Launch Studio

Our Mission

Launch Studio was founded with the goal of helping middle and high school students gain practical business skills through creating and selling their own products.

There is a fundamental disconnect between the education students are receiving and the skills they need to be successful. Students are not being taught vital skills, such as problem-solving and creative thinking, that are increasingly valued by employers. They leave school dissatisfied and unaware of the connections between what they are learning and the real world.

Launch Studio's mission is to give Title I schools the resources and support to provide students with a fundamentally different educational experience, where they are empowered to be creative and to take ownership over their learning. We want students to walk away from our program with new technical skills and a confidence that they have all the resources they need to make opportunities for themselves.

Digital Design and Fabrication

Students greatly improve their computer literacy while getting comfortable designing, prototyping, and iterating on various projects

Actions Rooted in Real World Results

Students are motivated to learn new skills when they can see tangible benefits to the work they are doing, and we set them up for these experiences

Education is a Team Effort

We shape our curriculum with direct feedback from students and educators, and it is designed to scale to reach hundreds of learning communities

Our Program

We use entrepreneurship as a way to engage a broader range of students than traditional STEM programs. We seek to especially empower students who are struggling with traditional schooling or coming from a low-income background. Entrepreneurship gives these students the ability to create value independent of a system that may be biased or broken. Through Launch Studio, students from all backgrounds gain the entrepreneurial skills necessary to start and run their own profitable businesses and the critical thinking skills that will benefit them in all aspects of life.

Our program fosters an experiential learning environment by forcing students to leave their comfort zone and take risks. Their learnings and the projects they work on relate directly to the real world as they enter the community and sell their products to strangers, partner with local businesses, and solicit feedback from potential customers. Young entrepreneurs work on the three tenets of our program -- making, design, and entrepreneurship -- to build their businesses. They walk away with a small business they can continue to work on, not to mention the confidence that they can create opportunities for themselves. You can find an overview of our program here.

What do students actually do?

Making

Design

Entrepreneurship

Our Team

Our team was initially inspired by our experiences at the Olin College of Engineering, where we saw first-hand the benefit of hands-on learning and the impact of acquiring skills that are immediately useful. We are united in our goal of bringing the best elements of our education to the K-12 space.

Ariana Chae

Operations and Finance

Ari, an engineer-turned-designer, thrives at the intersection of education and technology, from improving public education with emerging technologies to questioning the climate of engineering education. Previously, Ari worked at edtech startups like CueThink and School Shaped. Now, she is excited to challenge middle and high school students to run their own businesses.

Shane Skikne

Tech and Program

Shane has always looked to create value, from charging peers to watch him play Gameboy in elementary school, to making and selling unique hand-made chocolates in college. As he shaped his entrepreneurial sense by working at startups like HelpAround and Facebook, Shane became an educator, designing introductory robotics programs for kids at Boston's Museum of Science. Now, he combines these two interests to get students to be entrepreneurs.

Doyung Lee

Brand and Marketing

Doyung enjoys art, design, and video, but loves education the most. He has taught after-school STEM for 4 years, helped start an engineering university in São Paulo, and built a webapp that allows teachers to measure student motivation on a weekly basis. Now he’s excited to transform the classroom to best teach entrepreneurship, making, and creative thinking.