Startup Lab Graduates Gain Traction

SaraMarie Bottaro and Ryohei Takatsuchi are making tracks with their startup, Dancing Rabbits Publications, an alternative publication house.

May 5, 2015

This spring, BerkleeICE opened the doors of its flagship course, the Startup Lab, to students from ProArts, a consortium of visual and performing colleges across Boston. The focus on pulling students from colleges across the ProArts Consortium created a lively, interdisciplinary class environment in which each project was different from the next. Amongst those to enroll in the course were School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) undergraduates Ryohei Takatsuchi and SaraMarie Bottaro, who together created the alternative-minded publication entity, Dancing Rabbits Publications. The pair recently spoke to SMFA's career blog, Creative Futures SMFA, about their Startup Lab experience and where it has led them.

According to Takatsuchi, not only is the Startup Lab designed to be "spontaneous and spread out, just like entrepreneurship" but it is also somewhere that the members are "treated less as students and more as entrepreneurs of our respected disciplines." The course is taught at IDEO, an international design firm and the originators of human-centered design thinking. Says Bottaro, "It’s amazing to be in the middle of a highly creative work environment that has such a strong culture of innovation."

In the Startup Lab, budding entrepreneur students hone their pitching, prototyping, and adaptation skills to prepare their own personal startup idea for launch. Bottaro and Takatsuchi took the opportunity presented to them by the course to start Dancing Rabbits Publications. The alternative publications house aims to bring light to the work of activist communities through a series of zines. The course's founders have described the Dancing Rabbits project as part of an aspiration to work "towards a respected place for artists in our larger society."

Dancing Rabbits Publications now has the backing of an SMFA donor and the founders recently had the chance to network and learn from fellow entrepreneur's at the 2015 99U conference in New York City.

Read the full interview.