[clay_to_n]

I took a technical entrepreneurship course, and the professor forced us to come up with startup ideas very early on, and then iterate and convince everyone to throw our original ideas out. After a couple months every group had startup ideas that were clearly much more sound than the originals.

"First startup" ideas are very easy to identify, and are the majority of what you see in college entrepreneurship. The close, but often not scalable problems in competitive markets: food delivery. Textbook re-selling. Better course scheduling. Some way to make profit off of nightlife and parties. And then the large, technically unfeasible ideas: Solve X with drones, 3d cameras, machine learning.

The startups that keep going are usually not in either of these camps, but often start firmly in one and move towards the center as far as complexity.

But your last point is also spot on - a campus food delivery startup from my university got into a good accelerator and raised some money. Seems to be doing well.