Rob Fitzpatrick

After a very pleasant academic run (researching how to use video games to teach morality to kids), I stumbled across the startup world, abandoned my thesis, and leapt in.

I founded Habit Industries in summer ’07. We went through YCombinator and then raised rounds in the valley and London. We helped entertainment brands like MTV & Sony run safer interactive advertising campaigns. I ran it into the ground over the course of about 4 years and have retrieved most of this blog’s lessons learned from the wreckage.

Having spent about 4 years building a company I disliked working on (advertising is a cynical industry), I wanted to spend my time from then on building things I would love.

As such, I’ve put together a series of companies & projects to more effectively teach entrepreneurial skills. Those products have been used by universities around the UK and China to help about 2000 student businesses get started and to distributed just shy of £200k in grants & prizes to them. I like to talk about how to start companies without losing either your house or your mind, both at events and here on the blog.

I now work with General Assembly (an entrepreneurial campus based in NYC), leading the charge of our benevolent European takeover. Day-to-day that mostly means putting on workshops, classes, and events for entrepreneurs, soon-to-be entrepreneurs, and anyone else who is in the business of innovation under uncertainty.

My background is technical (and I spend a fair chunk of my leisure time coding), but the bulk of my entrepreneurial journey thus far has involved customer-facing stuff.

I mentor at and run training workshops with Seedcamp, HackFwd, Emerge Venture Labs, and UCL. I’m a Leancamp fellow.

I’m @robfitz on the twitter — let me know if I can be helpful!