How working with startups helps MBA students think like founders

From the climate crisis to AI and space innovation, many of today’s startups are tackling the world’s most complex global challenges.

For MBA students, working with these ventures offers an opportunity to contribute their business expertise to scientific breakthroughs.

Originally established in Toronto (Canada), the Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) is a deep-tech accelerator that connects MBA participants with early-stage, science-based ventures. At HEC Paris, one of Europe’s top-ranked MBA programs, students get to work directly with founders for at least three months throughout the program to apply their learning. Some continue for much longer.

Based just outside Paris and within easy reach of Station F, one of the world’s largest startup campuses, the HEC Paris MBA program provides access to entrepreneurs, investors, scientists, and industry mentors at the forefront of innovation.

We spoke to three recent students in the program to find out what they learned from working directly with founders and early-stage ventures.

What is it like inside CDL-Paris?

Professor Sebastian Becker (pictured right), co-site lead and moderator for CDL-Paris, sees CDL as a way of training MBAs to operate like consultants in high-pressure environments.

Often ventures are at a formative stage, founded by scientists who understand the technology but may lack business experience. Students support them on strategic and operational questions while applying and developing their own skills in the process.

The lab offers specialized streams that give students access to emerging fields such as AI, BioTech, Cancer, Climate, Defense, Next Generation Computing, and Space.

According to professor Becker, this level of immersion helps students gain a deeper understanding of founders’ challenges and develop empathy for the realities of building a business.

CDL‑Paris also exposes students to a particularly strong mentor community. Across the CDL network, mentors include two former astronauts, one of whom is a former space-station commander.

“Across all CDL streams, our students gain a front-row seat to entrepreneurial decision-making by spending more than 30 hours in small-group sessions with world-class entrepreneurs, scientists, and industry leaders and VCs, observing how they apply decades of experience and business judgment to real ventures. In the Space stream, for example, those mentors include astronauts, engineers who built the Mars rover, and pioneers behind SpaceX rockets,” says professor Becker.

In the Climate stream, mentors include a founder of two unicorn companies, while in Next-Generation Computing and AI they include a former Siemens board member, several ex-partners from McKinsey and BCG, and leading scientists from institutions such as Oxford.

The impact of that work is reflected in the students recognized each year. MBAs Idris Sadik, Mihir Vaidya, and Lindsey Martin each received a Student Leadership Award for their contributions to the Climate, AI, and Space stream, respectively.

How can a technical background lead to a climate-tech venture?

For MBA graduate Idris Sadik (pictured right), who worked on the Climate stream, CDL‑Paris became a bridge from a technical career into commercial problem-solving. Originally from South Africa, Idris joined the MBA from a background in chemical engineering and defense, having worked in Germany as an R&D process engineer.

The program gave him a testing ground to practice business development principles; the kind of experiential learning that HEC Paris and CDL-Paris afford, but that industry rarely does.

“I did not really want to stay in technical for my entire career,” says Idris, “I wanted to understand how an idea gets converted to something commercial, and the initial stages of starting a new business.”

The Creative Destruction Lab was central to his decision to choose HEC Paris. Once in the MBA program, he completed an introductory CDL phase over the summer, combining online work and interactions with professors to build a foundation in entrepreneurial concepts, frameworks, and strategies.

As a chemical engineer with green energy ambitions, Idris found the Climate stream aligned with his career goals.

The structure was intentionally demanding. CDL sessions are like a knockout round every two months, says Idris, with startups exiting if they do not meet milestones.

“At the beginning, you have about 20 startups. In each session, one to sometimes even five startups may be knocked out, and this means that the students can either choose to stay with the venture that's been knocked out as a consultant, or switch ventures.”

Idris’ first Climate venture focused on bio packaging, using renewable feedstocks to create alternative packaging solutions. When that startup left the program, he chose to switch to a venture working on a carbon-negative substitute material for cement.

Throughout the experience, his focus shifted from technical thinking to having a more commercial perspective.

“It was really good, not just in terms of getting exposure to what clients want or what customers look for in products, but then also building confidence with people in senior positions,” says Idris.

Putting that into practice through customer discovery and building a go-to-market strategy, he found that direct, in-person conversations with potential customers surfaced needs that desk research and theory alone would have missed.

As a result of his efforts, Idris also placed third globally in the inaugural CDL Global Student Entrepreneur Award, which recognizes students who delivered exceptional, verifiable value to a CDL venture.

Adding a product management lens in Spacetech

Where Idris used the MBA as a route out of technical work, Lindsey Martin (pictured) entered the program with different goals. She joined the MBA from a product and quality engineering background in San Francisco startups. She chose to take on the Space stream.

Collaborating with Asynchronics, a deep-tech startup building simulation and digital-twin tools for space missions, Lindsey supported both strategy and go-to-market efforts.

Her work included refining the investor narrative, clarifying seed-round positioning, and preparing outreach materials for potential investors.

Her biggest takeaway from the experience was learning to translate a complex technical product into a clear, compelling story that people outside the company could understand and care about. Also important was understanding the value of focus.

“I saw how important it is for a startup to stay focused on the right priorities, especially when so many opportunities and challenges compete for attention,” says Lindsey.

What can founders and mentors teach aspiring leaders?

MBA participant Mihir Vaidya joined HEC Paris after six years in finance and tech, at JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs. Mihir, who worked on the AI stream, learned a different lesson about what makes science-based ventures investable – how closely investors evaluate founders.

“One major thing I’ve learned is how much focus the investors or the mentors place on the founders, and not just on the idea or how it’s being implemented” Mihir says.

“If a founder is not good, then a startup is doomed to fail,” he adds.

Mihir’s experience, which included participation in a blockchain hackathon, helped him refine his post-MBA plans, identifying disruptive fintech opportunities he wants to pursue.

CDL‑Paris also led Idris to shift his long-term plans: “The program has given me the realization that I have entrepreneurial ambitions. It also highlighted my interest in venture capital,” he says. Today he is scouting science-based ventures for CDL-Paris's streams, which MBA students can expect to join in the upcoming 2026-2027 cohort.

For Lindsey, the broader impact of CDL‑Paris was how tangible the startup-building process became.

“What was most impactful for me was being able to contribute to a real venture in such a hands-on setting,” she says, “while learning from founders, mentors and peers.” This gave her a real understanding of the startup-building journey and a deeper appreciation for the discipline and collaboration it takes to move an idea forward.