Many aspiring entrepreneurs start on their path of building a business with a dream to change the world and make it a better place than they found it. But to a student just beginning to think of running their own business, it can be difficult to know where to start. In recognition of that fact, CREATE-X has launched a new series called “Deep Startups: A CREATE-X ideas series”. The goal of the series is to inspire students to think bigger when it comes to the problems their startups will solve.

"We encourage students to tackle highly impactful problems. The impact could be in terms of the size of the population the startup would serve, the size of the market it would cater to, the intensity of the pain it would relieve, and the lasting value it would create," said Raghupathy Sivakumar, director of CREATE-X. He feels that with the level of expertise that Georgia Tech students gain in diverse technologies, they shouldn’t be afraid of using their knowledge to build startups to tackle the bigger challenges facing the world today.

“We use the phrase "deep startup" to mean a startup that is focused on a technically difficult and challenging problem.  Many startups nowadays seem to be focused on seemingly superficial problems.  Our goal is to help our entrepreneurs think about larger and deeper problems that they can solve,” said Sanjay Parekh, Associate Director of CREATE-X. He believes that not only are deep startups more interesting and engaging to aspiring entrepreneurs than companies with more conventional everyday products, but they are also more viable over the long term. By design, deep startups are not as easily supplanted by other startups with a different twist on the same idea.

“People should be interested in building deep startups because they are seeking to make a lasting change in the world.  They aren't looking for simple solutions to unimportant problems.  The Deep Startups speaker series is about exposing attendees to the challenges within one industry and sparking discussion and ideas about how to solve those problems in the future,” said Parekh. Good examples of products created by existing Deep Startups include farming robots, ultrasound diagnostics, services for 3D printed parts, and mass manufacturing.

With a lineup of guest speakers who are well-respected in their fields, the Deep Startups series is designed to make their wealth of knowledge and experience on the topics discussed available to students. The first talk focusing on Information Security featured Chris Klaus, founder and CEO of Kaneva, and Vijay A. Balasubramaniyan, CEO, CTO and founder of Pindrop. The next session on October 31st will focus on the topic of The Internet of Things, and feature George Yu, founder and CEO of Variable, Inc. (You can RSVP for that event here.)

For CREATE-X, this is just another example of their commitment to giving aspiring entrepreneurs at Georgia Tech all the tools they need to succeed. Their other programs include Startup Lab, Idea to Prototype, and Startup Launch. Idea to Prototype offers students faculty mentors, guidance, and seed funding to build prototypes for their ideas, along with 3-6 undergraduate research credits. Startup Lab is a three credit course that teaches students about the process of becoming an entrepreneur, and how to vet their ideas and market needs. Startup Launch, their signature program, takes teams of students from one developed idea or prototype to a fully launched startup, with $20,000 in funding to get them there.

With the introduction of the the Deep Startups Speaker Series, Sivakumar hopes that students will continue to use the resources CREATE-X offers to build their own companies from the ground up, no matter what their product idea may be. “We are enabling Georgia Tech students to create the next Intel, Apple, Google, or Facebook,” he said.