Founded by Dr. Song Li, PhD ’92, CTech gives technical Columbia MBA and graduate Engineering students the tools to become world-class entrepreneurs by providing them with curriculum, mentorship, and networking opportunities, guiding the launch and growth of Columbia-founded and venture-scale technology startups.

CTech is a selective, cross-disciplinary program open to Engineering graduate students and rising second-year MBA students with technical backgrounds who are dedicated to launching and growing a venture-scale technology startup while at Columbia.

CTech represents a university-wide collaboration between the Business School’s Lang Entrepreneurship Center, the Engineering School’s IEOR Department, and Columbia Entrepreneurship.

Prerequisites for Application

• MBA student candidates: 
  • Rising second-year CBS students
  • Currently enrolled in or have completed Foundations of Entrepreneurship (CTech 101) prior to applying, or have received an exemption from this course
  • STEM undergraduate degree or relevant work experience in a technology role
• Engineering graduate student candidates: 
  • Rolling admissions
  • Preferably in first semester of Masters program, however students in their second or third term are nonetheless encouraged to apply. Requirements for entrepreneurship coursework and/or independent study will be determined on a case-by-case basis.

CTech Program Components

For MBA Students: 

• Enrollment in (CTech 201) Launch Your Startup (3 credits).
• Must be accepted to and subsequently complete the (CTech 301) Greenhouse Accelerator program.
  • NOTE: CTech students are not guaranteed acceptance into Greenhouse and must go through the application and pitch process with all other candidates.
• Attendance of the Dr. Li Distinguished Technology Entrepreneurship Speaker Series.
• VC coursework or VC-related experience. This requirement could be satisfied by one or more of the following: 
  • Enrollment in Foundations of VC and/or VC Seminar 
  • A qualifying VC Workshop
  • Acceptance and participation in the Columbia Venture Fellows program (administered by the Lang Center)

For Engineering Graduate Students (details decided on a case by case basis, but generally):

• Enrollment in CTech 201 (optional) - recommended courses: 
  • IEOR E4578 Startup Fundamentals – Build and Launch with Prof. Owen Davis, 3 credits
  • Computer Science W4995 Section 021 Building a Successful Startup with Prof. Agarwal, 3 credits
  • Computer Science WCOMS4460-1 Principles of Innovation & Entrepreneurship" with Prof Reinisch, 3 credits
• Must be accepted to and subsequently complete of the (CTech 301) Greenhouse Accelerator program.
  • NOTE: CTech students are not guaranteed acceptance into Greenhouse and must go through the application and pitch process with all other candidates.
• Attendance of the Dr. Song Li Distinguished Technology Entrepreneurship Speaker Series.
• VC coursework or VC-related experience. This requirement could be satisfied by one or more of the following: 
  • Enrollment in Foundations of VC and/or VC Seminar 
  • A qualifying VC Workshop

Note: If there is more than one student in the same startup who qualifies for CTech and wants to apply (e.g. each team member is either a rising second-year MBA with a technical background or an Engineering Masters student), team members should apply separately.

Questions? Please reach out to Lara Hejtmanek at [email protected] and Dave Lerner at [email protected]columbia.edu.

CTech Team Leaders

Angela Lee
Faculty Director, Lang Entrepreneurship Center

Angela's Bio

Angela Lee is a Professor of Practice and the Chief Innovation Officer at Columbia Business School. She teaches Venture Capital (Foundations of VC, VC Seminar) and Leadership (The Leader’s Voice) courses. She brings 20 years of innovation, strategy and entrepreneurship experience to the classroom. She started her career in product management and then moved into strategy consulting at McKinsey. Angela is passionate about entrepreneurship and has started several companies in the education sector. She is a startup investor and the founder of 37 Angels, an investing network that has evaluated 15000 startups, invested in 60, and activates new investors through a startup investment bootcamp.

Angela has spoken at the White House and NASA and is a sought-after expert on CNBC, Bloomberg TV, MSNBC, and Fox Business. She was recognized by Inc. as one of 17 Inspiring Women to Watch in 2017, by Entrepreneur Magazine as one of 6 Innovative Women to Watch in 2015, and by Craine’s as a Notable Women in Tech in 2019. Angela received her BA from the University of California, Berkeley and her MBA from Columbia Business School. ”

Dave Lerner
Director of Entrepreneurship at Columbia University

Dave's Bio

Dave was appointed Director of Entrepreneurship at Columbia University in 2013. In his years with Columbia Entrepreneurship he’s helped launch the Columbia Startup Lab, the Columbia Design Studio, Startup Law Studio, CTech and a host of new tech programs and curricula throughout the university’s many schools. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship at Columbia Business School where he teaches the Greenhouse Accelerator Program, the Launch Your Startup class and at Columbia Engineering where he teaches the Entrepreneurship Bootcamps to incoming Masters students.

By background he’s an entrepreneur (2 exits) and angel investor in 100+ companies. His personal blog, www.davelerner.com/blog, explores the worlds of university entrepreneurship, angel/venture investing, and startups and he’s a frequent contributor to many other publications, including Business Insider, whose SAI group recently named him both one of the “top 100 most influential New Yorkers in the digital business community” and “one of NYC’s top 100 early stage investors.”

Lara Hejtmanek
Director, Lang Entrepreneurship Center 

Lara's Bio

Lara is Senior Associate Director in charge of on-campus events, programming, and curriculum for the Eugene Lang Entrepreneurship Center. Lara has experience as an angel investor, focusing on early stage social enterprise companies.

Prior to joining the Lang Center, she worked at several early stage companies in strategy and planning roles, and has over 20 years of experience in digital marketing. Most recently she founded and led the Insights & Planning practice for 360i – named the #1 digital agency in the country by AdAge for four years in a row – serving major brands for clients in CPG, travel and retail. There she led her team in bringing together consumer insights with emerging technologies to identify high impact opportunities for clients, spanning social media, mobile, search, paid media, and overall brand strategy. Lara holds a BA in Art History from Vassar College and an MBA from Columbia University.

Yvette Miller
Director of Marketing and Communications at Columbia Entrepreneurship

Yvette's Bio

In her role as CE’s Director of Marketing and Communications, Yvette gets the word out about Columbia’s culture of innovation, dynamic entrepreneurship initiatives, and its world-class entrepreneurs.

Yvette has 13+ years of experience in the public, private, and education sectors. She started her career leading communications at an early-stage startup, and has built outreach strategies from the ground up a few times since. She has prepared senior staff at startups and major companies for media interviews, congressional testimony, and events, and garnered coverage in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, USA Today, Reuters, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, CNET, and more.

CTech Mentors 

Greg Marsh
Founder & CEO at KeyMe

Keith Gonzales
Director of Product of Artificial Intelligence at Dataminr

Agapitos Diakogiannis
Founder & CEO at Seafair 

Saron Yitbarek
Founder & CEO at Disco

Sameer Maskey
Founder & CEO of Fusemachines Inc

Apoorv Agarwal
Founder & CEO of Text IQ

Meet the 2022-2023 Cohort 

Andrew Rust ’23SEAS
Co-Founder & CEO of  ByteSize Learning

Andrew's Bio

Andrew is the founder of ByteSize Learning, an online education platform for children, extending educational experiences in programming and tech skills to the next generation through a variety of offerings by topic and modality.

Armin Yazdani ’23BUS
Co-founder of Treata

Armin's Bio

Treata is a health-tech startup, which helps biopharmaceuticals with their clinical trials and research by gleaning deep level insights from the patient chart records (EHR and genomics) via a high throughput AI analytical platform. Armin also holds a PhD in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Washington.

Cooper Shifrin, ’23SEAS
Founder of Airflow Seating System Technologies

Cooper's Bio

Cooper is the founder of Airflow Seating System Technologies, which aims to develop a medical mattress that uses sensor inputs to automatically redistribute pressure, removing the need for caretakers to reposition patients with limited mobility. Cooper received his Bachelor's in Biomedical Engineering from Boston University in 2022.

David Chu ’23BUS
Co-Founder of Kaly

David's Bio

David is the co-founder of Kaly, a healthcare technology platform that helps patients find the right doctor through intelligent matching. Davis received his MD from Thomas Jefferson University and completed his residency in Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation at Downstate Health Sciences University.

Demetra Mallios ’22BUS
Founder of Puberry

Demetra's Bio

Demetra is the founder of Puberry, an integrated EdTech app and period kit solution designed to tackle period shame at its source. Demetra received her Bachelor's from University of Pittsburgh in 2017 and has lived and worked in several countries, including the Netherlands, Germany, Greece, and Spain.

Paige Finkelstein, ’23BUS
Founder of ERInfo

Paige's Bio

ERInfo is a software company dedicated to saving lives and empowering first responders and medical professionals by providing patented, anywhere, anytime patient recognition and emergency notification using facial recognition. In addition to being an MBA student, Paige is an MIT engineering graduate, UMMSM MD and MPH graduate.

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Sandro Luna ’23BUS
Founder of Maiv Health

Sandro's Bio

Sandro is the founder of Maiv Health and a MD/MBA candidate and Columbia Fellow at Columbia University. Maiv Health is creating software technology to determine vital signs and standard blood panel biomarkers from mobile device video recordings.

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Srinivas Gunturu ’23BUS
Co-Founder of Freeda Print

Srinivas's Bio

Srinivas is the co-founder of Freeda Print, a B2B marketplace for sustainable packaging that connects package buyers, global suppliers, designers and green packaging certifiers. Additionally, he is a Director of Engineering at Bloomberg. In addition to his MBA, Srinivas holds a Master's in Computer Science from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India.

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Meet the 2021-2022 Cohort

Meet the 2020-2021 Cohort

Meet the 2019-2020 Cohort