From Engineer to Entrepreneur

Deepika Sampangi (MEM '26) spent six years at JPMorganChase when she decided to leave the company and attend Northwestern's Master of Engineering Management (MEM) program.  

Her time at JPMorganChase taught her how to build and scale technology. She thought MEM would help broaden her lens to think about the product, customer, market, economics, and organization related to that technology. 

She was right. 

Today, Deepika is co-founder and chief technology officer of Nyck AI, where she is building an AI buyer for midsize manufacturers and distributors. Nyck AI automates the purchasing process end-to-end—from forecasting demand and determining what and when to buy, to optimizing purchase orders, communicating with suppliers, and tracking orders. 

Deepika helped launch Nyck while completing the MEM program. Since then, the company has grown to nine customers, giving her the opportunity to apply what she learned in MEM while building and scaling a venture in real time. 

Days before she graduated, Deepika looked back on that initial decision to attend MEM and how her time in the program prepared her for her current role and responsibilities. 

What was it about MEM that initially appealed to you? 

Coming from a strong computer science and technology background, I was eager to develop a deeper understanding of business, strategy, leadership, and entrepreneurship, but I did not want to step away from the technical world that I am passionate about. 

MEM felt like the perfect balance, a program that combines the analytical and problem-solving mindset of engineering with the strategic and managerial perspectives of business. It offered an opportunity to learn how innovative technologies are not only built, but also how they are brought to market, scaled, managed, and transformed into successful businesses. 

For me, MEM represented the ideal "technical MBA" experience, allowing me to continue growing as a technologist while developing the business acumen needed to lead products, teams, and organizations. 

What are the most important lessons you learned during your time in the program? 

One of the biggest lessons I took away from MEM was learning to think beyond the technology itself. Before MEM, my instinct as an engineer was often to start with, “Can we build this?” The program pushed me to also ask, “Should we build this? Who are we building it for? What problem are we solving? Will customers pay for it? How does it create value? Can it become a scalable business?” 

Courses such as Product Management, Decision Tools for Engineers, Strategic Management for Engineers, AI Innovation Lab, and NUvention gave me different frameworks for answering those questions. NUvention was particularly influential because it forced us to think through the entire journey from an idea to a business—customer discovery, product, execution, financial models, governance, and long-term strategy. 

I use those perspectives constantly at Nyck AI. We're not building AI simply because the technology is exciting. We're using it to solve a very real operational problem. Purchasing teams at midsize manufacturers and distributors still spend enormous amounts of time manually determining what to order, creating purchase orders, communicating with suppliers, and tracking those orders. We're building Nyck AI to automate that process and allow those teams to spend more time on higher-value work. 

How do you hope to apply those lessons to work after graduation? 

Building Nyck AI has given me the opportunity to apply almost every dimension of what I learned through MEM. As a founder, you rarely get to operate within a single function. On any given day, I might move from working with our engineering team on product architecture, to speaking with customers about their procurement challenges, thinking through pricing and go-to-market strategy, interviewing candidates, analyzing our financials, or talking with investors. 

That is where the interdisciplinary nature of MEM has been incredibly valuable. I came into the program with a strong technical background, but MEM taught me to look at problems through multiple lenses—product, customer, strategy, finance, operations, and leadership. 

At Nyck AI, those decisions are all interconnected. A technical decision can affect the customer experience, a product decision can affect our economics, and a hiring or go-to-market decision can change how quickly we scale. MEM helped me become much more comfortable moving between those perspectives and making decisions even when there isn't a perfect answer. 

In many ways, building Nyck AI has become the real-world application of what I came to MEM hoping to learn: how to take technology, turn it into a product customers value, build a team around it, and ultimately create a sustainable business. 

How else did MEM prepare you for success after graduation? 

The biggest change MEM created for me was expanding how I see myself as a leader. I entered the program primarily identifying as a technologist. I left knowing that I could still be deeply technical while also building products, leading teams, understanding customers, making business decisions, and creating a company. 

That has been especially important as a founder because there is no single job description. Some days I'm a CTO, some days I'm a product manager, recruiter, salesperson, customer success lead, or strategist—and usually I'm several of those at once. MEM gave me both the frameworks and the confidence to operate across those different roles while continuing to learn along the way.