Ken Zolot
General Partner
Ken Zolot teaches innovation and entrepreneurship at MIT, including "The Founder's Journey" for aspiring entrepreneurs. In collaboration with Berklee College of Music and Harvard University, Ken teaches "Designing Virtual Worlds”. At MIT's Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation, Ken created the Innovation Teams ("I-teams") program, where multidisciplinary teams of students collaborate with lab directors, evaluating go-to-market strategies for breakthrough discoveries.
In 2009, Ken was named a Senior Fellow at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, to advise the Foundation on its new initiative "Kauffman Labs for Enterprise Creation". Ken's teaching and mentoring have guided numerous MIT-spawned companies. Ken has held full-time founding roles in several startups, including Rethink Robotics, which Ken co-founded in 2008 with Rod Brooks, former Chief Technology Officer of iRobot and Director of MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. In 2000, Ken co-founded Egenera, Inc., along with Goldman Sachs' Chief Technology Officer. Egenera was named to Red Herring's list of "100 companies most likely to change the world". Ken's previous startup, Geer Zolot Associates, was a spinoff from MIT Project Athena. Geer Zolot developed network security software for electronic trading and commerce and contributed to the early internet security architecture for much of the financial services industry. Zolot's first start-up was Spectra Communications, specializing in satellite telecommunications.
Ken is an active advisor to numerous organizations advancing innovation and entrepreneurship, including The Argosy Foundation, TechStars, The Deshpande Foundation, and MassChallenge. Ken served on the founding team of MIT's collaboration with Singapore University of Technology and Design, and on the founding team of the MIT Portugal Program, launching Portugal's BioEngineering Innovation program.
Mr. Zolot holds a Master of Science degree from MIT in Management of Technology. His undergraduate work was at Syracuse University, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy.
