E14 Venture Summit celebrates the diversity of spinoff companies from the Media Lab.
Left to right: Joe Chung (Redstar), Ayah Bdeir (littleBits), Nan-Wei Gong (Figur8), Rana El Kaliouby (Affectiva), Eran Egozy (Harmonix), and John Underkoffler (Oblong) participate in a panel discussion about their entrepreneurial paths out of the Media Lab.
Photo courtesy of the MIT Media Lab.
In collaboration with the E14 Fund, on Jan. 28-29 the MIT Media Lab hosted the inaugural Media Lab Venture Summit - the first-ever celebration of the myriad spinoff companies created by the extended community of Media Lab alumni, research staff, and faculty members.
Slated to become an annual event, the summit convened on the sixth floor of Building E14, with introductory talks by Deb Roy, professor of media arts and sciences and Media Lab executive director of operations and communications, and E14 managing partners Habib Haddad and Calvin Chin. Later events included a panel discussion between entrepreneurs from the Media Lab, presentations by nearly 40 spinoff companies, a networking lunch hosted by the MIT Industrial Liaison Program, some 25 demos, and three breakout sessions focused on radical reinvention of traditional industries, digitizing product value chains, and radical sustainability for future products. On the second day of the summit, participants were invited to tour Formlabs, Tulip, and Ginkgo Bioworks - local startups with MIT roots.
