

Why UT Austin is second-rate at producing startup founders - elbenshira
http://greengiraffe.posterous.com/why-ut-austin-is-second-rate-at-producing-sta

======
tansey
I think the same article could be written about lots of top ten schools,
particularly the larger ones. Take UCSD for example: top 10 CS program, great
city for young people, decent amount of angels/VCs floating around La Jolla,
huge city (LA) only an hour away with access to even more capital... yet there
hasn't been a major tech SD startup since mp3.com.

Big schools do not foster startups. I wonder if it's because smaller schools
have more in common with startups? They have smaller staffs, leaner budgets,
and typically fewer ridiculous processes. Key example: I just applied to
Stanford and UTCS for my PhD. Stanford has clear info on deadlines and sent me
an automated email reminder a few days before the app was due. UT Austin
requires you to fill out two separate applications (one for the general UT
system and another for UTCS), with different deadlines for each, inconsistent
deadline info between the two systems, requiring duplicate information, and
setting up a convoluted group of user accounts.

It is very hard to get big schools to understand startups. Virginia Tech was
pushing very hard to encourage starting more tech companies, but their
approach was to build a gigantic Corporate Research Center with isolated
buildings and establishing formal "partnerships" with established or funded
companies. Projects like the BT transit app get buzz only after they are a
hit; and they don't try to compound the momentum by getting an order of
magnitude more students working on their own apps, but rather let everything
die down and force the few startup-friendly professors to start all over
again.

As with most big organizations, the problems are fairly obvious. It's just
nearly impossible to get them to change anything, especially since the main
issue is a lack of willingness to change things.

~~~
puredemo
Just a side note, I see CS program ranking thrown around here quite often.
Exactly where are these pulled from?

~~~
tmurray
Generally, the US News and World Reports college rankings.

------
clavalle
I went through ChE at UT Austin in the 96-00 period. Most of my friends were
in CS or EE (which kind of explains my actual career path) and it seems that
their experience was much, much different than this persons. They were hacking
C and Perl and the better ones were getting odd jobs in industry through their
professors by the middle of their Sophomore year.

They had some pretty challenging real world like projects to do (way more than
I ever got a chance to work on so early, that is for certain) from identifying
a problem, choosing the infrastructure that would be most conducive to solving
the problem before the deadline, coding the solution and finally, testing the
crud out of other people's projects...

Finally, at the first opportunity, a bunch of us broke off and started a
company and so on etc. etc.

It is easy to blame culture and professors or other people in authority but
ultimately the bulk of the community, in this case, are students. It is
ridiculously easy to start a student organization. If I remember correctly, UT
will even grant $700 or so to get started so there is little excuse not to
generate interest and involvement. Then again, maybe it is better to just go
hack and meet like minded students...

As a side note, I think it is a terrible idea to get business students
involved in any attempt at a startup. They add very little and tend to want to
take over in my experience.

------
acallan
I am a UTCS graduate, working in industry.

At UT, I spent 2 years programming both Haskell and C++, and then 2 years with
very little programming. We focused instead on theorem proving and
linguistics. This has a lot to do with Dijkstra's legacy in the department.

Implementation, industry, and start-ups are thought as an exercise left for
the reader, and not part of curriculum. Throughout my career, I've always felt
proud about this.

------
tmurray
Am I missing something, or is this article just another variation on "my CS
program didn't prepare me for my particular career of choice because it didn't
teach me everything I needed to know on day one?" You can make this claim
about any CS program you want and how it should teach agile development
practices or Ruby or version control or whatever particular thing you've found
useful during your day job, but that really shouldn't be the measure of a
degree program. I think an undergraduate program should be measured in two
ways:

\- Does your education enable you to identify general types of problems and
know how to solve them? (as in "oh, this can be expressed as a graph search
problem and I can create an admissible heuristic, so I can use A* to find the
shortest path between these two points, done")

\- Did your education provide a solid enough understanding of the fundamentals
to enable you to learn most things that you don't understand fairly quickly?

That's it. How hard is it to learn git (or your source control of choice)? A
particular development methodology? iPhone programming? The average turnaround
time I've seen from hiring a new college graduate to having that person be a
meaningful contributor to a large project is between two and three months. I'd
much rather that CS programs keep preparing them for more and different
theoretical things instead of limiting that for the sole purpose of trying to
make that transition period a few weeks shorter.

------
aliguori
I'm a graduate of UTCS.

I only had one class that used Java. Different classes were taught in C, Lisp,
Scheme, ML, Haskell, etc. If anything, most students complain about not enough
Java.

It's certainly the case that startups aren't emphasized. What's emphasized is
research. For the professors that are really working with students, they are
focused on getting them into a graduate program.

The type of research done at UT tends to be pretty forward looking and not the
type of thing its easy to build a start up from.

But honestly, 99% of startups aren't dealing with the products of advanced
university research. For the most part, a successful startup needs people that
are solving problems that have already been solved before. It's not the type
of thing that a research university really should be pushing students toward.

------
naner
_First, our professors think that getting a job at a big, stable company is a
good thing. Is it?_

Yes. Most people aren't looking to start a company right after graduating
college.

Startups are rare. Successful ones are practically endangered species.

------
pavel_lishin
> (I've met seniors that have never used version control!)

I was one of those seniors, albeit at UT Dallas. I wasn't alone, by far. I was
a Comp Sci major, not a Software Engineering major, but the majority of my
classmates probably couldn't write a piece of code that ran.

No real solutions, just reiterating the scary facts about people who call
themselves programmers.

~~~
bbarthel
Is source control considered that large an educational opportunity that the
lack of classroom discussion is a barrier? When I hire someone that is a 15
minute conversation and maybe a cheat sheet taped to their monitor -
regardless of education. If they can't pick it up by the end of the day that's
usually a good sign that things aren't going to go well.

Not that there aren't plenty of educational opportunities surrounding the
implementation of a good control system, just that teaching basic usage just
seems to be a little simple.

Now not being able to write running code is a serious problem and it is
frightening that someone could graduate after 4 years of computer science and
never have written a working program.

~~~
pavel_lishin
It is simple, but not having had experience with source control is usually an
indicator that the developer in question probably isn't very good.

And yes, I did basically just say that I'm probably not a very good developer.
:)

~~~
bbarthel
From a hiring standpoint its not something I look for in recent graduates. I
also don't ask whether you have learned to use an IDE. Those just aren't
things I expect you to have been taught in a high-quality cs program because
those are things I expect to teach you on the job in under a week - along with
all the other project specific things you will need to learn (like which
frameworks we are using, what coding standards we use, our check-in policy,
etc.) If you have learned to use them and are familiar with them, great. It
won't really affect your chances of being hired though because in our next
project we may be using a completely different set of tools, and I will expect
you to learn how to use those instead.

Now if you are claiming 5+ years of professional experience and have never
used a source control system that is likely to trigger a whole set of negative
questions surrounding what kind of experience you actually have, but it isn't
a deal breaker - just a warning sign.

------
vishie
So I did my BSEE at UT and am now doing a PhD at Stanford. While at Stanford,
I have been a part of two funded startups (cofounder of one, and 5th employee
at the other). It is certainly the case that Stanford offers many more
opportunities to explore startups, entrepreneurship, and general business
education for ee, cs, and other technical majors. That is due to three main
things. The first is a handful of startup/and business courses such as MS&E
273 (Technology Venture Formation), and EE204 (Business for Computer
Scientists), and a few others. Note that these are graduate level courses, but
they do count as 3 graded units of engineering credit. Also note that I have
not included the iphone app etc courses. While these are cool hacker courses,
they don't really focuses on how to start a company or the principles of
running a business.

The second thing is the constant presence of startup companies on campus. They
hold hack-a-thons, infosessions, sponsor events and competitions, and so on.
This is extremely important to get students excited and involved in the
startup world, as it is very different from big company world.

The third thing is that many of the students (though still a minority) are
interested in or currently pursuing a startup. There are several on-campus
business plan competitions that are well attended by engineering students and
there are terrific resources on campus (and around campus) for pursuing
startups.

Honestly, I think UT is doing a pretty decent job. Austin has a fairly strong
startup presence, and I know startups recruit there. There are certainly hack-
a-thons and business plan competitions. I think they could certainly benefit
from a few business oriented engineering courses. My main gripe about UT, as
the OP mentioned, is their curriculum and the general attitude is extremely
focused on cranking out engineers for large companies (and they are very good
at this). I do not think that their goal should be to generate more startups,
but I do think that they should provide a more well-rounded exposure to
different opportunities. While I was there I got very little exposure to
research, and almost no exposure to startups (for the record, I was at
Stanford for almost 2 years before I got involved in a startup).

So in conclusion, Stanford is certainly not a magical startup land like many
think it is, but they do provide a very well-rounded exposure to different
opportunities. UT is already doing a decent job of promoting entrepreneurship,
but they could be doing a lot more, especially in their curriculum.

------
robertbanh
I agree with some points, but I also see the benefit of learning real
programming from Java/Haskell.

I graduated from UTCS and I see too many web programmers just load up RoR Gems
to perform something that takes 10 lines of code. Same thing with jQuery
libraries... young programmers are not learning how to program, and if you
tell them there is this shortcut they will take it.

Foundation is needed, that's the hidden secret. After you master foundation,
then you can hack any code no matter the language.

~~~
NickC_dev
The UT ECE department does a pretty good job trying to remedy this, but ends
up having the opposite problem. Yale Patt's EE306, Intro to Computing, takes
the class from transistors up to assembly on a simplified architecture.

Intro to Programming helps students get their feet wet in C and the subsequent
Data Structures and Algorithms courses are entirely Java. Intro to
Microcontrollers is C and assembly.

Here's where UTECE falls flat, with respect to startups. After getting a
decent foundation in "Real Programming", further specialization in tools
useful for web startups (php/ruby/jquery) is left as an exercise to the
student. Case in point, I'm a 3rd year Comp. E and I have yet to hear the word
"database" uttered in a classroom.

A web apps class doesn't even have to be good. I would take it just to meet
other hackers who are probably self-taught by now anyway.

------
tsestrich
I found that this article could easily have been written about my University,
from which I graduated about a year ago. I wanted to do a startup-esque
project for my Senior Design capstone project, and I had no end of
complications in getting the project approved. It seemed every other student
was doing some sort of "academic" endeavor working under a professor (with
students all in the same major of course).

I would guess that a majority of Universities are somewhat narrow in their
focus and what their definition of success for their students is.

------
michaelfairley
I think the problem is that the feedback loop between UTCS and the Austin
startup community hasn't hit a critical level. I can't name a single product
made by an Austin startup that I've used, while I can think of dozens within a
few miles of Stanford. Additionally, plenty of SV startups are within walking
distance of Stanford, whereas most Austin startups are at least 10 minutes (by
car) from the UT campus and are located in office parks, rather than the open
pedestrian environments of University Ave and Castro.

~~~
tfinster
If you've ever read a customer review on Dell's, Macy's, Costco's, or Home
Depot's websites, you've used an Austin startup product - BazaarVoice. If
you've recently booked a vacation rental, you've almost certainly used one of
HomeAway's properties (they're in the middle of consolidating the entire
industry). Maybe you've looked for a job via Indeed.com? Use Gowalla instead
of Foursquare (Gowalla relocated from Dallas)?

The startups are there; they are far and few now but rapidly increasing. I
fully agree with you on the disconnect between academia and the startup
community though - it's frustrating just how hard it is for Austin startups to
hire UT talent.

~~~
jderick
Or if you've ever used a Dell computer. :)

------
aguynamedben
The title of this article is kind of BS. I went to UT's business school and
studied Management Information Systems (I call it watered-down computer
science), and I founded a successful startup with another UT grad.

The courses at UT, even in the business school, do not prepare you perfectly
for startup world. But an important thing to realize is that being a startup
founder is about desire and taking risks. It's about eclipsing the limitations
of your formal education. There are plenty of successful entrepreneurs from
even just my class at UT. The real founders pick up and go to San Francisco or
New York to get shit done.

I agree with your general sentiment that the CS department should integrate
with real world projects more. I don't think UT in general is a haven for
future startup founders. But since when is it the role of a university to
produce startup founders? That's a personal duty. Saying UT Austin is second
rate at producing startup founders just doesn't make sense. The good ones,
whatever school they happened to go to, go to Silicon Valley or their industry
equivalent, so you aren't around them anymore to see.

This is more of a comparison of Austin tech to Silicon Valley tech, which, for
the foreseeable future, Silicon Valley will win definitively. That's why the
tech entrepreneurs that you're missing are out here. =)

------
megaman821
I was in UTCS from '00 - '06. I got a chance to program in a diverse set of
languages, learn a lot of theory, and get introduced to many practical
concepts like networking, security, and databases.

They give students the tools, the entrepreneurial desire has to come from
within.

------
simplify
I just graduated from UTCS this past May.

It's completely true that UT's CS program teach you real world programming.
But that's completely besides its purpose. UT's CS program is about the
_fundamentals_. Every required CS course teaches knowledge and concepts that
stand the test of time.

The required part of the degree is about 1/3 programming, 1/3 theory, and 1/3
computer architecture. The purpose of the degree isn't to teach you how to run
a business, how to run a web stack, or even how to work in the corporate
world. It's about learning the fundamentals of Computer _Science_.

I completely sympathize with the author. The whole time in UTCS I was
thinking, "This isn't going to help me run a startup. I don't need this
degree. Am I wasting my time?". But in the end, I realized that learning these
fundamentals made be a better programmer overall.

I don't know who claimed CS programs were supposed to teach students how to
run startups, but in my honest opinion, UT has a very good CS program.

------
jderick
Two of my friends had successful startups from UT Austin: audiogalaxy.com
(founded in the Napster days, now doing mobile audio streaming) and
adtuition/adtuitive (acquired by Etsy).

Maybe UT could be a better place for startups, but I never got the impression
that it slowed them down for one second. They were just too focused on getting
stuff done to worry about product competitions or entrepreneurship classes or
whatnot. In fact, I have to wonder in some cases if those sort of things can
be a distraction and give people the illusion that they are an entrepreneur
without actually taking any risk or producing anything of value (the two
essential ingredients, imho).

------
borogrove
It's not fair to blame the small Austin startup community on UT. Austin
doesn't have angel investors and VCs tripping over themselves looking to fund
the next Twitter killer in the same way that the bay area does. It makes for a
smaller startup community, but also one that is more focused on building real
products.

Full disclosure: I graduated from UTEE and have worked at some really great
small companies in Austin.

------
juddlyon
Comparing anywhere to Silicon Valley is probably unfair. I moved from SF to
Austin are they are too different to seriously compare.

While UT can do better, there's nothing stopping the students from connecting
with the various tech meetups and incubators around Austin. We're each
responsible for our own education.

I went to grad school at UT (advertising) and sadly almost nothing I learned
there applies to my day-to-day work (co-founder at a web design/dev shop). I
was a tad bitter when I finished but channeled the frustration into
motivation. There are people within academia who get it (usually adjuncts or
people with private sector experience), but most don't and never will. That's
why they're there.

The programmers I've worked with that have a CS background (formal or not) are
a cut above those without. I'd liken it to a classically trained pianist. If
you can play Beethoven you can easily figure out how to play pop, but the
reverse isn't true.

------
imdane
I'm a UT honors EE graduate and co-founded JobSpice (YC S09). I will admit
that going through the UT system is not conducive to starting a startup -- you
kind of have to break the mold.

The classes that are taught are great if you want to work for a large company
because for the most part, the professors at the undergraduate level do a good
job of teaching what's needed for those type of careers but do not actively
promote entrepreneurship.

I was lucky in that my advisor encouraged me to go my own direction, and I
started JobSpice less than a year after I graduated but wish I would have
started something during my time at UT. The problem lies more in the culture
that UT promotes at the classroom level. In addition, outside of Michael Dell,
you don't hear stories about past students creating companies in their dorm
room like you do at MIT, Stanford or Harvard.

------
vannevar
A CS program is not a business school, it's supposed to be teaching a science:
that is, a set of tools for exploring and explaining the laws of the universe.
There's no more reason to promote startups in CS than any other scientific
field.

CS departments have relationships with large corporations because they have
money and sponsor research. Startups don't. This influx of money has warped
the field. It's better to ask why there isn't more science in computer science
than to ask why there isn't more business.

~~~
TheBiv
I completely agree with your second point, however the value of promoting
startups is that it is exciting and provides real world applications for what
you are learning about. I am a biologist, and the truly great and respected
biologists are those that don't simply use the tools given to them. They
tinker, they screw stuff up, they see what happens...and that is exactly what
a startup should be doing!

~~~
vannevar
I would argue that it's also what a scientist should be doing. A startup is
trying to find money, a scientist is trying to find truth.

------
larrykubin
I went to UT around the time of the dot com crash. The curriculum was not
always so Java-centric. It used to start out with Scheme, C++, and Assembler.
I think it was a year or two afterwards that most courses started using Java
for everything.

As far as startups, I do remember most of us wanting to work at Dell or AMD
when I was an EE undergrad there. We would all go to the career expo and put
our resumes in these giant piles. Never hearing back from anyone led me to
explore other opportunities.

------
DrewHintz
At UT there are a few great upper-division software engineering classes, both
in EE and CS. In particular one software engineering class I took has small
teams act as a startup. You find a need, go through the process of figuring
out what to do to meet the need, implementing the solution and then shipping
the solution. For ours we created lesson-planning software for a elementary
school teachers.

------
DrewHintz
Two friends I went to UT undergrad with have started startups: \-
<http://www.buildasign.com> \- a very successful company that sells custom
signs \- <http://factorcode.org> \- While the startup portion didn't turn out
to be commercially viable, their startup helped to improve Factor.

------
adrianparsons
I know the author is writing about the CS department, but a UT Austin grad (in
communications I believe) , Brooke Moreland, just received $1 Million in
funding for her startup Fashism.

[http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/19/social-shopping-
sit...](http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/19/social-shopping-site-fashism-
gets-cash/)

------
umtrey
I would guess that the source of department donations would drive focus for
many universities - and not many startups are dropping seven figures for new
buildings or fellowships.

------
davidgiesberg
Really good article about UT's CS department - the situation is very similar
for the EE department as well.

------
jlyke
That was an interesting read. So, any alumni still in Austin working on a
start-up?

------
pilom
This post proves exactly why people are recommending not going to College. If
you want to be an academic researcher, go to college for CS. It really does
work well. If you want to program, start programming on projects you are
interested in and build your resume.

~~~
flacon
College will teach you lots of useful stuff outside of programming etc. I use
my Berkeley education everyday via critical thinking, researching
competitors/markets etc, presenting confidently, writing, argumentation and
slicing through rhetoric etc. It would be naive to think that you can run a
startup successfully by simply banging on a keyboard.

