Hacker News Reader

Comment by kapauldo | Hacker News Reader

The answer is no, sadly. There are no good university affiliated incubators. They are all inevitably run by professors and academic administrators who have no understanding of startups (financial and time crises, for example). I have a lot of experience here, and I don't mean to sound cynical but I'm 100% certain here. There is not 1 single successful university incubator if you take percentage of going concern businesses (successful launches) over business initiations as a metric. Every professor wants to "start a business" but none of them are willing to take the risk of leaving tenured jobs, so they all end in resentful exploited students walking away. I advise you to steer clear of this.

View on HN

Certainly there are countless examples of faculty serving on SABs of start-ups using technologies coming out of their labs. [I agree faculty rarely leave jobs for this, but then, they're not typical operational people anyway...]

I agree regarding metrics: if it's absolute returns, there's little hope for the univ-associated incubator model. This is at least partly because you might be obligated to spend time with teams on which you would otherwise pass.

But, clearly the university has numerous metrics including faculty/student retention & opportunities, community development, publicity, etc.

May I ask -- is your negative perception rooted in experiences with incubators?

my negative perception is partially rooted in experiences with incubators, but more so with academics in general. academics would do far better (and so would everyone) if they just licensed their IP for a small percent (like 1-5%) and then let ambition entrepreneurs take the innovation to market. the universities are full of trophy technologies because the academics themselves confuse their ability to innovate academically with their ability and willingness (including personal risk) to execute in business. i have observed first and second hand that there is a trend with academics that they are never willing to risk their own skin but will gladly risk young people's skin, and overvalue their contributions, and effectively take advantage of young people's innocent ambition. and it is innocent ambition that always executes innovation.

i reiterate my advice to the poster, walk away from this. he will waste 5 or 10 years of his life on this and statistically, there will not be a single business of lasting value that will come out of it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com