Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City

THE POWER OF ALUMNI

Internships and recruiting events are a powerful way to engage students with the startup community. Connecting the threads of the startup community with entrepreneurial alumni, especially those who have moved out of town after they graduated, is another powerful dynamic.

Although many universities look at their successful entrepreneurial alumni as sources of funding, I encourage them to make a huge mental shift and view them as leaders who can contribute back to the university in many nonfinancial ways. When they do this, they often get more money from the alumni than they would have otherwise, and they create a much more satisfying relationship with the alumni.

Almost all successful entrepreneurs who I’ve met have affinity for their school. You hear of stories about famous Stanford alums (Brin, Yang), MIT alums (Bose, Stata, D’Arbeloff, Swanson), and University of Michigan alums (Page, Costolo). Although you don’t always hear about CU Boulder entrepreneurial alums, there are plenty of them, including Glenn Jones (Jones Intercable), Libby Cook (Wild Oats), Steve Ells (Chipotle), and other up-and-coming stars like Dave Morin (Path, Facebook) and Jeremy Bloom (Integrate).

There are a handful of very simple things universities can do to leverage the power of entrepreneurial alumni, especially those who have moved to a different part of the world:

Bring alumni back to campus: First, invite them back to campus annually and make it easy for them to come. Have them ...