By When Harvard Business School decides to scale its entrepreneurial training, it doesn’t just hand out extra reading assignments. Instead, it unleashes hyper-realistic AI avatars of its own instructors to grill aspiring founders.
The Rise of AI Faculty in Elite Entrepreneurship Programs
As the business world races to adopt generative tools, elite institutions are finding novel ways to integrate artificial intelligence into the curriculum. Harvard’s eight-week, $699 HBS Foundry bootcamp is a prime example. While students still get weekly live sessions with real professors, the heavy lifting of practice pitches and simulated board meetings is increasingly handed off to digital replicas.
Built using technology from the video startup HeyGen, these avatars are designed to provide rapid, individual feedback to entrepreneurs. It’s an ambitious attempt to scale personalized mentorship—a commodity that has historically been bottlenecked by human availability and high tuition costs.
How Pitching an AI Simulacra Actually Feels
Reporters and startup founders alike have begun testing these digital clones in the wild. Pitching a concept to an AI-generated copy of Flybridge Capital co-founder Jeff Bussgang yields remarkably uncanny results. While both the flesh-and-blood Bussgang and his digital twin proved equally skeptical of unconventional ideas, the avatar reportedly delivered a distinctively frozen smile throughout the ordeal.
Key Features of the HBS Foundry AI Integration
- On-Demand Feedback: Founders can run practice pitches anytime without waiting for scheduled faculty office hours.
- Simulated Board Pressure: The avatars are prompted to react like seasoned venture capitalists, testing a founder’s composure and business acumen.
- Scalable Mentorship: Allows a $699 program to deliver high-touch experiential learning to a massive cohort of global entrepreneurs.
The Creepy Yet Captivating Future of EdTech
Let’s be honest: interacting with a digital copy of your professor can feel a bit unsettling. Even Bussgang himself has openly admitted that his virtual simulacra crosses slightly into ‘creepy’ territory.
Yet, student reception tells a completely different story. Program participants have praised the interactive format for sharpening their delivery and tightening their pitch decks under pressure. As higher education continues to collide with rapid technological innovation, Harvard’s bold experiment proves that students might just prefer a slightly frozen AI mentor over no feedback at all.
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