Intuitive Foundation

Innovation Takes a Team

The Intuitive Foundation, founded by Robert & Kathleen Dobkin, identifies and connects top science and business students and provides them with training on entrepreneurship through innovation fellowships, courses, and mentorship, so they can launch successful startups and achieve greatness together.

“If you’re an entrepreneur and you’re starting a company, you can’t do it all by yourself. You just can’t. If you don’t have a team, you’re losing a big part of what it takes to be successful. I know that I couldn’t have done it alone.”

— Robert Dobkin, Founder, Intuitive Foundation

Intuitive Foundation Bob Dobkins portrait

We envision a world where the best ideas never get stuck inside a lab

Bob Dobkin always wanted to be an engineer. As a young child, he liked to take things apart. It turns out, he has always been an inventor at heart.

As a co-founder of Linear Technologies, Bob grew the company from a small team of 5 people to a workforce of 5,000 people. As result of his hard work, the company was sold for $15 billion.

However, Bob says that without his business partner, Robert Swanson, the company would not have seen the success it did. In other words, his partner was the business side of engineering.

Great ideas don’t come to market because of one person. Rather, many great technologists — in science, engineering, mathematics — need the other half, the business half.

In this case, Intuitive Foundation Founder Bob Dobkin, a brilliant engineer, and President Gabe Fenton, a skilled businessman, have been able to reach great heights by pairing up their complementary abilities.

The genesis of the Intuitive Foundation is bringing technologists and business people together. Above all, the goal of our courses, innovation fellowships, and mentorship programs is to provide training on entrepreneurship and leadership, so that the best ideas never get stuck inside a lab. Because innovation can change the world.

“We hope to bring students from business, law, humanities, engineering, and other technical fields together to experience the importance of cross-disciplinary skills within a business team.”
Intuitive Foundation Gabe Fenton portrait
Gabe Fenton
President, Intuitive Foundation

OUR APPROACH

To empower the next generation to find impactful solutions to real-world problems and learn how to build a tech startup that succeeds, the Intuitive Foundation partners with top college entrepreneurship courses and innovation fellowships. Additionally, we provide training on entrepreneurship and mentorship to guide young people. Together, these students are creating cutting-edge, sustainable solutions that make a human impact and thrive in the market.

Intuitive Foundation engineers
Intuitive Foundation students working on computer
Intuitive Foundation robotic hands
Intuitive Foundation wind turbines

“The Foundation taught me to look at situations in a light where I constantly question assumptions and what the real problem or question is asking; to think outside the box and really be creative in the solutions that I am developing to problems that come about.”​​

— James Li​, SportVue, UC Berkeley

our partnerships

The Intuitive Foundation proudly partners with the Carnegie Mellon Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship, the University of Colorado Boulder Leeds School of Business, the UC Berkeley College of Engineering, the Claremont McKenna Randall Lewis Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology to teach, mentor, and connect the brightest minds in science, innovation, and entrepreneurship. Our startup classes and innovation fellowships provide the training on entrepreneurship and background on how to build a tech startup that students need to bring their ideas to market.