It seems like a lot of startups are born from an idea someone had while in college. But what if, instead of being honed years later at an accelerator, that initial idea was supported on campus while the dreamer was still enrolled?
For example, David Lin started food delivery service Duffl two years ago while an undergrad at the University of California Los Angeles. The company went on to be a part of Y Combinator and raised $13 million. Oculus co-founder Brendan Iribe was a University of Maryland student before dropping out to launch a startup. Some of the research on image-generating AI models came out of the University of Maryland as well, and the quantum chip technology behind EeroQ stemmed from Michigan State University research.
We’ve all heard success stories about schools like Harvard and Stanford churning out startup founders. While schools don’t often set out to be the next YC, they do seek ways to get some of the best research-based technology out of tech transfer offices and into the marketplace. That’s why schools, including the University of Maryland, Michigan State University, The Ohio State University and UCLA, are sinking resources into entrepreneurship programs and centers.
“Our secret sauce is to let students run with their ideas in ways that they’d like to without us prompting them, but then be there to support them.” University of Maryland's Dean Chang
The original thought for many of these hubs may have been technology transfer — the process by which university-supported research is taken to market — but as entrepreneurship became a more viable career path and more people sought to work for a startup, many schools added tailored support for student founders and their community at large.
I spoke with representatives from those four universities about their entrepreneurial programs to learn how they have found success.
Michigan State University
Jeff Wesley, executive director of Red Cedar Ventures, the venture investment subsidiary of the Michigan State University Research Foundation, said its infrastructure — and its depth and breadth of team and services — is what makes MSU unique.
“Between the venture creation group and the statewide efforts with funding organizations like Michigan Rise, we have invested in 60 companies now at an early stage, some from the university and some from the Michigan network,” Wesley told TechCrunch. “It’s very active and focused on the early stage, and we run two accelerator programs.”
It also taps into a lot of entrepreneurs-in-residence, who can bring both the knowledge of how to grow a company and the ability to leverage new ideas from faculty, staff and students and turn them into new companies.
In terms of investment, the foundation is one of the leading investors in the state — the state of Michigan gives Red Cedar a tranche of funds to invest — with its capital investment activity doubling in the past few years, Wesley said.
While there are similar programs across the country, Wesley said it was only recently that universities in the Big 10 came together to share ideas. In November, he traveled to Chicago for the inaugural Big 10 Venture Summit to learn from all of the other creation arms, including how states and college alumni are supporting these efforts.
“I couldn’t believe we had never done this before,” he said. “We shared notes and looked at best practices, and after all of that, decided to continue doing events like this where we could actually share opportunities and learn the approaches taken by different programs.”
As with everything startup related, funding continues to be a challenge. “Even with success, early-stage investing is different,” Wesley said. Though many schools are tapping alums and seeking more support from university administration and different avenues within the state, “frankly, there is not enough funding to support efforts, especially with cancer therapeutics, which take a lot of capital,” he added.
Wesley is often asked by other universities how to get a similar program started and how to invest in companies. His biggest advice is to create infrastructure around the campus’ research arm and to focus on places where they could get initial funding, either from alumni or the state.
“There needs to be a collective vision and discussion from tech transfer, the university in general and a group supporting the investments,” he added. “It’s a great time to be in this space. Over the last few years, with COVID, the economy and innovation, new ideas continue to thrive. It’s a great area for young people and those with experience. Everyone is continuing the momentum in this space.”
UCLA
Ten years ago, David Ochi, then a retired professor within the University of California system, started examining why the organization wasn’t better monetizing its intellectual property. He looked at best practices and wrote a position paper outlining a program that was the origin of what the system does today, Amir Naiberg told TechCrunch.
At the time, Naiberg led Yeda Research & Development Co. Ltd., which is responsible for technology transfer from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. He later joined UCLA and is now the associate vice chancellor for the UCLA Technology Development Group.
“You want all the good stuff that’s happening in academia to be translated into something more than a peer review article, but into a real product,” Naiberg added.
Today, Naiberg and his associates, including Thomas Lipkin, director of the UCLA Innovation Fund and New Ventures, report to an external board of directors composed of business people, entrepreneurs, investors and faculty. That collected acumen is something Naiberg said has enabled the university’s program to thrive as it developed and launched a number of new initiatives.
Lipkin started working at UCLA 10 years ago to start the New Ventures group, focusing on startup support within the realm of tech transfer. That includes making connections to investors, educational resources and service providers, as well as helping to secure entrepreneurs a good management team.
With the knowledge that many venture capitalists won’t invest in such early ideas, the UCLA Innovation Fund was created to identify promising academic projects and fund them to hit milestones that VCs and the industry want to see, Lipkin said.
“We are the market that is basically asking to push the envelope in terms of where science is, so government grants, at least in translational aspects, are necessary but sometimes not sufficient,” he added. “You do need not just additional funding but also sometimes expertise that academic scientists don’t have in-house.”
To keep programs like this going, there must be a collective vision, Lipkin said. UCLA has a strong tech transfer office, and he notes there is willingness and appetite from faculty members: The group has started over 20 companies in the past decade just from that technology pool, a figure that continues to grow, he added.
University of Maryland
The University of Maryland’s entrepreneurship program has been around for over three decades, with much of that initially stemming from the business and engineering departments.
During that time, Dean Chang, chief innovation officer and associate vice president for innovation and economic development in the school’s Division of Research, said the school has worked to figure out what to avoid and how to make programs work better.
Today, the program is broader, with students and entrepreneurs able to get involved even if they aren’t part of those two originating departments. They’ve since brought in several colleges, from agriculture to arts as environmental sustainability, social impact and public health have become popular areas of study.
“We have a blueprint, lessons learned and best practices for how to bring in yet another college into the fold so we’re not confusing students,” Chang told TechCrunch.
The university offers pitch competitions and access to an angel funding network. In the last five years, 461 companies were started and some $128.7 million in funding was invested into those companies, he added.
One unique aspect of the program is that it offers student led and student run programs like Startup Shell. Chang said it’s been important to see where the student interest is, where they show up and how committed they are, and then build programs around that.
He also noted that Startup Shell students didn’t tend to come to events that staff or faculty put on, so the program gives them space to do their own thing, which has led to new programs and ideas around social innovation and food.
“Our secret sauce is to let students run with their ideas in ways that they’d like to without us prompting them, but then be there to support them,” he added. “They’re on a path where they’re going to run into a wall at some point, and we can provide the pieces to help them keep going.”
The Ohio State University
I spoke with Cheryl Turnbull, the director of The Ohio State University’s Keenan Center for Entrepreneurship, back in June when TechCrunch featured Columbus, Ohio, as an up-and-coming tech hub. She discussed the early years of the program, which launched in 2012 with a $100 million investment from the school to support a startup ecosystem.
That has turned into investments in 10 funds, including those of Drive Capital and the Ohio Innovation Fund, and around 100 active spinoffs. The university is also in the midst of building an Innovation District that will connect students, researchers, enterprise businesses and startups.
Turnbull, like others, reiterated that success comes down to support from the top of the university all the way down, and one of the ways it differentiates itself is by providing resources to the whole of its campuses, not just certain schools or departments.
It is also working to pair business leaders with researchers. Many researchers make for great chief medical officers or chief scientific officers but aren’t likely to leave the university, especially if they are tenured, to lead a startup full time, she added. Therefore, programs also need someone to carry on the management of the business.
“At some point, if it’s going to be successful, it has to stop being a side hustle or a hobby and be a full-time commitment,” she said. “We’ve really had a lot of those pieces together in terms of the capital, the technology and now we are attracting talent.”
That’s where a strong community and skills-based training also come into play, Turnbull notes. Ohio State’s program offers educational resources on patents and customer validation strategies but also provides experiential learning opportunities, including accelerators and pitch competitions.
It’s been just over the past two years that much of OSU’s entrepreneurial program has grown and developed, particularly where various groups interact with and support each other.
In addition, it is getting more into early-stage funding. Turnbull said the university is in the process of creating an Ohio State early-investor network.
“We’ve tested angel groups who can potentially invest in any of these startups coming out of the Ohio State ecosystem,” she added. “It’s a way we can match them between our mentoring, the early-investor network and some of our other opportunities. We’re also now starting to involve the whole of the Ohio State community in terms of our alums, our fans and friends as well.”