Harbour.Space University

Harbour.Space University is a Barcelona-based institution focused on technology, entrepreneurship, and design, with a strong international student community.

Its development and data science students learn to write code, but rarely how to lead teams, design systems, make strategic decisions, and build ventures that actually work. The module exists to close that gap between what engineering programmes teach and what the industry demands.

• I created the "Developer to CTO" Master module from scratch.
• I teach it as a daily intensive covering project management, system design, business strategy, and venture building.
• Students form teams of four or five and build a real for-profit or non-profit venture from scratch: a working product with a business model, a target market, and a plan for sustainability.
• Students present their architecture choices to me as if I were an investor, with no jargon allowed.

• Real ventures instead of prototypes or mockups

  Why: students meet business constraints, not just technical ones

  Cost: far more ground to cover inside one module.

• Tight deadlines on purpose

  Why: teams that spend too long on architecture never finish

  Cost: students ship something imperfect and iterate.

I have taught the module every year since 2021, to development and data science students from 20+ countries, each cohort leaving with a venture they built themselves.

Teaching forced me to simplify. If you can't explain your architecture to a room of students, you probably don't understand it well enough yourself. The best feedback loop I've found for my own thinking is standing in front of people who aren't afraid to ask 'why'.