Senior Lecturing Fellow
Aaron Dinin earned his PhD in English from the University of Maryland, College Park. His dissertation is titled Hacking Literature: Reading Analog Texts in a Digital Age, and his critical work emphasizes the similarities between software development and literary textual production as parallel cultural technologies of information storage and dissemination.
In tandem with his academic interests, Aaron has spent more than a decade working as a tech entrepreneur and software developer. He has founded three tech companies, participated in two top-tier technology accelerators (DreamIt Ventures and The Startup Factory), and, in 2012, was named a Microsoft Fellow for his work on tech startups. In 2013 he co-founded a venture-backed sales technology company based in Durham called RocketBolt. These extensive experiences building companies inform Aaron’s classes in Duke’s I&E program, where he primarily teaches courses related to strategies for early product development, customer acquisition, social and affiliate marketing, fundraising, and monetization.
While Aaron currently teaches at Duke, he first stint in Durham was as a Duke undergraduate (Trinity, ’05). One of his earliest entrepreneurial endeavors was to write a book about Krzyzewskiville, Duke Basketball’s storied tenting tradition. His novel, The Krzyzewskiville Tales, was published by Duke Press in 2005, Aaron’s senior year.