Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City

UNIVERSITIES

There is a strong conventional belief that for a startup community to be successful, it has to be located close to a major university. The two regularly cited examples of this are MIT’s proximity to Cambridge/Boston/Route 128 and Stanford’s proximity to Silicon Valley. Although a university presence is valuable to a startup community, I reject the premise that the startup community is dependent on the university. It’s from this perspective that I categorize universities as feeders to the startup community.

Universities have five resources relevant to entrepreneurship: students, professors, research labs, entrepreneurship programs, and technology transfer offices. The first two resources, which are people, are much more important than the last three, which are institutions. The idea that people are always more important than institutions is fundamental to creating a healthy startup community.

Students are by far the most important contribution of a university to a startup community. Every year, a new crop of eager freshmen arrive on campus. Some of these freshmen are destined to become entrepreneurs; others will work for startups. Regardless of what they end up doing, they all bring new ideas and fresh perspectives to the community. Additionally, each year brings new graduate students to the community. These graduate students are almost always a net positive contribution to the intellectual capacity of the community. Some will engage in entrepreneurship, either through ...