As the second cohort heads towards Pitch Day, a look back at the first and at what Roséens learn working alongside startups.

In December 2025, fifteen startups pitched to a Rosey jury and audience at the first MITdesignX Le Rosey Pitch Day. They’d spent the autumn working through the MITdesignX Playbook with MIT faculty and a Roséen intern each, on ventures ranging from brain cancer diagnostics to elder care. Several have kept growing since: one’s floor system is going into a 10-storey building in Zug, and another’s founder left for a fellowship in San Francisco this summer.

Roséen interns sat with the founding teams through the workshops and took on whatever the venture needed next, whether that meant mapping competitors and target customers for an AI venture anticipating floods and wildfires, or working through user personas and revenue models with a social venture. Much of it drew on what Roséens already study: economics and maths when working through a revenue model, the sciences when a medtech team walked them through testing protocols and design controls.

At the end of the term, a few Roséens wrote down what had stuck with them.

“Being able to throw away and detach from past work is a super important skill. Don’t be scared to pivot and leave previous work behind, so as not to get dragged down by it.”

“I now see that these startups are built more on resilience and collaboration. It’s not just about having a great idea; it’s also about making sure real people can actually use it and enjoy the experience.”

That’s often where impact starts: with what changes in a person, how they understand a problem, and the skills, confidence and perspective they build. From there it works outwards to the people around them, and eventually to the wider system.

The second cohort arrived in September. Its founders are building for people the job market overlooks and for communities that need cooling without a power grid, alongside teams in Health & Med Tech, EdTech, Robotics and Social Tech. An early-stage startup doesn’t know yet how its own story ends, so Roséens get to watch decisions being made as they happen, and sometimes help make them.

Two workshops remain before Pitch Day on 27 November. By then, some of these ideas will look quite different from the ones that arrived in September.

Follow the cohort at @impact.rosey.