| I want to preface this by stating that I have tremendous respect for all the people at EI^2, the folks of VentureLab, the people in ATDC and Flashpoint. I really I owe much of where I am now to you folks. That being said, I think your rebuttal missed Chintan's initial premise, which is that Georgia Tech's startup culture is a little underwhelming for the respective technical chops of its student body. The article is simply one student's (correct) assessment about the present level of entrepreneurial activity at the undergraduate level in Georgia Tech.
Talking about how great Flashpoint, ATDC, EI2 are as rebuttal against Chintan's premise is like saying that just because a MacBook Pro has a long battery life, you can go without charging it. Surely you'd agree that the "build it and they will come" adage is entirely asinine in the context of a startup. Why should it be any different when it comes to communities? The "GT Establishment" has to market itself better and actively engage the entrepreneurial students where they are. In school. This might seem like a ridiculous thing to ask but VCs and influencers elsewhere in the country do this: ----
Jason Mendelson of the Foundry Group:
http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2012/11/new-online-courses-f... Peter Theil (no explanation needed here) taught CS183:Startup-Stanford
http://blakemasters.com/peter-thiels-cs183-startup David Skok teaches Startup Secrets at Harvard's i-Lab
http://bostinno.streetwise.co/2012/12/05/some-vcs-blog-micha...
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I really think that the bottom-up entrepreneurial movement that is taking place at Tech needs to be met with equal vigor from the top. In the "Drownproofing" article you wrote nearly one year ago, you very clearly articulated some of these problems yourself. You patently state that "EI2 and its predecessor organizations don’t have a strong history of student engagement." Additionally, you say, "And there are all sorts of funding mechanisms...It’s confusing to me. Imagine the poor student trying to navigate all this!" What sort of progress has been made since then? I've heard about the Techstarter initiative (which btw was branded as "funding for researchers") but they've been disappointing. In fact, even the link from the official press release doesn't work: http://www.gatech.edu/newsroom/release.html?nid=212581 For most students nothing has changed since that post was written or even since the release of the Strategic Plan 4 years ago.
I'm not saying any of this to be harsh, I'm just trying to keep it honest. Lets be better than average. Lets strong shooting for mediocrity when we clearly have the potential to be extraordinary. That means investing real time, real effort and real money. Lets collaborate more often, lets communicate more frequently and let make to finally centralize those resources. Repectfully,
Aswin |