MIT Alum’s High School Entrepreneurship Program Builds Real Companies, Not Mockups

'LaunchX,' an entrepreneurship program founded by an MIT alum, enables high school students to experience genuine business by establishing and operating actual companies rather than through mock training.

Stach revealed that she has harbored ambitions to solve the world's problems since her teens. Upon entering MIT, she realized she was not the only peer driven by such aspirations, and she identified the root cause in education. "Adults look at youth who excel in math and science and say, 'They will do great things someday.' But traditional education fails to actually prepare them for that," Stach said in her MIT Technology Review profile. Stach’s diagnosis was that talented students are trapped by deferred promises, failing to learn the act of immediate execution. LaunchX stepped into the void left by a structure that merely classifies talent as a future asset without offering opportunities.

In the intensive four-week summer program, participants form teams, narrow down the problem they wish to solve, and build their own products or services to release to the market. Some teams even secure pre-orders or generate revenue before the course concludes. Pre-orders, which represent a customer's commitment to pay, serve as a signal of market validation.

LaunchX, which held its first summer session with 30 students on the MIT campus in 2013, has expanded its reach through both in-person and online formats to teach approximately 500 students annually. Stach described the program's growth as "snowballing."

The background of the operator also aligns with the program's model. Raised in Texas and the Carolinas, Stach majored in mechanical engineering at MIT before receiving an MBA from Harvard Business School in 2011. She designed the program after combining the engineering discipline of building things with the business acumen for selling them.