Dr. Sean Ammirati

Biography

Sean Ammirati is a Distinguished Service Professor of Entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business. He is the co-founder and director of the Carnegie Mellon Corporate Startup Lab (CSL), an initiative under the Swartz Center, which conducts research and develops tools to help companies adapt and integrate entrepreneurial practices into their innovation processes. His frameworks and tools have aided innovators in becoming successful entrepreneurs and have helped leaders manage innovation portfolios. CSL has created a unique project course in corporate entrepreneurship, where diverse teams of graduate students partner with large companies to test and develop real startup ideas. Additionally, Sean joined Birchmere Ventures as a partner in 2012, focusing on seed-stage SaaS and marketplace startup investments, with the firm headquartered in Pittsburgh and an office in San Francisco. Before this, he spent twelve years founding, building, and selling businesses in the software and media industries, serving as Chief Operating Officer of ReadWriteWeb, which was acquired by a private-equity rollup, SAY Media. He is also a co-founder and former CEO of mSpoke, which was acquired by LinkedIn, and co-founded Peak Strategy, which was acquired by Morgan Stanley. Sean published a book, Science of Growth, released by St. Martin's Press in April 2016, and has hosted a popular podcast on corporate innovation, Agile Giants, available on various platforms.

Research Interests