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Author says UI has "a rich history" with regard to startups. I am curious when the clock started ticking for "history" in this author's view -- last 10 years? 1

Author says UI has "a rich history" with regard to startups. I am curious when the clock started ticking for "history" in this author's view -- last 10 years? 15? Startups were a very different story at UI in the late 60s, 70s, and early 80s. From what I've gathered, it seems doing a startup could be a very iffy proposition, vis a vis the university. Sometimes it could even get you in a heap o' trouble.

perryh2 11y ago
I graduated in 2014 and I've definitely seen a huge growth of startup programs over the course of the last 5 years. I don't think some things (e.g. hackathons) existed before my time.
joezydeco 11y ago
I'm a UIUC alum. The author is doing what UIUC typically does, which is try to take credit for the successes of their alumni when those alumni did it without the UIUC ecosystem. I like to call it the Andreessen Complex: https://hack.vc/tech-companies-started-by-university-of-illinois-alumni-6753327a0829 https://hack.vc/tech-companies-started-by-university-of-illi... UIUC has historically done little to negative work in making their graduates successful beyond the diploma. I don't see much changing here except a lot of handwaving, throwing cash around, and grand announcements like UILabs which will make a lot of noise and smoke but eventually do very little toward the dream of being more like Stanford or MIT or Fraunhofer. "The list is still a work in progress but shows just how many great entrepreneurs were at one point roaming around in central Illinois" Sums it up right there. They roamed until they roamed all the way to the west coast. And that's the eternal agony of the University of Illinois.
- dtparr 11y ago
  Alum as well. The ones I know from that list personally fit that exactly. Pete Koomen was a Google a few years before Optimizely (the post says he got his BS in '06, but that was his MS). Dan Kador was at Salesforce for a while as well before Keen.io.
  - afridi 11y ago
    Absolutely, I wasn't trying to say that the University helped start these ventures. From what I see there hasn't been a lot of support for student entrepreneurs on campus historically, but that has greatly changed (a lot of the programs I mentioned are just a few years old). Pete Koomen's degree was a typo on my part. I've updated the blog post to reflect the correct info.
- SilasX 11y ago
  In fairness, it's not like any other university's PR wing is going to judiciously filter its alum bragging list to those who owed their success specifically to that university...
- Ologn 11y ago
  Also, when Andreessen left UIUC to form a company, he was almost immediately sued by UIUC. Oppose this to say, Stanford, out of which have come many companies, where Stanford is usually legally hands off with regards to them.
  - afridi 11y ago
    Author here. As I mentioned previously, I'm just a student and have no ties to any administration so I'm just speaking from my experience. UIUC suing (or almost suing?) Andreessen is definitely a terrible step, but that was one event 21 years ago. In fact it happened before I was born (I'm a senior at UIUC now). Definitely a dark chapter of entrepreneurship on campus, but the goal of this post is to highlight the current ecosystem. The university and the ecosystem is continuously evolving and hopefully we can tailor it to learn from other schools that have done a good job.
    - rmason 11y ago
      I never went to IU but I was at a conference there right after Netscape launched. The Dean spoke and he laid it on real thick about being the place where the web browser was invented. He said that IU was 'ground zero for the upcoming Internet revolution'. Then I found out much later that they had refused to let Andreessen use the Mosaic name for his company. They also turned down equity in the company that became Netscape. They also Andreessen later said burned any bridge to receiving alumni support from him. But the Dean told us at the time that IU had a 'close relationship' with Andreessen and the rest of the alums creating Netscape. Then they licensed the Mosaic source code to Microsoft which proceeded to use it to bludgeon Netscape.
- afridi 11y ago
  Author of the original post here. To start of I'd just like to clarify that I'm a student at the University and have no ties to any of the administration. The goal of the post was not to try and take credit for the successes of alumni, I rather wrote it to highlight how some of our alumni have gone on to do great things. I decided to write it after an experience I had this summer while I was interning at a VC firm in NYC. While there, I met the managing partner for one of NYC's biggest VC firms (I'll leave it unnamed) who basically said: 'oh, you go to UIUC.... they've produced one famous tech entrepreneur (Marc Andreessen), maybe you can be the second'. That's a sentiment I saw echoed throughout my time there and through previous experiences (especially on the East Coast). In terms of the helping alumni with their ventures after graduation, I'd argue that the school has actually done a lot to help founders through the resources and early-stage funding available (a lot of these have sprung up recently). It's hard to compare it to Stanford/MIT/Harvard which are based in thriving tech cities where alumni and VCs can hop by on campus whenever. Update: I'd also love to know (from everyone that sees this) what programs other universities have done to help alumni after graduation. Just because UIUC hasn't already done this doesn't mean we (students and alumni) can't start it. Just take a look at the awesome stuff that alumni from Harvard do for their community (http://harvard.splashthat.com/ http://harvard.splashthat.com/). It's entirely alumni managed + organized.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - joezydeco 11y ago
    'oh, you go to UIUC.... they've produced one famous tech entrepreneur (Marc Andreessen), maybe you can be the second Let's get history straight first. UIUC didn't turn pmarca into an entrepreneur. Jim Clark did that.
    - jjtheblunt 11y ago
      Andreesesen is overly celebrated because of his extreme luck, and is certainly not the first. Look up John Bardeen and Nick Holonyak for examples.
- jjtheblunt 11y ago
  I'm a uiuc alum also, hold a job at Apple in engineering I reckon many young folk would think wonderful, and while Apple may be, the west coast is an absolute horror. The region is plainly unaffordable to folks earning tons yearly: the misrepresentation of the Bay Area as any kind of promised land is nearly always a veiled manipulation by landowners and, via the H1b visa programm, business owners to lure suckers from whom money and labor can be easily obtained.
  - eldavido 11y ago
    I go back and forth on this; the issue is the lack of a better option. I for one would love to see a viable tech community emerge in Chicago -- we could all be near family, afford houses, hell maybe even inject some much-needed tax revenue in the state of IL -- but the reality is SV is where all the ambitious tech people are, the money is here, and the entrepreneurial management talent is here. Don't take my word for it: the west coast absolutely dwarfs Chicago in VC (20x as much capital is raised in the Bay Area than Chicago), which is made even worse considering the relative population skew in Chicago's favor: http://www.citylab.com/work/2013/06/americas-top-metros-venture-capital/3284/ http://www.citylab.com/work/2013/06/americas-top-metros-vent...
    - joezydeco 11y ago
      I for one would love to see a viable tech community emerge in Chicago Well, we all would. The fact that Chicago is building things like 1871 and UILabs shows they want the image of being a vibrant startup-friendly community but we all know what the true reality is. Northern Illinois has a extremely valuable legacy in tech, especially in the bio and manufacturing sectors. Think of Motorola, Bell Labs, Teletype, Abbott, Baxter, Sundstrand, ITW, Zenith, Bally, Kraft, Caterpillar, CME, Molex... there's a huge list. But that legacy isn't what's hot and cool with the VC community. Chicago's modus operandi is about going heads-down and getting shit done. But that isn't what's hot and cool with the VC community either.
afridi 11y ago
Author here. I guess I didn't really think of it in terms of starting at a specific time, I was just looking at the past. I focus mainly on tech entrepreneurship so I'd say maybe mid-90s onwards would be what I looked at.

perryh2 11y ago

I graduated in 2014 and I've definitely seen a huge growth of startup programs over the course of the last 5 years. I don't think some things (e.g. hackathons) existed before my time.

joezydeco 11y ago

I'm a UIUC alum. The author is doing what UIUC typically does, which is try to take credit for the successes of their alumni when those alumni did it without the UIUC ecosystem. I like to call it the Andreessen Complex: https://hack.vc/tech-companies-started-by-university-of-illinois-alumni-6753327a0829 https://hack.vc/tech-companies-started-by-university-of-illi... UIUC has historically done little to negative work in making their graduates successful beyond the diploma. I don't see much changing here except a lot of handwaving, throwing cash around, and grand announcements like UILabs which will make a lot of noise and smoke but eventually do very little toward the dream of being more like Stanford or MIT or Fraunhofer. "The list is still a work in progress but shows just how many great entrepreneurs were at one point roaming around in central Illinois" Sums it up right there. They roamed until they roamed all the way to the west coast. And that's the eternal agony of the University of Illinois.

dtparr 11y ago
Alum as well. The ones I know from that list personally fit that exactly. Pete Koomen was a Google a few years before Optimizely (the post says he got his BS in '06, but that was his MS). Dan Kador was at Salesforce for a while as well before Keen.io.
- afridi 11y ago
  Absolutely, I wasn't trying to say that the University helped start these ventures. From what I see there hasn't been a lot of support for student entrepreneurs on campus historically, but that has greatly changed (a lot of the programs I mentioned are just a few years old). Pete Koomen's degree was a typo on my part. I've updated the blog post to reflect the correct info.
SilasX 11y ago
In fairness, it's not like any other university's PR wing is going to judiciously filter its alum bragging list to those who owed their success specifically to that university...
Ologn 11y ago
Also, when Andreessen left UIUC to form a company, he was almost immediately sued by UIUC. Oppose this to say, Stanford, out of which have come many companies, where Stanford is usually legally hands off with regards to them.
- afridi 11y ago
  Author here. As I mentioned previously, I'm just a student and have no ties to any administration so I'm just speaking from my experience. UIUC suing (or almost suing?) Andreessen is definitely a terrible step, but that was one event 21 years ago. In fact it happened before I was born (I'm a senior at UIUC now). Definitely a dark chapter of entrepreneurship on campus, but the goal of this post is to highlight the current ecosystem. The university and the ecosystem is continuously evolving and hopefully we can tailor it to learn from other schools that have done a good job.
  - rmason 11y ago
    I never went to IU but I was at a conference there right after Netscape launched. The Dean spoke and he laid it on real thick about being the place where the web browser was invented. He said that IU was 'ground zero for the upcoming Internet revolution'. Then I found out much later that they had refused to let Andreessen use the Mosaic name for his company. They also turned down equity in the company that became Netscape. They also Andreessen later said burned any bridge to receiving alumni support from him. But the Dean told us at the time that IU had a 'close relationship' with Andreessen and the rest of the alums creating Netscape. Then they licensed the Mosaic source code to Microsoft which proceeded to use it to bludgeon Netscape.
afridi 11y ago
Author of the original post here. To start of I'd just like to clarify that I'm a student at the University and have no ties to any of the administration. The goal of the post was not to try and take credit for the successes of alumni, I rather wrote it to highlight how some of our alumni have gone on to do great things. I decided to write it after an experience I had this summer while I was interning at a VC firm in NYC. While there, I met the managing partner for one of NYC's biggest VC firms (I'll leave it unnamed) who basically said: 'oh, you go to UIUC.... they've produced one famous tech entrepreneur (Marc Andreessen), maybe you can be the second'. That's a sentiment I saw echoed throughout my time there and through previous experiences (especially on the East Coast). In terms of the helping alumni with their ventures after graduation, I'd argue that the school has actually done a lot to help founders through the resources and early-stage funding available (a lot of these have sprung up recently). It's hard to compare it to Stanford/MIT/Harvard which are based in thriving tech cities where alumni and VCs can hop by on campus whenever. Update: I'd also love to know (from everyone that sees this) what programs other universities have done to help alumni after graduation. Just because UIUC hasn't already done this doesn't mean we (students and alumni) can't start it. Just take a look at the awesome stuff that alumni from Harvard do for their community (http://harvard.splashthat.com/ http://harvard.splashthat.com/). It's entirely alumni managed + organized.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- joezydeco 11y ago
  'oh, you go to UIUC.... they've produced one famous tech entrepreneur (Marc Andreessen), maybe you can be the second Let's get history straight first. UIUC didn't turn pmarca into an entrepreneur. Jim Clark did that.
  - jjtheblunt 11y ago
    Andreesesen is overly celebrated because of his extreme luck, and is certainly not the first. Look up John Bardeen and Nick Holonyak for examples.
jjtheblunt 11y ago
I'm a uiuc alum also, hold a job at Apple in engineering I reckon many young folk would think wonderful, and while Apple may be, the west coast is an absolute horror. The region is plainly unaffordable to folks earning tons yearly: the misrepresentation of the Bay Area as any kind of promised land is nearly always a veiled manipulation by landowners and, via the H1b visa programm, business owners to lure suckers from whom money and labor can be easily obtained.
- eldavido 11y ago
  I go back and forth on this; the issue is the lack of a better option. I for one would love to see a viable tech community emerge in Chicago -- we could all be near family, afford houses, hell maybe even inject some much-needed tax revenue in the state of IL -- but the reality is SV is where all the ambitious tech people are, the money is here, and the entrepreneurial management talent is here. Don't take my word for it: the west coast absolutely dwarfs Chicago in VC (20x as much capital is raised in the Bay Area than Chicago), which is made even worse considering the relative population skew in Chicago's favor: http://www.citylab.com/work/2013/06/americas-top-metros-venture-capital/3284/ http://www.citylab.com/work/2013/06/americas-top-metros-vent...
  - joezydeco 11y ago
    I for one would love to see a viable tech community emerge in Chicago Well, we all would. The fact that Chicago is building things like 1871 and UILabs shows they want the image of being a vibrant startup-friendly community but we all know what the true reality is. Northern Illinois has a extremely valuable legacy in tech, especially in the bio and manufacturing sectors. Think of Motorola, Bell Labs, Teletype, Abbott, Baxter, Sundstrand, ITW, Zenith, Bally, Kraft, Caterpillar, CME, Molex... there's a huge list. But that legacy isn't what's hot and cool with the VC community. Chicago's modus operandi is about going heads-down and getting shit done. But that isn't what's hot and cool with the VC community either.

afridi 11y ago

Author here. I guess I didn't really think of it in terms of starting at a specific time, I was just looking at the past. I focus mainly on tech entrepreneurship so I'd say maybe mid-90s onwards would be what I looked at.