How MIT Revolutionized a Flagship Entrepreneurship Course With AI

How MIT Partnered With StackAI to Power Student Innovation

Overview

A storied university known for being at the cutting edge of technology, MIT was first in line to deploy a student AI assistant platform powered by StackAI to enhance its flagship entrepreneurship course, Disciplined Entrepreneurship. The platform helped students navigate all 24 steps of the course, supporting tasks like market research, pitch deck development, and business modeling. The result? Faster iteration, more student engagement, and over 500 hours saved, all built and deployed in under two weeks.

The Opportunity: Empowering Students With AI-Powered Tools

A common challenge for students in entrepreneurship courses is efficiently executing core tasks like market research, business model development, and synthesizing interview insights. In Disciplined Entrepreneurship, students must progress through 24 structured steps to take a concept from idea to prototype. This involves performing primary market research by searching the web, reading industry reports, and synthesizing information—a time-consuming and cognitively demanding process. 

Structuring pitch decks and business models is also a hurdle, especially when feedback loops are limited and turnaround time is tight. Students often accumulate large volumes of knowledge throughout the course, making it difficult to find relevant information quickly. Additionally, extracting insights from user interviews and notes requires significant manual effort.

MIT saw an opportunity to streamline the student experience by integrating AI agents directly into the course structure, helping students overcome these barriers while improving learning outcomes.

The Solution: 24 AI Assistants for 24 Steps

MIT was eager to partner with StackAI to build a customized AI assistant platform tailored to the Disciplined Entrepreneurship framework. The team created a centralized knowledge base containing course materials, entrepreneurial resources, and video content. From there, they built 24 dedicated AI assistants: one for each of the 24 steps students must complete.

These assistants were not just general-purpose chatbots. Each one was tailored to guide students through a specific deliverable, whether conducting market sizing, validating product-market fit, or writing a business plan. Using APIs, the MIT technical team deployed the assistants within their own interface, allowing students to interact with AI directly alongside the course content.

This end-to-end setup made it easier for students to stay focused, move faster, and get real-time help without needing to wait for instructor feedback.

Two Weeks to Launch. More Than 500 Hours Saved. 

The platform was operational in just 2 weeks, demonstrating StackAI’s low-lift implementation even in high-stakes academic settings. Over 250 students actively engaged with the assistants during the course. With the AI agents handling research, synthesis, and structured feedback, students saved more than 500 hours—time that was reinvested in refining ideas and deepening learning.

In total, 24 assistants were deployed, each aligned to one of the entrepreneurial steps in the curriculum. The platform now plays a critical role in how students experience innovation at MIT.

"The Stack AI platform was paramount in easily building AI assistants for our students, in a matter of weeks. We were able to transform the students' learning journey ourselves, without the need to code or become an expert in AI."

— Doug Williams, Product Lead at MIT