
The University of Illinois’ Startup Ecosystem - badboyboyce
https://hack.vc/the-university-of-illinois-startup-ecosystem-b1cb79cdc80d
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qCOVET
I started a not to be named University entrepreneurship program. I drew
similar pictures and it looked beautiful, as if the ecosystem was bursting
with activity. But the reality was different. It lacked excitement, it lacked
visibility, it lacked engagement and above all it lacked entrepreneurial
culture (which I see as gluon or higgs boson of a robust entrepreneurial
ecosystem).

So at the heart of this beautiful map, I created a cultural hub .. a space
that was founded and run by students, who elevated the excitement and
visibility of entrepreneurship. To top it up, I elected a student women
entrepreneur to lead it. It had interesting implications:

1\. Entrepreneurial ecosystems tend to be male dominated. By creating a
community of student entrepreneurs, lead by a female student, it created a
'safe zone' for other women entrepreneurs to come forward and engage.

2\. Much of what we did at the space, was to encourage trying new things, new
ideas and celebrating every tiny milestone of a student. I started a FB page,
where every student activity was documented and celebrated.

3\. In less than 2 years, I helped start over 60 new ventures. Some died or
would have died or will die and a few get accepted into top incubators..and
others are at limbo... but the process helped students to learn important
lessons in entrepreneurship. It is best to do it while still a student.

4\. The space helped connect all the dots in the picture (drawn in the
article). It brought the organizations closer to the students and helped
create visible linkages. It helped movement of entrepreneurs and
entrepreneurial ideas easily across those linkages and removed redundancies in
the ecosystem.

5\. I gained a lot of visibility in the media and it didn't go well with the
fossils of University who claimed entrepreneurship as their own and turned my
exciting job into a political game and a living hell. Non of it leaked to my
students, but being an entrepreneur myself, I already had many other projects
that I was working on ... so I left the University and aside from championing
my students from the sidelines now, I find utmost excitement in pursuing my
own tiny startup. I am broke, but I am happy and every day take pride in the
work I did, to create the nucleus of a successful entrepreneurial ecosystem in
one of the top Universities, that would act as a cascading feeder to the
community for many generations to come.

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bman90
Currently working at UIUC at a relatively new startup and yes there is a good
community building here. There is lots of agricultural innovation going on
here and having giants like John deere, adm, ABinBev as well as tech companies
like said yahoo hadoop analytics group. Cool to see some UIUC research park
love here on hacker news. Can't wait to get up and go back to work at the
research park where I will be hacking on python all day!

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brianstorms
Author says UI has "a rich history" with regard to startups. I am curious when
the clock started ticking for "history" in this author's view -- last 10
years? 15?

Startups were a very different story at UI in the late 60s, 70s, and early
80s. From what I've gathered, it seems doing a startup could be a very iffy
proposition, vis a vis the university. Sometimes it could even get you in a
heap o' trouble.

~~~
joezydeco
I'm a UIUC alum. The author is doing what UIUC typically does, which is try to
take credit for the successes of their alumni when those alumni did it without
the UIUC ecosystem. I like to call it the Andreessen Complex:

[https://hack.vc/tech-companies-started-by-university-of-
illi...](https://hack.vc/tech-companies-started-by-university-of-illinois-
alumni-6753327a0829)

UIUC has historically done little to negative work in making their graduates
successful beyond the diploma. I don't see much changing here except a lot of
handwaving, throwing cash around, and grand announcements like UILabs which
will make a lot of noise and smoke but eventually do very little toward the
dream of being more like Stanford or MIT or Fraunhofer.

 _" The list is still a work in progress but shows just how many great
entrepreneurs were at one point roaming around in central Illinois"_

Sums it up right there. They roamed until they roamed all the way to the west
coast. And that's the eternal agony of the University of Illinois.

~~~
afridi
Author of the original post here. To start of I'd just like to clarify that
I'm a student at the University and have no ties to any of the administration.

The goal of the post was not to try and take credit for the successes of
alumni, I rather wrote it to highlight how some of our alumni have gone on to
do great things. I decided to write it after an experience I had this summer
while I was interning at a VC firm in NYC. While there, I met the managing
partner for one of NYC's biggest VC firms (I'll leave it unnamed) who
basically said: 'oh, you go to UIUC.... they've produced one famous tech
entrepreneur (Marc Andreessen), maybe you can be the second'. That's a
sentiment I saw echoed throughout my time there and through previous
experiences (especially on the East Coast).

In terms of the helping alumni with their ventures after graduation, I'd argue
that the school has actually done a lot to help founders through the resources
and early-stage funding available (a lot of these have sprung up recently).
It's hard to compare it to Stanford/MIT/Harvard which are based in thriving
tech cities where alumni and VCs can hop by on campus whenever.

Update: I'd also love to know (from everyone that sees this) what programs
other universities have done to help alumni after graduation. Just because
UIUC hasn't already done this doesn't mean we (students and alumni) can't
start it. Just take a look at the awesome stuff that alumni from Harvard do
for their community
([http://harvard.splashthat.com/](http://harvard.splashthat.com/)). It's
entirely alumni managed + organized.

~~~
joezydeco
_' oh, you go to UIUC.... they've produced one famous tech entrepreneur (Marc
Andreessen), maybe you can be the second_

Let's get history straight first. UIUC didn't turn pmarca into an
entrepreneur. Jim Clark did that.

~~~
jjtheblunt
Andreesesen is overly celebrated because of his extreme luck, and is certainly
not the first. Look up John Bardeen and Nick Holonyak for examples.

~~~
afridi
The school actually does highlight John Bardeen and Nick Holonyak a ton! John
Bardeen was the first person mentioned on my tour of the college of
engineering and Nick Holonyak gave the keynote at my ECE orientation.

My posts were meant to highlight entrepreneurship which is why I didn't
mention them (they'd be in a class of amazing innovators who studied/worked at
UIUC). There's also a ton of awesome alumni that have gone on to be C level
execs at big companies, but again they were omitted because these posts were
specifically targeted at entrepreneurial alumni.

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matmann2001
UIUC grad here. Pretty sure I was the author's TA at one point too :)

All of these programs and events are a huge step in the right direction. I
personally did my best to even help some of these programs grow, particularly
iFoundry and the group that eventually became Hack Illinois. But the biggest
challenge I found was bridging the chasm between this hacker/entrepreneur
culture and the existing academic/research culture.

As a premier research university, the UIUC engineering curriculum is heavily
focused on the theoretical. In my years there, I really had to go out of my
way to obtain some hands-on learning experiences. Those are so important for
breeding a hacker/entrepreneur culture. It's how you learn to work with real-
world constraints, how to network and collaborate, and how to fail well. A
textbook and a Powerpoint lecture just can't teach that.

So the question I pose, to the author and to the readers, is this: How do we
change the way students are taught?

~~~
eldavido
Be careful what you wish for.

Asking universities to teach "hands-on learning" isn't productive; you'll get
plenty of that, that's more recent and marketable, from practical work
experience. I'd rather the universities go even further in the theoretical
direction.

What I got from engineering school wasn't just another 2-3 years of work
experience, it was much deeper things like numeracy, learning to write well,
lifelong relationships, appreciation for rigor, and a hell of a work ethic. It
was a fantastic value for the time and money I put in and it was absolutely
worth it.

(UIUC alumnus living/working in SF)

~~~
afridi
I think a balance is needed. A lot of my friends in CS graduating after 4
years of college (at a number of schools including at UIUC) feel less
confident going into the industry than people I know that have gone through
developer bootcamps.

Theory is definitely important, but the number of hands-on/practical courses
needs to be increased as well.

~~~
eldavido
Don't worry about it. People who get paid to assess the actual -- not
perceived -- quality of tech talent for a living (hiring managers, bigco
recruiters) aren't fooled by this. The mere amount of stamina it takes to
complete an Illinois engineering degree is enough of a signal.

Your experience might be different if you're dealing with money guys with no
operating experience who trust the Harvard/Stanford pedigree uber alles,
second/third-tier startup founders who dropped out because they're "the next
steve jobs" and would rather drop acid than finish their degrees,
"journalists" writing schlok "content" for valleywag/techcrunch etc. without
an iota of fact-checking, and other hilarious SV stereotypes that this area
seems to attract in droves. Try not to let it get you down too much. There's
more to life that the front page of Techcrunch.

------
nickysielicki
Madison and the University of Wisconsin are developing their startup scene
more since I've started here.

The nice part about Madison is that it _isn 't_ just the university, like some
are commenting about UIUC. The Ionic framework is based out of Madison, made
by two Wisconsin grads. Gener8tor is an accelerator in this city and they're
growing. They really do provide good opportunities to founders, and they have
funding from State Farm insurance that seems to be steady, so I have hope that
things can really go somewhere. Though I have to say that having been around
their office and at a few events they really don't feel tech-oriented.

And then the university has their own stuff. To anyone at UW-Madison reading
this: avoid them! WARF is a hungry parasite and if you do anything interesting
they will do their best to take their perceived share.

------
procu
So many points to answer...

1\. I am willing to grant that Champaign/Urbana is not the ideal place to live
for everyone; however, it affords me the best of everything I want from a
community, without a lot of what I perceive as the drawbacks of places like
Chicago or SV or other large metro areas. I would not live anywhere else, and
I know that others feel the same way that I do; and it is fine if others
disagree.

2\. (This ought to start a firestorm of comments...) I have worked for three
different companies based in SV or SF and have lots of friends still in that
area. It has been my personal experience that people there are motivated by
money concerns much more than they are in CU. In conversations with my friends
there, they say things like, "Come work at XYZ and they'll up your salary by
X"; or, "If you come to this startup you'll get tons of stock options"; etc.
This is totally my opinion, but I believe that people in SV are so worried
about money because they really can't afford to live there unless they make a
_lot_ of it. And again, my opinion is that this influences people to move jobs
frequently in order to get a bump in pay, a big sign-on bonus, or the hope for
a big stock payout. The SV culture encourages frequent moves. I certainly
cannot deny that people in CU talk about money, but when my friends here try
to pull me away to another job, they often talk about the cool tech they are
working on or how much they love the culture of their company, and not about
the money. It is because people in Tech in CU can afford to live very well on
modest salaries. (My spouse doesn't work and we still live really well.)
Again, just my opinion, but I believe that this is the real reason why people
stay longer in their jobs in CU. It isn't because they don't have options. (I
feel that I have many options, and my options seem to be increasing all the
time.) It is because they are not forced to move just to afford to live.

3\. Rome wasn't built in a day, and anyone who has been in the community for a
while can see that there have been great improvements in our startup culture
over the last decade or two. And, just as Rome fell, SV will not be the center
of the Tech Universe forever.

4\. Related to comments 2 and 3, see the article:
[http://www.cnbc.com/id/102697372](http://www.cnbc.com/id/102697372)

5\. The University has done an amazing amount of good for the community, if
only by being one of the major economic engines in CU, and I appreciate that.
It isn't their "responsibility" to build a startup community in CU. However,
they have done a lot to advance it. The U of I Research Park is a great
example of that.

6\. A few people in this thread seem to be blaming UIUC for what they perceive
as startup culture issues. It takes a lot of hard work from many players
(individuals and organizations) to build a great startup community, so if
there are failings, stop blaming others and do something about it.

------
jostmey
Urbana-Champaign is in the middle of no-where. The University is _Urbana-
Champaign_ \- there is very little city around the campus. It would be one of
the worst places to start a company. Not to mention that Illinois is one of
the last states where I would want to start a company.

~~~
skynetv2
I beg to differ. U-C is an excellent place. I dont think you have ever been
there to say that.

Its very affordable. You want to spend millions on rent or hire your staff?

college town - perfect for those college grads to entertain themselves after
work

Hire students from UIUC, Parkland, ISU, and few other campuses around.

Not great restaurants but pretty good variety of cuisines

Chicago is less than 2 hours away by car

no sitting in traffic for hours every day

only drawback is you cant jump companies every 6 months

air connectivity is limited but Bloomington next door has decent options

excellent place to have a family and raise children

Yahoo is increasing its presence in Champaign, so is Intel, Caterpillar, and a
few more. I know they are not startups but there is a reason why they are
growing there.

~~~
hcrisp
Yahoo moved their Hadoop analytics group from CA to IL at least partially due
to huge turnover. Since moving they have not lost "quite" as many people. UIUC
is also where the transistor was invented, and it the home of NCSA and HDF
Group. In my opinion, it has definitely contributed to computer science and
scientific computing everywhere.

~~~
shostack
What do you think accounted for the huge turnover and why moving from CA to IL
reduced that? Less competitive job options in IL that made the opportunities
look more attractive?

~~~
hcrisp
Perhaps the stability of the Midwest and a culture unlike Silicon Valley where
folks move jobs every two to three years. There does seem to be more loyalty
in IL, and the calmer pace may encourage more long-term planning?

~~~
shostack
Honestly, I spent most of my life in Chicago and only recently moved out to
the Bay. I can't say in a major metro like that there is any more inherent
loyalty. In many industries the only way to get ahead is to change jobs every
couple years to make sure you stay at market rate for compensation.

