Phil Dirkse
Phil Dirkse is the founder of Zipper Labs, a Michigan-based public charter school with a design-focused curriculum. While he graduated as a MechE from Olin College of Engineering in 2011, he was fascinated with education and was the entrepreneurship kind of guy. He traveled a winding road to get to his business, taking a study abroad at a traditional boat building school in Maine and working at an energy company post-graduation, leaving him with an interesting array of skills in craftsmanship and manufacturing.
Phil was inspired to start Zipper Labs after his involvement with educational workshops at a previous job, where he demoed cool projects such as solar powered race car builds. These got him thinking about a sustainable, larger-scale educational system. Thus he crafted Zipper Labs, with the intent to share the hands-on Olin experience with K-12 students.
Zipper Labs is currently partnered with Icademy, an online school with extra building space and a willingness to share resources. Both serve as a replacement for traditional public education, which made them a good match.
Phil found a market in outside-the-home education for home-schoolers, which make up about half of Zipper Lab’s students. Parents often sought out supplemental education for their children when they can no longer provide content, or reach a level of math they can’t teach. Other potential markets included students with behavioral issues looking for a new school, after-school programs, and summer camps. The trick was to find a structure that both fit Phil’s vision and matched the expectations of his customers when they enrolled for classes, which depended on how Zipper Labs was presented and the corresponding cost.
In many ways, Zipper Labs resembles a maker-space, providing similar resources and environment. It gained credibility in its curriculum by consulting teachers and educators to help conceptualize what it is as a school, and how to push creative education forward.
What started as an idea a couple years ago has since grown into a public charter school that provides services in many different school districts, recently serving seven different schools in a week.
Before Olin, Phil’s view on entrepreneurship was that it was all about making money and maximizing profit. However, his perspective changed as he took economics classes such as “New Tech Ventures.” He realized that entrepreneurship was much more about how to make money in a sustainable way to support beneficial social ventures. Profit was involved, but only to support a greater idea. This is evident in Zipper Lab’s business model, as an L3C company which functions like a non-profit, in order to provide its curriculum without the concerns of for-profit education.
While at Olin, Phil embraced high academic caliber, hands-on, design-oriented learning. He also participated in Engineering Discovery, a club which seeks to bring the Olin education to local elementary schools.