What is Donut Labs?

Donut Labs helps support Caltech startups.

Donut Labs was founded by Josh Gutman to solve the gap in entrepreneurship at Caltech.  While the university helps sharpen some of the brightest young minds, many take a linear career path that underutilizes their skills.  While some students might excel in these paths, we think many others would benefit greatly from different environments.  We want to be a resource for Caltech students to bring great companies into the world in whatever capacity that entails.

The initial focus is on mentoring students through the process of customer discovery and iteration.  We’ll bring in successful Caltech founders, some of who, like many of you, didn’t know that entrepreneurship was even a path to consider.  We want to dispel some of the false notions around who can start companies and when they’ll be ready to start them.  We will also provide a community to help students go through the challenging and rewarding journey.

Some projects will be eligible for a Donut Labs Fellowship, which will provide a very modest amount of non-dilutive money for some basics as they are launching their project.

About Josh:
Josh Gutman graduated from Caltech in 2006 with a degree in Computer Science. He spent most of his career at Virtu Financial during the period that included the proliferation of new and faster equities exchanges in the US and globally, the US financial crisis, and the 2013 European debt crisis. Virtu went public in 2015, and Josh left in 2016 to pursue other interests. For the past several years, Josh has been investing in early-stage startups and now lives with his wife and two daughters in Santa Monica, CA.