6 ms·

After a decade of VC influence at Stanford, what’s next?

51 points by adrian_mrd 5y ago

chirau 5y ago
This was a snippet of a whole report. Here is the full report https://stanford.app.box.com/v/Stanford-Tech-History-Project https://stanford.app.box.com/v/Stanford-Tech-History-Project
temp8964 5y ago
Why can't Standford open another campus in, say, Austin?
- ardit33 5y ago
  They tried to open one in NYC (Roosevelt Island, Development, between Manhattan and LIC), but there was major pushback by both faculty and some students/alumi They felt opening Stanford to more students will dilute its brand/exclusivity feel, and character, yada yada.... Basically, some folks that wanted to keep it an exclusive club, nixed it. Right now Cornell has a tech campus there.
  - drfuchs 5y ago
    New York held a competition for establishing a campus on Roosevelt Island, and Stanford competed strongly, and was considered the shoo-in candidate, but they were sent home with their tail between their legs when the Cornell / Technion team won the bid. Nobody on the Stanford side nixed it; they lost and everyone in Silicon Valley was astonished.
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  Has a satellite campus ever worked anywhere?
  - mc32 5y ago
    Didn’t Stanford open a small campus in Japan, maybe still has one?
    - chris11 5y ago
      A quick google search makes it seem like their Kyoto campus is for a study abroad program. and it's located in Doshisha University. https://ealc.stanford.edu/undergraduate-program/study-abroad https://ealc.stanford.edu/undergraduate-program/study-abroad
  - _delirium 5y ago
    It's too early to be sure, but Cornell Tech, the new-ish satellite campus of Cornell in NYC, looks to be on a successful trajectory.
    - chirau 5y ago
      I remember when Cornell Tech was just a fraction of a floor in the Google Chelsea office. If there sheer growth in presence in the city is anything to go by, it looks they have invested a lot in it. I mean, a lot.
  - chirau 5y ago
    Duke has a really amazing and world renowned satellite medical school in Singapore.
  - redis_mlc 5y ago
    I don't know if you'd call the UC (University of California) system satellites, but they seem to work well. I vaguely remember reading about some Western universities opening branches in China, which will probably grow larger than the original locations. Not sure what happens when you flunk a princeling though, if that's even possible.
  - iancmceachern 5y ago
    Wharton?
- paxys 5y ago
  Satellite campuses never work. They would have to build an entire Stanford University System which would then need to ensure that every individual location was keeping up with their "brand". There's a reason why "I'm a UC graduate" doesn't mean much, but Berkeley most certainly does.
  - temp8964 5y ago
    I don't think it is that definitive. It's hard, but not impossible. Also, it doesn't have to begin with a whole university system. A few departments could be fine. I wouldn't say begin with a small elite campus on a focused area is a task deemed to fail.
- rejectedandsad 5y ago
  UT Austin already exists and is a top CS school? Why would it need to be Stanford?
- temp8964 5y ago
  @dang, it seems your software is overreacting. redis_mlc 's comment under this thread is totally fine, not sure why it was killed. Is it bc it mentioned "China"? I have seen a few overkills recently, so just asking.
  - grzm 5y ago
    Given that the majority of their recent comments are [dead], 'redis_mlc is likely banned. If you see a dead-yet-worthwhile comment, you can vouch for it. (Also, @dang doesn't do anything special: if you want to contact the moderators, email them using the Contact link in the footer.)
narush 5y ago
> Venture capitalists are a primary source of vigor [1] for the entrepreneurial ecosystem of Silicon Valley, and venture capital as an asset class largely punches above its weight. Maybe I'm a bit cynical, but this is the first sentence in a post written by an investor about an investor. So, ya know, I'm a bit skeptical. The cited paper does very little to make me feel any better. For one, it's not a history paper - you know... the closest bit of academia to the "study of what happened." It's an economics paper that uses some sort of system model to argue for what links / nodes are valuable in the "silicon valley network." Yeah, nah. Systems like these rely on far to many assumptions-from-no-where to make compelling arguments about how the real world works. One can massage these models to output pretty much any result one wants (tweak the constants a bit in favor of the venture capitalists, if you so desire). I'll also note I stopped reading the post there. The rest of it might be inspired, but I couldn't make it through that first sentence. [1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03085140902786827 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0308514090278682...
throwaway1959 5y ago
At the end of the article, the author seem to have listed every diversity criteria, except the diversity of thought. With Democrat to Republican ratio of professors in the leading US Universities being 11.5 to 1 [1], there is a growing danger that Stanford will go the way other universities have gone: lowering academic standards, admitting students based in their identity affiliations (and of course rich parents who could skirt the system), lowering faculty standards in technical departments, etc... The Stanford startups will move towards social engineering, disguised as impact investing. Move towards normalizing the discrimination against Asian and Indian male students and entrepreneurs. [1] https://econjwatch.org/articles/faculty-voter-registration-in-economics-history-journalism-communications-law-and-psychology https://econjwatch.org/articles/faculty-voter-registration-i...
- stephencanon 5y ago
  Are you suggesting that Stanford needs to lower its standards to create reserved spaces for Republicans?
  - throwaway1959 5y ago
    Of course not. I am not actually sure how to solve this problem. I think a good start would be to move back towards encouraging freedom of speech on campus and dialog between people with different opinions.
    - whatever_dude 5y ago
      If one of those sides specializes in ignoring verifiable facts, and is of the "opinion" that entire groups of people shouldn't exist, I'm not sure there's much to be gained by any sort of "dialog".
      - bacheaul 5y ago
        Are you suggesting that this is fair characterisation of Republicans in a general sense? I'm not sure that all Republicans would agree with this. And I definitely consider myself on the liberal side of the political spectrum. I can empathise that it's difficult to have a dialog with some individuals who are only interested in convincing you of the correctness of their world view and not understanding others, but inflamatory rhetoric like this doesn't help.
paxys 5y ago
My guess is more VC influence
jdsully 5y ago
This is highly misleading on a key proof: Microsoft was never venture backed in the common meaning. They did accept VC investment from David F. Marquardt to get him as an advisor while they restructured to go public. His firm owned 6% and was never a major investor. Microsoft was profitable pretty much from the start and didn’t need the money.
Animats 5y ago
Stanford is now an investment and real estate firm that runs a school on the side as a tax break. Some years back, in the 1990s (?) the university created the Stanford Management Company to manage the endowment. That was originally located out on Sand Hill Road, near the VCs. SMC started investing in startups. Like Google, Cisco, etc. This was a new thing at the time. Classically, universities only invested in passive investments. Over time, the Stanford Management Company produced very good returns, and acquired more influence over the university. It's become far more than an investment office. Leland Sr. would have loved how it came out.
TedShiller 5y ago
?

51 points by adrian_mrd 5y ago

This was a snippet of a whole report. Here is the full report https://stanford.app.box.com/v/Stanford-Tech-History-Project https://stanford.app.box.com/v/Stanford-Tech-History-Project

temp8964 5y ago

Why can't Standford open another campus in, say, Austin?

ardit33 5y ago
They tried to open one in NYC (Roosevelt Island, Development, between Manhattan and LIC), but there was major pushback by both faculty and some students/alumi They felt opening Stanford to more students will dilute its brand/exclusivity feel, and character, yada yada.... Basically, some folks that wanted to keep it an exclusive club, nixed it. Right now Cornell has a tech campus there.
- drfuchs 5y ago
  New York held a competition for establishing a campus on Roosevelt Island, and Stanford competed strongly, and was considered the shoo-in candidate, but they were sent home with their tail between their legs when the Cornell / Technion team won the bid. Nobody on the Stanford side nixed it; they lost and everyone in Silicon Valley was astonished.
908B64B197 5y ago
Has a satellite campus ever worked anywhere?
- mc32 5y ago
  Didn’t Stanford open a small campus in Japan, maybe still has one?
  - chris11 5y ago
    A quick google search makes it seem like their Kyoto campus is for a study abroad program. and it's located in Doshisha University. https://ealc.stanford.edu/undergraduate-program/study-abroad https://ealc.stanford.edu/undergraduate-program/study-abroad
- _delirium 5y ago
  It's too early to be sure, but Cornell Tech, the new-ish satellite campus of Cornell in NYC, looks to be on a successful trajectory.
  - chirau 5y ago
    I remember when Cornell Tech was just a fraction of a floor in the Google Chelsea office. If there sheer growth in presence in the city is anything to go by, it looks they have invested a lot in it. I mean, a lot.
- chirau 5y ago
  Duke has a really amazing and world renowned satellite medical school in Singapore.
- redis_mlc 5y ago
  I don't know if you'd call the UC (University of California) system satellites, but they seem to work well. I vaguely remember reading about some Western universities opening branches in China, which will probably grow larger than the original locations. Not sure what happens when you flunk a princeling though, if that's even possible.
- iancmceachern 5y ago
  Wharton?
paxys 5y ago
Satellite campuses never work. They would have to build an entire Stanford University System which would then need to ensure that every individual location was keeping up with their "brand". There's a reason why "I'm a UC graduate" doesn't mean much, but Berkeley most certainly does.
- temp8964 5y ago
  I don't think it is that definitive. It's hard, but not impossible. Also, it doesn't have to begin with a whole university system. A few departments could be fine. I wouldn't say begin with a small elite campus on a focused area is a task deemed to fail.
rejectedandsad 5y ago
UT Austin already exists and is a top CS school? Why would it need to be Stanford?
temp8964 5y ago
@dang, it seems your software is overreacting. redis_mlc 's comment under this thread is totally fine, not sure why it was killed. Is it bc it mentioned "China"? I have seen a few overkills recently, so just asking.
- grzm 5y ago
  Given that the majority of their recent comments are [dead], 'redis_mlc is likely banned. If you see a dead-yet-worthwhile comment, you can vouch for it. (Also, @dang doesn't do anything special: if you want to contact the moderators, email them using the Contact link in the footer.)

narush 5y ago

> Venture capitalists are a primary source of vigor [1] for the entrepreneurial ecosystem of Silicon Valley, and venture capital as an asset class largely punches above its weight. Maybe I'm a bit cynical, but this is the first sentence in a post written by an investor about an investor. So, ya know, I'm a bit skeptical. The cited paper does very little to make me feel any better. For one, it's not a history paper - you know... the closest bit of academia to the "study of what happened." It's an economics paper that uses some sort of system model to argue for what links / nodes are valuable in the "silicon valley network." Yeah, nah. Systems like these rely on far to many assumptions-from-no-where to make compelling arguments about how the real world works. One can massage these models to output pretty much any result one wants (tweak the constants a bit in favor of the venture capitalists, if you so desire). I'll also note I stopped reading the post there. The rest of it might be inspired, but I couldn't make it through that first sentence. [1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03085140902786827 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0308514090278682...

throwaway1959 5y ago

At the end of the article, the author seem to have listed every diversity criteria, except the diversity of thought. With Democrat to Republican ratio of professors in the leading US Universities being 11.5 to 1 [1], there is a growing danger that Stanford will go the way other universities have gone: lowering academic standards, admitting students based in their identity affiliations (and of course rich parents who could skirt the system), lowering faculty standards in technical departments, etc... The Stanford startups will move towards social engineering, disguised as impact investing. Move towards normalizing the discrimination against Asian and Indian male students and entrepreneurs. [1] https://econjwatch.org/articles/faculty-voter-registration-in-economics-history-journalism-communications-law-and-psychology https://econjwatch.org/articles/faculty-voter-registration-i...

stephencanon 5y ago
Are you suggesting that Stanford needs to lower its standards to create reserved spaces for Republicans?
- throwaway1959 5y ago
  Of course not. I am not actually sure how to solve this problem. I think a good start would be to move back towards encouraging freedom of speech on campus and dialog between people with different opinions.
  - whatever_dude 5y ago
    If one of those sides specializes in ignoring verifiable facts, and is of the "opinion" that entire groups of people shouldn't exist, I'm not sure there's much to be gained by any sort of "dialog".
    - bacheaul 5y ago
      Are you suggesting that this is fair characterisation of Republicans in a general sense? I'm not sure that all Republicans would agree with this. And I definitely consider myself on the liberal side of the political spectrum. I can empathise that it's difficult to have a dialog with some individuals who are only interested in convincing you of the correctness of their world view and not understanding others, but inflamatory rhetoric like this doesn't help.

paxys 5y ago

My guess is more VC influence

jdsully 5y ago

This is highly misleading on a key proof: Microsoft was never venture backed in the common meaning. They did accept VC investment from David F. Marquardt to get him as an advisor while they restructured to go public. His firm owned 6% and was never a major investor. Microsoft was profitable pretty much from the start and didn’t need the money.

Animats 5y ago

Stanford is now an investment and real estate firm that runs a school on the side as a tax break. Some years back, in the 1990s (?) the university created the Stanford Management Company to manage the endowment. That was originally located out on Sand Hill Road, near the VCs. SMC started investing in startups. Like Google, Cisco, etc. This was a new thing at the time. Classically, universities only invested in passive investments. Over time, the Stanford Management Company produced very good returns, and acquired more influence over the university. It's become far more than an investment office. Leland Sr. would have loved how it came out.

TedShiller 5y ago