3 ms·
I'm going to say something obnoxious but true. Lots of universities train people to be able to work at startups; but only Stanford (and, distantly behind it, M
by michaelochurch 13y ago
I'm going to say something obnoxious but true.
Lots of universities train people to be able to work at startups; but only Stanford (and, distantly behind it, MIT and Harvard) trains people to own them. Very few schools inculcate the confidence, as a 22-year-old with no work history, to walk into an investor's office and ask for a million-dollar seed round. But at Stanford, where seed investment is a graduation present, that's normal to people.
The rest of the country has some fierce talent and there are capable people everywhere, but there are only a few places where it's normal for people to think of being a founder as a logical next step. Merely working at a startup isn't the same thing.
I think this can be overcome. There's a lot of talent outside of a small, privileged echo chamber and there's no good reason why it should be excluded from the highest levels of work autonomy. I'm just pointing things out as they are now.
- hpagey 13y agoThe primary reason of Stanford's success is the availability of high risk capital from local angels and VC firms. ATL has no such setup which prevents Tech's startup environment from being like Stanford's. It will remain so for foreseeable future. Also, most of the ATL companies are bootstrapped and there is no cultural of handing out liberal stock options. This greatly reduces the number of early stage investors created due to exit events. Now, ATL is a great place to bootstrap and start B2B companies. But that requires certain work and life experience.
- michaelochurch 13y agoAlso, most of the ATL companies are bootstrapped and there is no cultural of handing out liberal stock options. Valley startups don't hand out liberal options, not anymore. Typical for a 20th employee is around 0.05%, which rarely makes up for what's lost by taking a below-market salary. (Plenty of Tumblr employees cashed out with less than a million.) Almost no one going into the VC-funded world now is going to get rich enough to become an angel investor. That ship sailed about ten years ago.
- kmassey 13y ago"ATL has no set up..." Please. See my comments above regarding angel investing in ATL and VC firms in GA, etc.
- kenster07 13y agoWhy is it desirable for fresh college grads to be deluded into thinking they can found a company without any real work experience?
- timtamboy63 13y agoFresh college grads should always have a range of internships under their belt. Tech has one of the best co-op programs in the country. If you're graduating without interning or co-oping somewhere, you're doing it wrong
- kenster07 13y agoThere are not many skilled and experienced workers would work for a ceo who has but a few internships under his or her belt. A fresh college grad may be able to design a web product, but let us not confuse this with running a real company.
- rayiner 13y agoMy experience as an undergrad in the AE department was thus: you're irrelevant to the professors working on grant projects, and if you're not PHD material well just do your problem sets, finish your degree, then get the hell out. Throw in the absolutely awful adminstrative side, and its an exercise in teaching students how not to take ownership. It seems geared to training worker bees for Big Engineering, and identiying the few suitable for Big Academia. Then again, its probably changed a lot in the last decade. I started school just after the last tech bubble popped.
- apu 13y agoAgreed, from someone who was there at roughly the same time. (I was AE 2000-2005...I wonder if we overlapped?)