The Young Entrepreneur Advantage
While the accelerator and incubator models are nothing new, the enthusiastic involvement of big corporations now jumping into the fray gives college start-ups a leg up.
imaginecup/Flickr
Participants of Microsoft's YouthSpark Imagine Cup during the 2011 finals.
Young entrepreneurs have it made. While most start-ups are struggling to find resources, funding, mentorship, and talented employees, college start-ups have no shortage of incubators, accelerators, college entrepreneurial programs, and a pool of super-talented classmates to help them get off the ground. And with a number of high-profile college start-up successes--Michael Dell and Mark Zuckerberg--the ranks of undergrad entrepreneurs continue to swell.
But, of course, every business won’t succeed. There will inevitably be a few standouts that have that magic combination of skill, resources, intelligence, drive, and resilience to create and run a scalable business. Each year we take a deep dive into this space with the hopes of discovering these standouts--the most innovative upstarts with the most potential to succeed. And my, what a difference a year makes! We received nearly 100 more nominations than we did last year, totaling just over 200. We also noticed an interesting trend arising: big corporations such as Microsoft and General Electric are competing with the Y Combinators of the world to align themselves with, potentially, the next Alexis Ohanian.
Coming to the Table
Large corporations and established companies, in the past more guarded and reluctant to share their resources with outsiders, are opening up and granting the next generation of entrepreneurs access to their infrastructure, hardware, and networks. What do they get out of the deal? Tapping early-stage entrepreneurs gives large companies access to fresh ideas, first dibs on amazing new products, and, perhaps, their next acquisition.
“Connecting to early stage innovation, they [the host companies] are able to speed up their own internal innovation, see things their competitors miss, and bring cutting-edge solutions to their customers,” explains Unity Stoakes, co-founder of StartUp Health Academy, a Washington, DC-based program with the goal of helping to build 1,000 sustainable businesses in healthcare over the next decade. In conjunction with General Electric, the program will help early-stage consumer health companies by providing a customized growth curriculum, access to GE’s executives, training on scaling business operations, and exposure to GE technology experts. There is no fee to participate.
Dan’l Lewin, corporate vice president of strategic and emerging business development for Microsoft, echoes the sentiment. “These days more than ever, everything is connected,” he says. “As a result of that, it’s ever more obvious that there are more smart people around the world than inside your corporate firewall.”
There is also, of course, the possibility of a start-up being purchased by the host company, though all who contributed to this article said this is an exception and not the rule. “Over time we may buy some as well, if entrepreneurs are doing things that fill gaps in our product lines,” Lewin says. “This is a byproduct as opposed to the purpose, but sometimes the outcome.”
Newer and Younger
As these programs continue to grow and expand, corporate incubators and accelerators once only within reach of older, more established entrepreneurs are opening up to young early-stage start-ups.
Entrepreneurs like Tim Schwartz, co-founder and CEO of Uprise Medical, a data-driven start-up, who worked with Healthbox, a health accelerator with multiple locations across the U.S. and many different local partners, in the fall of 2012. Schwartz participated in the program in Boston, where Healthbox teams up with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts. In addition to providing capital, Healthbox gave Schwartz strategic advice and access to mentors who helped him refine his business strategy. He honed his product and direction, and started meeting with partners within only three months--milestones he says Uprise would never have accomplished on its own. “You have to understand an overlapping network of customers and operate within a complex regulatory environment,” explains Schwartz. “Providers and other healthcare companies can be very skeptical of start-ups, and so we saw the combination of industry expertise and a stamp of credibility as significant potential benefits of going through the program.”
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In the 1980s, Michael Dell launched the computer company from his University of Texas dorm room. Click on the hottest 2013 college start-ups to read more about each, and then "Like" the best.
ARCHIVES
2012
Our 2012 class of college start-ups were founded on the mission to give back to the world’s communities, be on the cutting-edge of innovation, and have fun while doing it.
2011
Our third-annual report on the most innovative college start-ups in the country features a Northern Iowa hacker-turned-bookworm and a St. Louis sociology student with a website for tween girls—valued at $15 million.
2010
Our second-annual report on college start-ups, featuring students from Chapel Hill to Harvard Square, who are inventing the future (or at least a steady source of income for themselves) by launching companies in their spare time.
2009
In the years since Dell launched the world's best-known college start-up, more students have followed his lead. In our first report on college start-ups, these 16 enterprising kids will reveal that Michael Dell is no longer the exception to the rule.
