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MIT ignored YC, and now is competing with YC.
Next will be bargaining with YC :)
Then just partnering with YC...
Is this filling a void in the current venture space...?
Beyond serving hard tech with longer time-to-market requirements, there is a huge opportunity for brain-rich cities like Boston to build out a more robust startup ecosystem to compete with SF. People in Cambridge joke about the one-way plane tickets to the Bay Area. If you're anchored in Cambridge, that means huge spoils for the group that figures out the equation to keep them there.
They're working on the absolute lack of space, but I think the "reasonably priced" part is unlikely to get fixed short of backing like this from someone who can provide facilities and funding for at least the first few years without expecting returns.
Does anyone know if something similar exists at other universities (specifically curious about Stanford)?
This sounds similar to The Impact Engine out of Chicago. My company was part of the first cohort back in 2012. Feel free to AMA about this space - I have learnings to unload if interested.
Does anyone know what MIT wants out of the funds it invests? Also, what rights does its faculty have on their inventions? Same question for entrepreneurs who work with MIT?
Faculty at most universities sign the rights to their inventions over to their host institution as part of their employment agreement. I believe MIT is the same way. Universities generally have a technology transfer office (at MIT, it's called the Technology Licensing Office) that manages all of the intellectual property created there, with the hope of commercializing some of it. From what little I can read, The Engi…
Yes, MIT does this quite explicitly, which while making some professors unhappy, has helped it avoid some notorious messes seen at other universities when they got greedy, e.g. the University of Pennsylvania going from #1 in computers (ENIAC) to nothing, or CalTech losing Steve Wolfram over his first symbolic math program.
Flip sides include giving professors 1 day a week to work on whatever they want that's not part of their MIT stuff.
Trivia: after decades of being one of the worst in the nation, averaging about one license per year (seriously, and we know of three of them, Symbolics, LMI, and Macsyma to the former), and infamously flubbing both 3D core memory and synthetic/semi-synthetic penicillin licencing, MIT realized they had a problem and supposedly fixed it, the official statement was wonderfully understated, said something about actually licencing the technology instead of focusing on the process of licensing....
Serious question:
Is there any type of "traveling workshop" program that brings high-tier guidance and supplies to various locations for a weekend? I was thinking that an up-front Submission Process, then some evaluations / meetings / feedback, and then a Weekend Workshop using 3D printer(s) and other basic tools that could fit in a box truck and about 5,000 sq ft of space (?) - would be a great way to bring brain capital to under served communities. Then follow up through the same channels used for evaluations / meetings / feedback, and continue mentorship.
I mean, I'm not knocking location anchored programs, they make sense and they can help a community.
>In that time, they will receive financial investments as well as guidance in business planning and access to shared services such as legal, technology licensing, and administrative assistance. Entrepreneurs will be able to take advantage of specialized equipment, services, expertise, and space through an online marketplace developed for The Engine.
Doesn't most of that read like something that doesn't need to be totally anchored in the "Greater Boston" community? Especially for a tech-savvy institution with plenty of bandwidth?
What I am trying to say is that based on the distribution of population in the US, if you really want to find undiscovered talent, you're going to have to meet them half-way.
YC now functionally resembles a world-class university: huge endowment; elite alumni; pure & applied research departments; staff scientists; education program; bi-annual semesterish schedule; all in service to the mission of improving the world by empowering the next generation of innovators. MIT ignored YC, and now is competing with YC. Next will be bargaining with YC :) Then just partnering with YC...
Really? Some endowment sizes for world-class universities:
MIT: $13 billion
Caltech: $2 billion
Harvard: $36 billion
Stanford: $22 billion
Princeton: $21 billion
Yale: $25 billion
Cambridge: GBP ~6 billion
Oxford: GBP ~4 billion
Caltech is the outlier here for US universities, but it's also an outlier in size; its endowment per student is still about $1 million, which is in the same ballpark as the other US universities on the list. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universit... for probably more data than you ever wanted. ;)
I'm having a hard time finding how much money YC has lying around, but I would be rather surprised if it's in the billions USD.
> pure & applied research departments; staff scientists
On a _tiny_ scale compared to a world-class university.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Beyond serving hard tech with longer time-to-market requirements, there is a huge opportunity for brain-rich cities like Boston to build out a more robust startup ecosystem to compete with SF. People in Cambridge joke about the one-way plane tickets to the Bay Area. If you're anchored in Cambridge, that means huge spoils for the group that figures out the equation to keep them there.
The hardest part for me in starting a hard tech company in the Boston area was just getting reasonably priced access to facilities. They're working on the absolute lack of space, but I think the "reasonably priced" part is unlikely to get fixed short of backing like this from someone who can provide facilities and funding for at least the first few years without expecting returns.