3 Questions: A new resource to empower young entrepreneurs

The book “Disciplined Entrepreneurship” by Bill Aulet, managing director of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship and the Ethernet Inventors Professor of the Practice at the MIT Sloan School of Management, walks readers through the 24 steps of starting a venture. With more than half a million copies sold, the approach has proven remarkably effective: MIT students who use the framework in the delta v startup accelerator program have a 61 percent survival/acquisition rate and have collectively raised over $3 billion dollars.

But while the framework is taught at hundreds of colleges around the world, it is not designed for younger students who want to learn about entrepreneurship. To fill that gap, the Trust Center created a free, AI-powered youth entrepreneurship platform called Dear Dreamer, made possible through a gift from the Frank and Eileen Foundation. 

Dear Dreamer is open to all students in middle and high school. It adapts the disciplined entrepreneurship framework into a digital, self-paced learning experience featuring short educational videos, interactive exercises, and personalized feedback on the user’s idea. Aulet says the goal is to empower 50,000 young entrepreneurs by 2030.

MIT News spoke with Aulet about the mission of the project and how it came together.

Q: What was the impetus for creating Dear Dreamer?

A: We’ve had a lot of success teaching the disciplined entrepreneurship framework at MIT. Then we made it a course on the online learning platform edX, and we got hundreds of thousands of people taking the class. I used to get emails from people saying, “For the first time in my life, I see myself as an entrepreneur,” or “I see economic security.” At MIT, we often say, “MIT in the world, for the world.” At the Trust Center, we see our mission as, first, train people here at MIT, but also to create more entrepreneurs outside of MIT.