Comment by fuzzmeister | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fuzzmeister | Hacker News Reader

I'm a freshman here at Wash U. Have you heard of WUTE? It's a small but growing organization of tech entrepreneurs, check it out at wute.wustl.edu. I met with the head of the club yesterday (he's a computer science professor) and it seems like a great group of people. Also, did you attend the recent IdeaBounce? It's a great way to meet people interested in entrepreneurship; I actually found quite a few people who are just as involved in the technology community as I am. I'd love to talk to you, here's my email: http://mailhide.recaptcha.net/d?k=01vqV9OdbUlDk40CbmVWIumw==...

As a whole, though, I do agree with your sentiment: a disheartening number of people here are perfectly content with getting their masters and scoring a steady paycheck at a large corporation. I suspect that the situation may be similar at most any other university, though. I don't see why it would be specific to WUSTL.

Seconded the suggestion of IdeaBounce. There's actually a fair amount of entrepreneurial spirit at WashU, though a lot tends to be in the biomedical area. While I wasn't a WashU student (ex-fiance was), I participated in IdeaBounce for a while and eventually networked my way into several other groups in St. Louis that were doing interesting things.

Beyond that, I had a similar experience as a student at Iowa State. Smallish town, a lot of folks focused on getting jobs, and the general creativity of the entrepreneurial groups a bit lacking. Eventually I made my way through to various programs about start-ups run by the state of Iowa and met a number of angels, early stage investors purely to meet other people doing interesting things (which landed me time doing sales at a photovoltaics company and business planning for a textbook coop idea). Really my goal was to meet a lot of people and learn a lot of things such that, when I moved out of Iowa (I'm in SF now), I felt like I made the most of the opportunity in the time I spent there.

In the end, I think if you try to be open and meet a lot of people, you'll eventually find others that share your interest and match well. Use STL as a place to hone your skills, toss ideas off people, and prepare yourself for opportunities in the future. Perhaps something will stick between now and graduation but, if it doesn't, you'll have learned a lot.

I actually attended the first few WUTE meetings last year, though I wasn't all too impressed with the attendees (largely grad students with a medical lean).

I haven't had a chance to check out an IdeaBounce, but you're right -- perhaps I should.

In any case, I'll send you an email!

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