Today in Georgia Tech Academics & Research
Monday brought a reminder that a Georgia Tech degree rarely leads where you expect it to. Here is what caught our eye on September 14, 2026.
From Coding to Cabernet: A Yellow Jacket Trades Corporate Tech for Startup Life
When Christian Doetsch earned his bachelor’s degree in computer science from Georgia Tech in 2013, upcycled bourbon barrels were not part of the plan. After more than a decade in the corporate world — rising from software developer to manager, and later co-founding the financial literacy company Lemony Learning — Doetsch is now vice president of technology at VinoBarrel, a 2022 startup that blends software, hardware, and data to help restaurants, bars, and hotels build customer relationships through wine. The company’s technology-enabled dispensers are housed in reclaimed bourbon barrels, letting guests use a key fob or tablet to access their profiles, redeem offers, and pour a glass, while operators track activity and run loyalty programs. Doetsch first saw the product at Tech Alpharetta, told founder and fellow Yellow Jacket Seth Lytle (IE 2003) that all that valuable data needed a platform behind it, invested, and eventually decided to build it himself. Read the full story at Georgia Tech News.
The Georgia Tech thread runs through the whole venture. VinoBarrel is opening new locations in Midtown Atlanta near campus, the Georgia Tech Hotel and Conference Center is evaluating the product, and Doetsch still finds time to mentor students — most recently an entrepreneurship-focused CS design capstone team that built a tool for managing and forecasting AWS cloud costs. “I was given a lot,” he said of giving back. “It seems like the ethically right thing to do.”
His advice to current students is worth framing: “As a Georgia Tech student, you have access to immense resources and support… However, it’s up to you to be proactive in using the resources available to you. Be intentional about what you choose to pursue, because you can have anything, but you can’t have everything.”
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