Universities Need To Develop Entrepreneurs

It's interesting to hear an outside view on entrepreneurship at MIT. Inside of MIT, most Course VI (Computer Science) students have gone through 4 years without even having a single conversation about starting a company.

There is a single class with Course 6 that teaches skills for presenting an idea and putting together a project proposal, but it's aimed at seniors going into industry and working at a large company, or students going onto grad school.

There are resources available - but most of them are accessed by MBAs and Alums. Dropping out of school to start a company is something that's considered a huge risk by your undergrad peers. The few that do are definitely given respect, but because the academic program is so tough - dropping out for most things is considered giving up, and not really an option which most people think is viable. Most would-be entrepreneurs wait until after graduation, go to grad school and drop out there - or work at a big company until they get tired of it. The community (of students and professors) just doesn't encourage many students to leave or take time off.

This however, is entirely different from the Institute. MIT as an institute (deans, registrar..etc) let's undergrads in good standing take a leave of absence with a single sheet of paperwork and a single 5-20 minute phone call. To get back in after the leave of absence - the same single sheet and 5 minute phone call are put through, and then any financial aid paperwork has to be renewed. If most undergrads knew how easy it was - I think more would try it.

It's interesting to me that about 2-3 years out of school, 60% of my older friends have consistently started "itching" for something more interested where they can push themselves to their own limits like they did during their undergrad career. This is in sharp contrast to the countless job fairs students go to their junior and senior year which encourage them to take the safe route and work for a "large" company.

NOTE - These comments about MIT and its community are strictly from my personal experience with taking a leave of absence from MIT to start a company, coming back, and leaving again with 2 classes left to start another company. (I did this in the period from 2002-2006). I also think that that the various MIT (entrepreneurship) clubs around the country really help with the community.

Stanford does a lot of this, as the article mentioned, but there's a bit of tunnel vision in the entrepreneurship resources throughout the university. For example, it's virtually all geared toward starting ventures which will require a great deal of Venture Capital. There's a tremendous amount of emphasis on developing presentations to give to VCs. Those skills are useful, but they're emphasized at the expense of other critical topics like knowing your customer, recruiting talented employees, or being able to execute.

Almost none are remotely capable of this.

There's certainly a lot of interest and activity around entrepreneurship at Berkeley. This URL gives a sense of some of what's happening here: http://cet.berkeley.edu/curriculum.htm

Montreal has a tech scene? Since when? I can't picture any city in Canada having a tech/entrepreneur scene. At least not one as a solid as the one in the Valley.