What It’s Really Like To Build A Startup At Wharton

People think Wharton is all about finance bros and Wall Street fast tracks.

But here’s the truth: Wharton is a thriving place for founders, product nerds, AI geeks, and people building seriously cool stuff. 

Whether you’re dreaming of your own startup, eyeing a role in an early-stage company, or just want to play in the innovation sandbox, Wharton hands you the keys. With their Entrepreneurship and Innovation Major, Wharton would help you develop the core skills necessary to thrive as an entrepreneur. Here’s a shoutout to a few of the top resources that we’ve brought straight from current students and recent graduates who’re living their entrepreneurial dream. 

Courses That Don’t Just Sit on a Syllabus

First off, the courses here are not just PowerPoint theory marathons. They’re real-world, build-something-or-break-something kinds of classes.

• Enabling Technologies: is where you get your hands dirty with AI, blockchain, IoT — not just buzzwords but how they actually work in business.
• AI in Our Lives: dives into how machine learning is reshaping everything from marketing to ethics. Think Black Mirror, but with frameworks.
• Operations Strategy and Scaling Operations: are founder must-haves. These classes train you to think like a COO — systems, logistics, supply chains — the stuff that actually breaks when a startup starts to grow fast.

You don’t just “learn.” You test ideas, bring them to class, debate, iterate, and sometimes totally blow them up (in a good way).

Learning by Doing (A Lot of Doing)

Wharton’s huge on experiential learning i.e. you don’t just learn theoretically but by actually doing it.

• The Venture Acceleration Lab: It’s where your baby startup idea starts breathing. You’re surrounded by peers, mentors, and actual venture partners who won’t sugarcoat their feedback on your pitch (bless them). For instance, on May 2nd 2025, they’ve hosted a Live Final at Tangen Hall where the top 8 teams pitched to a panel of alumni judges in front of a live audience and competed for prizes from a pool of more than $150,000 in cash prizes, in-kind support, and additional resources.
• Product Design classes: are hands-on, where you learn to build user-obsessed products iteratively by sketching wireframes and building prototypes to build products that solve real-world problems.
• The Choice Architecture Lab: adds a behavioral lens — you start realizing how people really make choices (spoiler: not rationally), and how to design around that.

Bottom line: If you’re someone who learns by trying, failing, and rebuilding, this is the good stuff.

Professors Who Actually Do the Work

Now let’s talk about the people teaching you. They’re not just academicians. They’re builders, operators, and advisors.

• Ethan Mollick: is that professor everyone follows on LinkedIn and Twitter. He’s obsessed with entrepreneurship, experiments constantly, and brings cutting-edge stuff into every class. He’s the author of Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI, and his research has been featured in top publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Forbes.
• Kartik Hosanagar: is the author of A Human’s Guide to Machine Intelligence: How Algorithms Are Shaping Our Lives and How We Can Stay in Control. His class often induces self-reflection in the classroom, making people rethink how we let algorithms run our lives.
• Karl Ulrich: is a startup whisperer. His background in product development, wherein he has led dozens of innovation efforts for medical devices, tools, computer peripherals, food products, web-based services, and sporting goods, makes him the guy you want in your corner when you’re stuck in a product dilemma.
• James Bidwell: brings in a global innovation edge. He’s been in corporate innovation labs, sustainability ventures, and somehow still finds time to advise student founders.

They don’t just teach — they mentor, connect, and challenge you to actually build things that matter.

Go Global or Go Home (Just Kidding, But Go Global Anyway)

Want to understand how startups scale across borders? Wharton makes you go out and experience it.

• The Global Modular Courses (GMCs): are super intense, 1-2 week immersions in places like Vietnam, Thailand, Israel, focused on tech, innovation, or sustainability.
• The topics are fire: things like Disruptive Innovation in Southeast Asia or Blockchain in Emerging Markets.
• You get to work directly with founders, VC firms, or public sector innovators in the regions where your goals lie, which means you’re not just learning about international markets you plan to build in, you’re in them.

It’s basically the coolest business vacation where you not only build memories you’ll cherish forever but also learn new skills and develop a stronger network within a region of your choice. 

Startup Support (Beyond What You Can Fathom)

Wharton really walks the talk!

• The Venture Initiation Program (VIP): is like your startup launchpad. You get co-working space, legal support, office hours with founders-in-residence, and early funding opportunities.
• Want feedback on your pitch? They’ve got it. Need help finding a CTO? Someone knows someone.
• The Entrepreneur-in-Residence program pairs you with founders who’ve built, scaled, exited, or failed gloriously — and they tell you what they wish they’d known at your stage.

Plus, the Startup Job Board and Tech Tuesdays are goldmines if you’re not ready to found (yet!) but want to join a rocketship-in-progress.

PS: We’re All in on AI

In 2025, Wharton’s rolling out a brand-new AI major, and it’s not surface-level stuff.

• You’ll take technical classes like Foundations of Deep Learning, but also dive into ethics, social impact, and what AI means for the future of business.
• Electives span everything from Data Mining for Business Intelligence to AI and Neuroscience.
• It’s built to prep you not just to use AI tools, but to lead with them—responsibly and creatively.

It’s the kind of program that makes you realize: Oh yeah, the future is already here.

Final Thoughts: If You Want to Build, This Is the Place

Wharton’s not just a place for business theory or brand-name chasing. It’s where ambitious, curious, slightly-crazy-in-a-good-way people come together to build cool stuff, whether that’s a marketplace, a fintech app, a deeptech AI startup, or a climate tech solution.

The best part? You’re doing it with a squad of people who get it — professors, peers, alumni, advisors, all cheering (and challenging) you every step of the way. So if you’re thinking of founding, joining, or just flirting with the idea of building something bold, Wharton gives you the playground and the playbook.