning in customer conversations and proposals. You will learn how to identify emerging business opportunities for AI solutions like computer vision and natural language processing. Kevin Dewalt is the CEO and co-founder of Prolego and has 25 years of experience as a corporate innovation leader, entrepreneur, and startup investor.

The Introduction to Deep Technology E-Seminar will provide a high-level overview of emerging areas in Deep Tech including the Internet of Things, Autonomous Vehicles, Deep Learning, and Virtual reality, as well as some underlying enabling technologies. A portion of the talk will describe what participants can expect from the upcoming Deep Tech Bootcamp hosted at MIT. Josh Siegel is an Assistant Professor in Computer Science and Engineering at Michigan State University (MSU) and the lead instructor for MIT’s Internet of Things and Deep Tech Bootcamp. He received Ph.D., S.M. and S.B. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from MIT. Josh and his automotive companies have been recognized with accolades including the Lemelson-MIT Student Prize and the MassIT Government Innovation Prize. He has multiple issued patents, published in top scholarly venues, and been featured in popular media. Dr. Siegel’s ongoing research develops architectures for secure and efficient connectivity, applications for pervasive sensing to vehicle diagnostics, and new approaches to autonomous driving.

Jim Lampert responds to questions from the previous lecture about working with universities.

Jim responds to your questions regarding patent licensing.

Unless you're lucky enough to be a well-funded startup, a cash crunch during the early stages of your company is often a question of when, rather than if. And a few small errors in operation management may put you in a situation with a financial storm on the horizon. While some entrepreneurs may quit, Dr. Wasim’s story is about weathering the bankruptcy storm and coming out ahead. Techmed, India's first dedicated hospital lab company, faced bankruptcy during their startup journey and came out ahead. Today, the company has about $8 million in annual revenues, but it wouldn't still be standing if they had quit during the tough times. Dr. Wasim, co-founder of Techmed, shares the inside story of how they overcame bankruptcy and why persistence is the key to success.

If your business uses technology and IP to make money, you will likely need licenses from others who have the technology and the IP that you need. After you received those, you will likely give licenses to those you work with and often your customers. So, where to start?  Here are some of the questions Jim answers... What kinds of licenses are there? What do they usually say? What provisions do you need to look out for? When what you are doing involves both your and someone else’s technology, what is the fair way to deal with what each of you can do with that technology in the future? And finally, what are the limitations?

Jim Lampert responds to your questions about Patent Infringement.

So you want to hire a startup team, but don't know where to start. How do I begin to hire my first employees? A friend of a friend? Do I reach out blindly to my network? What if I’m not finding the right candidates? Where should I look? What happens when I disagree with my co-founder? How do we move forward? Seasoned entrepreneurs Robin Bose and Ed Hallen walk us through how to hire your startup team and how to manage the conflicts that will, undoubtedly, arise on your team. Robin and Ed have built successful careers in the startup world after graduating from MIT with MBAs from the Sloan School of Management. Robin works to build software that creates both market and social impact. Robin started his career working with big data at a technology and analytics company, mostly for customers in financial services. Later, he worked with Ashoka, a global network of social entrepreneurs in 70+ countries and most recently served as the VP of market development at Endurance International Group, a provider of cloud software that helps small and medium businesses launch and grow. He is a 2x semi-finalist of the MIT100K entrepreneurship competition and has served as a judge for the MIT 100K competition, MIT Global IDEAS competition and BUILD Boston entrepreneurship semi-finals. Ed is the founder and CEO of The Hiring Engine, a venture backed software platform that helps companies hire hourly workers. He previously co-founded and ran Klaviyo, an ecommerce email marketing platform, that he scaled to tens of millions in revenue and hundreds of employees, and where he still serves on the board. Prior to founding Klaviyo, Ed worked in private equity for Accel-KKR, in business development at Google, and was an early employee at Applied Predictive Technologies (before it was acquired by Mastercard). Ed holds an MBA from MIT Sloan, where he was a Siebel Scholar, and a BS in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia, where he was a Rodman Scholar.

After graduating from the University of Virginia with a B.S. in Systems Engineering and Economics, Ricky Sahu went to Google and worked to improve search functionality and to increase traffic for Google’s Enterprise Apps product. Afterward, he built tools to improve search engine optimization and online marketing using machine learning and programming crowds with tools like Mechanical Turk. After Google, Ricky worked at Promediacorp where he further used his skills to improve SEO and online marketing for companies like Sony, Microsoft, and Forever21. Changing his focus to healthcare analytics, Ricky was the first employee and Director of Engineering at the D.C. based health tech startup CareJourney which analyzes claims data and publishes APIs for Accountable Care Organizations to improve care and reduce costs. In 2017, Ricky co-founded 1upHealth where his company aims to bridge the gap between patient-centered data and provider needs by using patient-generated data to enable applications to improve healthcare outcomes and reduce costs. Ricky’s vast experience spans machine learning, building scalable technology, circuit design for IoT Wifi based location sensors, blockchain smart contracts, and healthcare. In short, he is a data and systems whiz. During his E-Seminar, Ricky will share his insights on how to wield data to build your best business. In his case, how he tapped into electronic health data to build the company he co-founded, 1upHealth.

The details of patent infringement are something that only a patent attorney love. But you and your company (particularly if you are start-up) need to have some basic understandings when you are trying to decide whether or not to sue come competitor, or what to do when you are charged with infringement. The goal of this session is to help you understand what acts can and cannot be “infringing,” and what effects of losing an infringement suit can have on you and your customers. Also, when can you challenge a patent in the PTO without having to go through litigation, and if your patent has problems, can you get the PTO to fix them.

When might you be able to get a patent on your invention? At the last lecture, we talked about what kinds of things are, and are, not patentable, and what is prior art. In this lecture, the questions are obviousness and what standards your patent application meet. There is no clear answer to “is this claimed invention obvious,” but there is a hundred and fifty years of history, a 1952 patent act laying out a framework, and two Supreme Court decisions telling the patent office and courts what they should consider. As for your patent application itself, what does it have to include to meet the statutory requirements that it tells a reader what your invention is and how to use it, and how precise must your claims be to strike the proper balance between a patentee’s and the public’s interest. And what is likely to happen to your claims as your application wends its way through a patent office.

How do you reduce an idea to practice with a shoestring budget? This webinar will explore the concept to product testing process through the speaker’s own experience in wireless sensing research and a healthcare startup. Nithin Kantareddy, Ph. D. candidate in Mechanical Engineering at MIT, shares his experience in developing hardware products using battery-less sensors, photovoltaics and augmented reality. Learn through his examples on how to iterate and test for real-world use cases. This 'How To' E-Seminar will explore opportunities and challenges in your product development process and encourage you to test ideas early in the process to save money and time.

Vitor is a partner at Nubank, Brazil’s largest financial technology company with over 4 million customers. He joined Nubank in 2014 and has helped build, maintain, and scale their financial products, accounting systems, and securitization strategy. Since 2016 he has lead the team that developed NuConta, Nubank’s digital checking account. Before Nubank, Vitor worked with credit, foreign exchange and trading at BTG Pactual, one of the largest independent investment banks in Latin America. Vitor graduated from Duke University in 2011 with a double major in Economics and Computer Science. During his E-Seminar, Vitor will share how Nubank is disrupting the Brazilian banking industry, a highly regulated, consolidated, and complex market. By leveraging design, data science, and software engineering, Nubank is changing the fintech landscape as we know it. In 2018, Nubank became only the third Brazilian company to become a unicorn, a privately held startup company valued over $1 billion.

When might you be able to get a patent on your invention? At the last lecture, we talked about what kinds of things are, and are, not patentable, and what is prior art. In this lecture, the questions are obviousness and what standards your patent application meet. There is no clear answer to “is this claimed invention obvious,” but there is a hundred and fifty years of history, a 1952 patent act laying out a framework, and two Supreme Court decisions telling the patent office and courts what they should consider. As for your patent application itself, what does it have to include to meet the statutory requirements that it tells a reader what your invention is and how to use it, and how precise must your claims be to strike the proper balance between a patentee’s and the public’s interest. And what is likely to happen to your claims as your application wends its way through a patent office.

Hannah Hagen is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Oncology and Cancer Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Hannah’s research focus is in Uveal melanoma, working out of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. Prior to attending the MIT-Harvard Medical School Healthcare Innovation Bootcamp last August, she was unsure of what career path to follow after graduation. During the Bootcamp, she discovered new career possibilities involving innovation, entrepreneurship, and management – as well as how to apply her existing skill set to these opportunities. In this Global Innovators E-Seminar Hannah shares her Bootcamp experience with us. She explains why she decided to attend the Healthcare Innovation Bootcamp, what she learned the most from her experience, and what she is planning to do next with the insights she learned.

James Lampert responds to your questions about how Intellectual Property can strategically advance your business goals.

James Lampert responds to your questions on what are patents and when are they worthwhile.

James Lampert answers your questions on Getting a Patent.

Learn how Kimberly Jung mastered the Art of Transition through our latest E-Seminar. Kimberly will share actionable lessons she’s learned throughout her life – from serving in the military, starting a saffron company, to transitioning to the space industry through her studies at MIT. What’s more, we’ll learn what principles guided her as she transitioned through different periods of her life, and how to apply it to entrepreneurship.

Have you created an innovation and wonder whether you should protect it by applying for patent? Do you struggle to determine whether you need to protect your innovation in the first place? And what are the different ways of protecting your innovation and the potential tradeoffs?