Sean Ammirati

Director, Corporate Startup Lab at Carnegie Mellon

This week we feature an interview first launched on Startup Competitors, a partner of The Innovation Series. Mike Kelly talks with Sean Ammirati, a VC, distinguished service professor of entrepreneurship, and director of the Corporate Startup Lab at Carnegie Mellon University.

Sean shares a bit of his history as an entrepreneur and the path that he took to get to where he is today. He also spends some time diving into the similarities and differences between traditional startups and corporate startups, the strengths, and weaknesses of each, and even some of the regulatory aspects of corporate startups.

SHOW NOTES:

• The trend in recent years of large companies rediscovering their entrepreneurial roots
• The importance of early customer feedback for both traditional and corporate startups
• Traditional entrepreneurs don’t have to think about how their vision fits into a larger organization’s strategy
• For corporate startups, one single “no” could be much more devastating
• The feedback problem with corporate startups
• The customer knows the problem. The entrepreneur comes up with the solution.
• Collaborating as a corporate startup with competitors
• The tools and techniques that work for both corporate and traditional startups