Bill Aulet

Bill Aulet, senior lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and Managing Director of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center, has 25 years of experience in technology business operations and financing. He started his career at IBM and then ran two private companies, Cambridge Decision Dynamics and SensAble Technologies. Most recently he helped engineer a dramatic turnaround at Viisage Technology as its Chief Financial Officer. He has created hundreds of millions of dollars of shareholder value by building focused, fundamentally sound businesses. He has raised $100 million in institutional financing via private placements and public offerings. Mr. Aulet now works with students and start-up companies to build strategies and operating plans that will create sustainable value. He has an undergraduate degree from Harvard University and a graduate degree from the MIT Sloan School of Management, where he was a Sloan Fellow.

Recent posts

Startup Resolution 2017: Embrace Believers, Bounce Skeptics & Keep Moving
The holiday period is a great time for reflection and then behavior modification – often referred to as resolutions. While a bit artificial to the logical engineer, this opportunity can be... Read more »
What’s the Most Important Issue That Didn’t Get Addressed in 2014?
Immigration. Very sad and shows how deeply dysfunctional our system is. This is really hurting innovation—and other countries, like Canada, U.K., Chile and Spain, have moved way ahead of us. Very... Read more »
What Entrepreneurs Should Learn from John Lackey
Success in business is out of reach to those who aren’t already blessed with plentiful advantage, so goes the conventional wisdom. A similar stereotype in sports is that you either have... Read more »
6 Reasons Why the MIT Blackjack Team Became Entrepreneurs
Wow. Imagine being invited to moderate a free-form discussion with the people who lived out the book “Bringing Down the House” and the movie “21.” It doesn’t get any better than... Read more »
I Love Entrepreneurs, But Not as My Science Teacher
“If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”
It may be just a bumper sticker aphorism, but lately it’s got me thinking. Peter Thiel, early Facebook investor and Paypal cofounder, announced... Read more »
“My Parents Won’t Let Me Marry You Because You’re an Entrepreneur:” Cultural Challenges to Growing Entrepreneurship
During my recent trip to Korea, an American expat told me about his friend, a successful young Korean entrepreneur who employed a half-dozen people in an education business. He fell deeply... Read more »
AC/DC Controversy of the 1880s Applies to Natural Gas Today: Reflections After 2011 MIT Energy Conference
In the 1880s, Thomas Edison was locked in a battle with the legendary inventor Nikola Tesla and the entrepreneur George Westinghouse.
Edison argued that alternating current was “impractical” and highly dangerous.... Read more »
Does an Innovation Ecosystem Need an “MIT” or Will Evita Perons Do?: A Romanian Tale
In my role at the head of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center, I have the great opportunity, at times, to travel the world and learn about entrepreneurship on a global scale,... Read more »
Ten Thoughts from MIT Sloan’s Silicon Valley Tech Trek
Each year, we at the MIT Entrepreneurship Center at the Sloan School of Management travel to Silicon Valley for a three-day immersion program with our MBA students who have a very... Read more »
Xconomy Man of Year for 2010—Plus a Gigantic Energy Prediction for 2011
My Xconomy “Man of the Year” for 2010 would not be Mark Zuckerberg (that should have been a year or two ago if you are on the leading edge like Xconomy),... Read more »
Celebrate Entrepreneurs Like the Red Wings Winning the Stanley Cup
I am very pleased to see Xconomy moving into the Michigan area to help with the reinventing of the economy there. A lot of people are clearly feeling real pain from... Read more »
Route 128 vs. Silicon Valley: Stop the Noize!
[Updated and corrected, May 9, 2011–see below] We just came back from spending a week with 95 MIT students in Silicon Valley drinking from the West Coast Fire Hose of Entrepreneurship.... Read more »
Report from the Russian (Entrepreneurial) Front
November 20, 2009, Moscow, Russia—I write this from the Moscow airport on my way home to Massachusetts after teaming with MIT colleagues Howard Anderson and Peter Kurzina to teach a... Read more »
How to Build a Successful Innovation Ecosystem: Educate, Network, and Celebrate
Last week, I was honored to give a keynote speech in Dublin, Ireland, at an international symposium marking the launch of the nation’s ambitious new R&D program in energy by its... Read more »
The Next Big Thing in Energy Innovation and Investing? Let’s Talk Water
Energy innovation and investing are exploding right now. Technological breakthroughs are seen as perhaps the greatest hope to solving our dire energy challenge. However, what is often overlooked is the link... Read more »
What’s Wrong With Energy Investing? Part II
I had the good fortune to receive a substantial amount of feedback on my first post on this subject a few weeks ago. The feedback was productive and helped to clarify... Read more »
What’s Wrong with Energy Investing? Part I
I just returned to Kendall Square after spending a spectacular weekend at Squam Lake in New Hampshire and at the forefront of my mind—and what I could not shake over the... Read more »