Joe Hadzima opens MIT's 15.393 Nuts and Bolts of New Ventures with a blunt premise: most startups fail, and this session is about shifting the odds. Recorded for the January 2025 Independent Activities Period, the talk lays out the skills and habits that separate ventures that survive from those that do not, drawing on Hadzima's long experience advising founders and teaching entrepreneurship at MIT. He covers the practical mechanics of getting a venture off the ground, from assembling a founding team to the early decisions that shape a company's trajectory, framing the course's approach before later sessions get into specifics like legal structure, financing, and operations. Running 69 minutes, it functions as both a course overview and a standalone talk on the realities of startup risk, aimed at students who want the unglamorous version of entrepreneurship rather than the pitch-deck version.