Yale Fights to Keep Student Start-Ups From Defecting to Silicon Valley | Hacker News Reader

Yale Fights to Keep Student Start-Ups From Defecting to Silicon Valley

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19 pointsdaveambrose37 comments

These guys don't seem to understand that the critical ingredient is investors. Half the startups we fund start out in Boston, which is much more of a startup hub than New Haven. And still most of the successful ones end up in the Valley, because that's where the investors are.

If YC doesn't cause startups to take root in Boston (not that we care; we're neutral on the question), this program is unlikely to make startups take root in New Haven.

How about for non-web (or even non-software) companies? Two of the six YEI featured companies are in totally different industries (water purification and materials), are they really at a disadvantage for being in New Haven rather than someplace else?

I don't know. It depends how centralized those industries are in particular cities, and whether New Haven is one of them.

Paul, what about idea incubation? I went to a school similar to Yale in the mindset of Investment Banking, Consulting and Law School was the end-all-be-all; wouldn't this be a great resource for interested students to mix/match with successful alumni, interested board members and a rich network?

I'm strongly considering this for Georgetown.

What is idea incubation? Working on your startup's business plan while in school? Sounds like premature optimization. Or more precisely, what Trevor calls "turd polishing."

If you want to start a web/software startup, the best thing you can do while in school is just start hacking with your friends. Maybe a company will grow out of it, maybe not, but you'll get the two most important ingredients for a startup: expertise and co-founders.

But hack, don't plan.

...don't plan. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hill_climbing

> Investment Banking, Consulting and Law School was the end-all-be-all; wouldn't this be a great resource for interested students to mix/match with successful alumni, interested board members and a rich network?

You tell us - what, exactly, do such folks have to contribute? (I'm sure that they're great lawyers, but does John Doerr invite any of them to dinner?) If they're such a great startup resource, where are the startups?

Well, Connecticut does have a significant number of investors for pharmaceutical products and other life sciences startups - but not much for the web.

See https://www.pwcmoneytree.com/MTPublic/ns/nav.jsp?page=region...

Speaking as someone who vaguely knows many of the people who are involved in YEI, the yale students involved are very much in the same vein as the marketing folks who you'd see creating companies during the first web bubble, where the technology folks who actually do the design and whatnot are second tier.

There exist counter examples,but thats certainly the general trend

Is it such a problem that technically oriented, entrepreneurial Yale students head out to silicon valley for funding? After all, I wouldn't expect Yale to try to dissuade finance-types from working on wall street. Instead, it would make more sense to tout the students' success stories in these two regions - ie., prove that you don't have to go to Stanford to succeed on Sand Hill Road, and that you don't have to go to Columbia to succeed on wall street.

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.)

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

"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"

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.

Fuck that, it was awesome

Isn't Yale where you go when you can't be bothered to start a company, because you're inheriting one from your family?

Emmett and Justin of Justin.TV went there.

Additionally, off the top of my head, Joel Spolsky and Olin Shivers.

Boolah boolah.

Joel went to Penn, didn't he?

From his webpage:

    I came back to the US for college, where I attended the 
    University of Pennsylvania for one year, then transferred 
    to Yale, where I got a BS in Computer Science.

So yes, but mostly Yale.

Thanks. I should have checked his site. I just remembered his name from an alumni thing at Penn.

VideoEgg and LicketyShip were started by Yalies.

Ahhh, how I love misconceptions and prejudices..sigh!

Sadly, I dropped out of community college so my concept of Yale is formed by Mr. Burns of the Simpsons. My apologies for the bad joke. Besides, heirs and heiresses skip college and go straight to reality TV these days.

You do realize that most of the writers for the Simpsons went to Harvard...

Great comment:

Yale has too much of a business/MBA/manager orientation (read: inefficient, simpleminded bean-counting).

Unfortunately, the entire country is seeing the fruits of a decade or so of “investment management’s” influence.

Tech people need to understand that save for MIT and environs, the east coast is at best s second rate tech hub.

Perhaps, but there will always be a select few that push the traditional boundaries and challenge the status quo. Maybe there won't be too many, but those that do can reap the rewards.

Yes, a very few will beat the odds. What benefit did they get for their extra risk?

Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but wouldn't they just defect after the 10 week program, especially since the majority are tech startups?

After 10 weeks of working with Yale faculty and New Haven based lawyers, accountants, etc, they'd have much more reason to stay.

Can you explain in more detail?

He means that they are already vested in a working relationship so why change a good thing.

They have a relationship, but what is it working toward and what is it good for?

How many of the lawyers in New Haven are or personally know partners at Wilson Sonsini? (If you don't recognize the name ....) I know paralegals with shelves full of "tombstones". How many can I find in New Haven? (Again, if you don't know what a tombstone is ....)

The important thing about Silicon Valley is that almost everyone involved has done it before. (Yes, it may be the first time for some/all of the founding team, but everyone else is a veteran.) How many people in New Haven can say the same?

No one said it was in the students' best interest, just that the goal was to get more companies to stay in New Haven.

Well, of course. Because everyone knows New Haven, Connecticut is a global hub of technological innovation...

The Silicon Valley ecosystem is too well established? (...even people from the other side of the planet are looking to Silicon Valley if they are into tech and coming to America).

In like forth sentence I read "Business Plan".

Fail.

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