Harvard's $699 Startup Bootcamp Adds AI Avatars of Its Mentors

Pitch your startup idea to Jeff Bussgang, and you might actually be talking to a digital clone of him. Harvard Business School's HBS Foundry, an eight-week entrepreneurship bootcamp priced at $699, now lets participants practice their pitches with AI avatars built from its real instructors.

The avatars were built by HeyGen, the video-generation startup known for creating lifelike digital doubles of real people. One of them models Bussgang, the Flybridge Capital co-founder and longtime HBS lecturer, giving students a way to rehearse pitches and get feedback outside scheduled class time.

The program still runs on a hybrid model. Foundry pairs the AI avatars with weekly live sessions led by actual instructors, rather than replacing human mentorship outright. The avatars function more as an always-available practice partner than a substitute for the program's teaching staff.

That design wasn't the original plan. Project director Katharina Rings said she initially pictured the AI feature as something closer to a simple chatbot. Students pushed back, asking for a more structured, guided coaching experience instead, which shaped the avatar format Foundry ultimately built.

New York Times reporter Sarah Kessler put the system to the test herself, pitching a startup concept to the HeyGen-generated version of Bussgang to see how the feedback compared to a live mentor. Her hands-on trial offered an early outside look at how the avatar performs in practice.

Mixed feelings, positive results

Reactions among Foundry participants have leaned positive, according to TechCrunch's reporting on the program. That's notable given a broader undercurrent of skepticism: some college-age students in the cohort said they hold generally negative views of AI, even as they responded well to the avatar coaching specifically.

That tension points to a distinction schools may need to draw carefully going forward: general unease about AI's role in education doesn't necessarily translate into rejection of a well-scoped, practical tool. Foundry's bet is that pairing AI feedback with live human instruction, rather than choosing one over the other, is what made the format land.

Harvard hasn't disclosed how many students have gone through the AI-avatar version of the program, nor whether HeyGen's technology will expand into other HBS courses. For now, Foundry stands as one of the more concrete examples of a name-brand business school integrating generative AI avatars directly into its curriculum rather than treating them as a side experiment.