In 2012 at Carnegie Mellon, Luis von Ahn (reCAPTCHA, Duolingo) headed a similar type of startup class where students spend time creating their own startup. One of these startups, PayTango, made it into Y Combinator (W13).
I believe UT Austin has been doing this for a while in an official capacity, as an offered course for undergraduate students. I'm not sure of any major success stories from their program. Their program is called 1 Semester Startup.
As a designer living and working in Atlanta I often forget how much engineering talent we have locally. I've been to the Georgia Tech campus for a few events and was impressed with many of the students (and former students) I've met. I look forward to seeing my city develop its own technology culture and companies. Maybe someday I'll find the right people here and help make something myself. For now, it's all client work.
I live quite close to Atlanta! Shoot me an email hi@josh.ml and let's chat.
yeah man -- there is a surprising amount going on here. i think a decent amount of atl folks are probably here on hn as well. get in touch if you ever wanna talk.
Concrete-jungle.org is just awesome. Just saw it on your profile. Really cool idea.
thanks! this time of year is some welcome down-time for us before things get really busy in late spring. :)
woo, in atl and went to GT, just saying hi!
> It is not an official program sponsored by the Institute and will in no way be recognized on your transcripts or degree.
Yup, it's entirely student run (for now).
Interesting concept. Some of the fine print is sketchy. Seems like this is something that should end up on a transcript in some way or another.
And this title:
Dr. Chris Reaves, Advisor Extraordinaire
This is entirely student run right now. We're trying to make it an official program.
Props.
Sounds fun and good luck! Excited to see what you guys make.
Georgia Tech really seems to be taking initiative here with this and their MOOC, I hope more schools follow suit with similar ideas.
It doesn't seem like this was started by the school, but by the students.