Introducing Foundry — Carnegie Mellon's First Student-Led Startup Accelerator
The Pipeline Problem
I spent my first year at CMU watching some of the smartest people I've ever met optimize for (in my opinion) boring things. Lines outside Jane Street recruiting events, cramming mental math for Optiver's 80-in-8 test, and friends pulling all-nighters on LeetCode problems for big tech interviews.
But for what outcome, for what returns?
All in all, the numbers are staggering. Just this past year, Citadel received 108,000 applications for its summer program, but accepted just 0.4% of them, according to Business Insider. Furthermore, even the path to these rooms has been standardized almost to the point of sterilization. Jane Street publishes clear tracks for trading, software engineering, and research. Hudson River Trading runs dedicated winter programs. The pipeline is so refined that students start training for these roles months and even a full year before applications open.
Overall, the takeaway that I've seen is that these companies have created perfect funnels because they understand something universities don't. Clarity wins. Students choose predictable paths not just because of money or prestige (although they certainly are factors), but in large part because they know exactly what to optimize for, when to apply, and what success looks like.
And at this point, we can't deny the fact that they're appealing, as we've grown up with them right as soon as we enter the modern education system. We take classes dictated by a standardized common core, then take AP classes and SATs to get into higher education, which, funny enough, promises that a large part of their existence is to break away from standardization and to allow you freedom. However, external pressures, whether social, family, job, etc., take much of this away anyway.
I believe there can be a different way. Breaking out of the system by taking a drive to do something, anything truly different, is something that I know brings individual fulfillment and societal gains. Instead of building companies that could hire thousands, we're feeding our best technical minds into existing corporations. To be clear, I'm not anti-corporate — those jobs are great, and do provide individual value and stability. However, when top talent default to the same path regardless of personal interest or experience, especially if they do so when that personal drive does exist, something systemically feels off.
The Infrastructure Illusion
I want to preface this first: CMU's existing entrepreneurship infrastructure is genuinely impressive and is great. The Swartz Center runs campus-wide programming, connects students to mentors, and hosts competitions like McGinnis that award real funding. Project Olympus provides a full incubator experience with 24/7 makerspace access at 4620 Henry Street, customer discovery support, and connections to experienced entrepreneurs. VentureBridge supports alum founders post-graduation with pre-seed funding and dedicated office space.
These programs work. They've launched successful companies and provide real value, and they do it well.
But there's a gap that becomes obvious when you talk to serious student builders. CMU lacks an intensive accelerator explicitly designed for enrolled students in a team format. A place where small cohorts can spend serious time in the same room, working on startups with real stakes and weekly validation from VCs who can actually write checks and provide support, and hear from founders who have been in their shoes before and know exactly how to help.
The Environmental Problem
Context shapes everything. When you're surrounded by people building products that matter, you start thinking differently about what's possible.
Identity follows environment. Put someone in a room full of people grinding for Goldman Sachs interviews, and they'll optimize for finance recruiting. Put them with founders who talk to customers and ship products weekly, and they'll start thinking like entrepreneurs. This vision is the environment and community that I want to cultivate.
Furthermore, after talking to 50+ founders, VCs, and successful student builders, the pattern became clear. Real builders require five key elements:
- Weekly density with other builders
- Regular deadlines with meaningful stakes
- Mentors who give transparent advice from first-hand experience
- Focused time blocks to do their startup and nothing else
- Clear proof paths that lead to revenue or investment
Most university programs provide some of these elements, but rarely all five. For example, hackathons give you intensity for a weekend but no sustained momentum. Semester courses on entrepreneurship provide structure, but they often lack customer obsession and can be time-consuming, focusing on business plans/other materials. Even entrepreneurship clubs focus mainly on networking and events, which, while great, distract you from the people you should be really talking to — customers.
Look at what works elsewhere. V1 at Michigan runs Product Studio, where teams go from zero to one in eight weeks, with weekly Ship-It sessions and a Startup Fair that lands actual job offers at startups. Prod bridges MIT and Harvard with a nonprofit model focused on pre-idea founders, providing clear positioning and mentorship without equity complications. Telora in Miami offers a full-intensity program with dedicated cohorts, allowing participants to focus on the fellowship without taking classes or jobs.
These programs understand something crucial: building companies requires a fundamentally different operating system than taking classes. You can't treat startup building as an extracurricular and expect transformative results — they subsidize consistent focus, and a place that embodies that is what CMU needs.
The Foundry Experiment
Foundry exists because I realized CMU needed something that didn't exist anywhere else on campus. An idea-stage incubator explicitly designed for our most dedicated entrepreneurial builders, targeting seven teams willing to spend more than 30 hours per week building and validating startup ideas.
The goal is concrete: teams should achieve steady revenue and be ready to raise funding by the end of the semester. Not someday, not after graduation, but within four months.
The structure is intentionally intensive, with a maximum of seven teams selected based on demonstrated teamwork, building experience, and genuine commitment. Thirty-plus hours weekly, with a focus on two fixed build days where everyone is in the same room, and progress is still expected when we're not together.
I'm building this with ScottyLabs because we already understand what it means to build. We run TartanHacks, Pittsburgh's largest hackathon. We also build applications like CMUCourses, CMUEats, and CMUMaps that over 10,000 CMU students use monthly, and have sponsors like Jane Street, Stripe, Scale, Perplexity, Hudson River Trading, and Bloomberg. We've seen the power of CMU students who choose to build, and there is no better place to expand that power to create real companies with lasting impact.
Addressing the Obvious Concerns
"What about classes?" This is the most common question I received when pitching this idea, and I completely understand why. I'm asking students to commit 30+ hours weekly to building startups while maintaining their academic responsibilities.
However, I've come to realize that there is no good answer to this. Building a startup is hard, and to accommodate this, students might have to defer one class for the semester, deprioritize their other involvements, or decide that Foundry isn't the right fit. The commitment bar is intentionally high to attract CMU's best, genuine builders, and put our all into them to help them succeed. Plus, we believe that the best people who want to build a startup will do so regardless of Foundry's existence — our goal is to increase that success as much as humanly possible.
"Students should focus on school first." I fundamentally agree that this is the right advice for most people. However, as I've alluded to before, for the subset of students who already possess building experience and the burning passion to make something of their own, that priority has to be deeply questioned.
The simple answer is that most questions I've received are variations around these two, and the best answer to them is what your gut tells you, and what you innately want the most. Doing so usually helps you make a decision that you won't regret in the future.
The Path Forward
The gap between exceptional talent and company creation isn't about lacking smart people or innovative ideas. CMU produces both in abundance. The missing piece is creating an environment where builders can connect, learn from experienced mentors, and focus on shipping products that customers truly want.
Foundry is my attempt to build that environment. Seven teams, semester-long commitment, real revenue targets, and actual investment conversations. Small enough to maintain quality, focused enough to drive results, and connected enough to provide lasting value through our network of VCs and successful founders.
Across history, the level of access to opportunity, talent, and the desire to turn raw, natural, and human ambition into reality has never been easier and higher than it is now. This is the best time in history for you to create a company — to turn your literal dreams into something that can exist and that the world can benefit from. My life's goal is to continuously build communities and to subsidize opportunities like this. Foundry is my way of wanting to help the CMU community and to fill this gap that has long gone unaddressed for far too long.
The infrastructure is in place. The talent is here. What we need now are the students willing to bet on themselves and to prove what focused building and raw human ambition can accomplish. Foundry is how we turn that potential into companies that matter.
Originally published on Medium