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I graduated from Yale in '06 and sold the company I'd been working on throughout college nine months after I graduated. Yale definitely doesn't have a lot of en

I graduated from Yale in '06 and sold the company I'd been working on throughout college nine months after I graduated. Yale definitely doesn't have a lot of entrepreneurs there, but we do have the Yale Entrepreneurial Society -- of which I was a member -- that acts as a support hub for the few entrepreneurs to get together. They also have the Y50K, which awards $50k to the winning business plan. Funny thing is, my company didn't even make it to the final round, but we sold a year later for probably 10x the current revenue of all the companies that did make it combined (sorry, I had to, I still feel snubbed). The problem with Yale's entrepreneurial endeavors is that it's far more aimed at traditional business / pharmaceuticals / brick&mortar rather than smart techies with a great idea. And, well, my company involved gaming and VoIP and they didn't gave a damn about gaming. (We went on to win $75k and first place at Case Western Reserve University's business plan competition.)

emmett 18y ago
We didn't win the Y50K either, and I think we were the only team from our year to actually go on and found anything at all. To be fair, the idea we applied with was kind of stupid.
- justin 18y ago
  Fuck that, it was awesome
danw 18y ago
Business plan competitions seem to be about giving away money to the wrong thing. The prizes go to the ones who can write what the judges want to read, not to those who can start a company. Perhaps they should give the prizes to people with product prototypes or who can demonstrate the existence of a market because they've sold something to it
- pg 18y ago
  "A prize poem is like a prize sheep. The object of the competitor for the agricultural premium is to produce an animal fit, not to be eaten, but to be weighed. Accordingly he pampers his victim into morbid and unnatural fatness; and, when it is in such a state that it would be sent away in disgust from any table, he offers it to the judges. The object of the poetical candidate, in like manner, is to produce, not a good poem, but a poem of that exact degree of frigidity or bombast which may appear to his censors to be correct or sublime. Compositions thus constructed will always be worthless." - Macaulay, "On the Royal Society of Literature"

emmett 18y ago

We didn't win the Y50K either, and I think we were the only team from our year to actually go on and found anything at all. To be fair, the idea we applied with was kind of stupid.

justin 18y ago
Fuck that, it was awesome

danw 18y ago

Business plan competitions seem to be about giving away money to the wrong thing. The prizes go to the ones who can write what the judges want to read, not to those who can start a company. Perhaps they should give the prizes to people with product prototypes or who can demonstrate the existence of a market because they've sold something to it

pg 18y ago
"A prize poem is like a prize sheep. The object of the competitor for the agricultural premium is to produce an animal fit, not to be eaten, but to be weighed. Accordingly he pampers his victim into morbid and unnatural fatness; and, when it is in such a state that it would be sent away in disgust from any table, he offers it to the judges. The object of the poetical candidate, in like manner, is to produce, not a good poem, but a poem of that exact degree of frigidity or bombast which may appear to his censors to be correct or sublime. Compositions thus constructed will always be worthless." - Macaulay, "On the Royal Society of Literature"