michael's update #9
Discover more from michael raspuzzi's updates
hello!
here's a seasonal update with three things:
startup life: 2 week summer program done and onto larger product build
building community: ai hardware hack
miscellany: featured blog writing in education
my goal is to share important updates from the last few months. i like a menu format so if you’re curious for more, then i linked other things to explore for each.
enjoy,
michael
🌊
1. startup life: 2 week summer program done and onto larger product build
we designed and launched a new climate tech program in a month to test a new model for collge aged students.
we ran a ten day program to go 0 to 1 in different areas of climate tech exploring net zero materials, advancements in fusion, applications in synbio, and more.
overall, it worked better than expected: great experience (4.6/5) and solid progress in two weeks with no background experience.
here’s what students had to say:
“awesome!” eric schmidt funded global rise scholar
“amazing experience.” stanford undergrad
“i feel like i've learned more in this week than i have all summer.” cs student at waterloo
what i personally liked: earlier stage support exploring what 10x education looks like. up next, we’ll keep focusing on this stage for 18-25 year olds to see what we can build out
what that means for what’s next: we’re exploring how to double down on a better winter program with more students as well as test some ai coaching
check out all student projects and more full debrief in the write up below.
if you know a college aged student who may enjoy a winter explore program, they can request an invite here.
and if you want to check out individual student reflections on their individual experience, then check out these pieces:
2. building community: ai hardware hack
the spring hack was so good, we had to run another one. this time with robots and the theme of ai in motion.
we had the spot dog, ur arms, roombas and more with 45 hackers across open ai, tesla, deep mind, + cal in the machine learning space and founders in the hardware space to ship in 24 hours. judges had backgrounds from google x, angel investing, and stanford.
it truly felt like tasting the future. teams of 3-6 shipped more in a weekend than teams 5x bigger with more time.
highlights included:
smart nursing companion for aging in place population. imagine being able to call, discuss, and get support from a medical cabinet
roomba + camera + gaussian splat = 3d mapping of rooms in ~30 images
robotic dog as seeing eye dog for the visually impaired
other higlights in community building include hosting:
biotech x hardware demo for sf hardware meetup with lab automation startup and pathogen detector for crops
dog brain computer interfaces, an interesting talk on the future of interspecies communication
collaborative events with onshape’s ceo and kickstarter’s after party in tech crunch disrupt
3. miscellany: featured blog writing in education
this summer, i focused on getting thoughts to publish with weekly writings in education.
some were ama style reflecting from coaching calls like:
other were personally more reflective, like starting a new decade:
and some strategically playful in education, like this one:
bonus: i also helped cole paint his first tree mural. 20ft tree in 2 days. it was fun to include an art project, especially one that’s used as a backdrop for all of studio 45 events.
🌊 forward onwards,
michael
ps. if you made it this far, you know what's up: recipe inspiration for the season. this walnut, pecorino, mint pasta was a fun one.