Startups

A list of startups with founders who spent time in the EDS.

Startups with a human connection to the EDS

The Engineering Design Studio is not a startup incubator, accelerator, venture studio, or investor, but there is a legacy of future entrepreneurs and founding engineers spending a vast amount of their undergraduate time at NYUAD in the EDS. Some worked on their startups as students, and some even ran their startups in parallel to their studies. Most, however, started or joined founding teams after graduation.

Note: The EDS, in no way, claims affiliation with or credit for these startups. Students listed below have gone on to do excellent things and, coincidentally, spent time co-conspiring with us in their undergraduate years.

imagiLabs. Beatrice and Dora graduated in 2016, and went on to found imagiLabs after completing their masters programs in 2018. imagiLabs is an educational hardware and software platform that works to build pathways for the broadest spectrum of human participation in the technology ecosystem. imagiLabs has been an outpost for many NYUAD interns and graduates over the years. Interestingly, Dora is now part of a tech power-couple, as her partner, Anton, is a co-founder at Lovable.

Mission Mule. Martin, Zane, and Dani Carelli graduated in 2017 and 2018, and went on to build Mission Mule to serve wildlife conservation needs using autonomous aerial vehicles. Martin and Zane later co-founded Picogrid. Dani moved to SpaceX.

Picogrid. Martin, Zane, and Dan Chirita founded Picogrid in 2020 as they identified ways of delivering on complex remote sensing needs across multiple industries. Check out what Picogrid is up to now.

Coval. Brooke graduated in 2018, spent time at Google and Waymo, and went on to found Coval in 2024. Coval was part of the Y-Combinator Summer 2024 batch.

Borderless. Veronica and Shunsuke graduated in 2019. Veronica worked with imagiLabs for a couple years after graduation, and Shunsuke worked at WHILL, a personal mobility company, until they founded Borderless in 2022. Borderless helps connect students with international university opportunities. Check out Borderless.

Physical Intelligence. Quan graduated in 2017, earned his PhD from UCSD in 2022, and went on to co-found Physical Intelligence. Quan spent much of his time at NYUAD in the EDS, specifically working on the RoadWatch project that won the 2016 Dubai m-gov service award.

hexafarms. David graduated in 2019 and went on to officially launch hexafarms in Berlin in 2022. He worked on early versions of hexafarms while he was a student at NYUAD. Check out hexafarms.

Aiden.ai. Ling graduated in 2016 and Emil graduated in 2019. Both joined Aiden.ai as early software engineers, and in 2019, Twitter acquired Aiden.ai. Both Ling and Emil stayed with Twitter for a while after the acquisition. Emil went on to work with Picogrid.

Citadel AI. Kenny graduated from NYU Shanghai in 2017 but spent a significant amount of time with us in Abu Dhabi, specifically working on the RoadWatch project that won the 2016 Dubai m-gov service award. He worked at Google in San Francisco for a few years after graduation and founded Citadel in 2020. Check out Citadel AI.

Dismantly. Taza graduated in 2023. He started Dismantly to "Redefine the Auto Recycling Industry through software" and ran it from a desk in the EDS for many of his undergraduate years. Check out Dismantly.

Auren Bikes. Will graduated in 2018 and went on to found Auren Bikes that produces "Bespoke Titanium bikes. Made to order based on your physical geometry, riding personality and budget". Check out Auren Bikes.

Biggerlab. Rock graduated in 2015 and went on to found Biggerlab with the initial mission to create a space in Shanghai where exceptional project work could happen. He's evolved it into a youth programming education institution that combines technology and academics. Check out Biggerlab.

Metorial. Wen graduated in 2025 and was accepted to the Y-Combinator Fall 2025 batch. Wen started Metorial as a student with Tobias, a friend from Austria, and worked on it, completely independently, while casually camped out in the EDS. Check out what Metorial is doing with MCP.

Diode. Nasheed graduated in 2025 and went on to join the Diode (Y-Combinator Summer 2024) founders, Davide and Lenny (non-NYUAD), as one of their founding engineers. Check out what Diode is doing for the future of PCB design.

KOPAA. Raitis gratuated in 2019 and went on to earn his masters from TU Delft in 2023, later founding KOPAA in 2025. He was part of the 2018 NYUAD Solar Decathlon team. Check out the computational and parametric design tools that KOPAA is creating.

Startups with more sparse connections to the EDS

In addition to the startups listed above that have a relatively direct connection to individuals who worked in the Engineering Design Studio, there are a few others with less direct connections to the EDS.

Blacksmith Coffee. Stephen graduated in 2014 and immediately jumped into creating Blacksmith Coffee, grown out of a Student Interest Group. He and his co-founder, Rafael, used Matt's old office (C1-036) in the Experimental Research Building as their homebase and launched with the support of the team that would eventually become StartAD. The EDS's only claim to fame in the Blacksmith startup journey is that Stephen pulled his first shot of espresso on the Rancilio Silvia machine (still alive, as of 2025) in the EDS. Sadly, Blacksmith now mostly serves as a cautionary tale of how students founder can be pushed out of their own companies when they rush to take external money without having term sheets reviewed by competent, independent, legal counsel. Blacksmith remains a vibrant brand; though, Stephen and Rafael no longer have any financial or operational stakes in it.

Lumi Labs (Later Sunshine). Will graduated in 2019 and earned his PhD from Georgia Tech (though, spent most of his PhD at Stanford) in 2025. Will was one of the early engineers at Lumi Labs, founded my Marissa Mayer. The company changed names from Lumi Labs to Sunshine in 2020 and eventually wrapped up operations in 2024.

Renovate Robotics. Dylan spent time in the EDS while studying abroad at NYUAD. He's done a number of interesting things post-graduation, including starting Renovate Robotics to automate roofing.

Why future founders have spent / spend time in the EDS

As stated above, the EDS is not an official source of advice or education for future founders, so speculation on the existence of a causal relationship should be met with extreme skepticism; we actively refute any claims that the EDS (or any other lab, office, or Student Interest Group at NYUAD) creates founders. However, the lab has been carefully crafted to foster a kind of thinking that often naturally aligns with being a founder. The room is a "high agency" environment, and that is the best prototype we've found to nourish an entrepreneurial spirit. A space like the EDS is a natural attractor for individuals predisposed to thriving in environments where the expectation is to undertake challenging, open-ended problems where risk of failure is, decidedly, non-zero.

Additionally, Matt, the director of the EDS, has served on the selection committee for the in5 Tech incubator in Dubai since 2016. In this role, he has reviewed literally thousands of startup pitches (250+ per year) from founders seeking support to grow their startups in Dubai. This amounts to an implicit promise that if you come to the EDS for a conversation about startups, it will never be boring. in5 Tech is part of the in5 ecosystem (Tech, Media, Design, and Science) and operates under Dubai Holding.

General Advice

1. You probably don't need money right now.
2. You need to more authentically understand what you're working on.
3. Your idea needs to survive brutal critique; customers, competitors, and investors don't have to be nice.
4. Wanting to be rich isn't a good enough reason to start a company.
5. You need a good co-founder.
6. You need a good lawyer.
7. You should cultivate co-conspiratorial mentor relationships, up and down, in which frankness and honesty are front and center.
8. Ensure agreements and contracts are written as if you hate the other party. They will only be enforced in a situation in which civil discourse has broken down, so you better be in a solid legal position when things go sour.
9. You probably don't need to drop out.
10. Go work for a startup instead of searching for a corporate summer internship.
11. You might not need to go to an incubator or accelerator.
12. If you go to an incubator or accelerator, only go to a top-tier, famous one. Their fame, reputation, and professional network is what will help you most.
13. Letters of Intent mean nothing.
14. Don't build your product rigidly to only serve your first customer's hyper-specific needs. That's consulting.
15. You probably need to pivot, not because that's what everyone does, but because your idea hasn't been tested by fire.
16. You probably don't need to do a bunch of entrepreneurship courses.
17. Your hackathon idea is exceedingly unlikely to directly translate into a successful company.
18. Your research project is exceedingly unlikely to directly translate into a successful company.
19. Your capstone is exceedingly unlikely to directly translate into a successful company.
20. Your mentor's academic research is exceedingly unlikely to directly translate into a successful company.
21. Government structures of thought and policies do not mirror what fuels entrepreneurship.
22. University structures of thought and policies do not mirror what fuels entrepreneurship.
23. Learn how to take reasonable and large risks.
24. "Sure things" are likely just copy pasta.
25. Sometimes, in fact quite often, boring-sounding, non-consumer-facing ideas are the most successful.
26. Don't be a "Wantrapreneur", an individual who only seeks the glory of a CV wherein every job title is CEO or founder, regardless of the underlying business.
27. Beware of copy pasta. Work on things that offer at least a semblance of novelty.
28. Annoyance plays are just that, annoying. Starting an Uber clone with the hopes that Uber will, one day, be forced to acquire you, is just tacky. Leave that kind of brain-dead nonsense to the brain-dead.
29. You can't make it cheaper.
30. You can't compete on price, alone.
31. The world isn't fair; don't demand that it is.
32. Being an outsider can help you, but often only at the beginning.
33. Being an insider can hurt you at the beginning. You're likely partially-lobotomized and blinded by legacy thinking.
34. Get good at working under shifting constraints.
35. A problem isn't solved better just because it's solved using something you like or are good at.
36. Don't compete with a switch. Ideas are weak if they compete with a feature flag or "switch" that can be easily flipped in existing products from established players.
37. A competitive advantage is only advantageous if it's conceptually or legally hard to copy.
38. You can't make a better iPhone. This kind of thinking is tempting, but it's not the scale of undertaking a first-time founder should entertain unless under extremely unlikely and favorable extenuating circumstances (aka never).
39. Don't request an NDA prior to discussing your idea.
40. Know why people say "ideas are cheap"