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Perhaps the larger percentage of founders has more to do with the substantially smaller student body and shorter track record of the university. Daniel Kahneman touches on this phenomenon in "Thinking Fast and Slow".
Before jumping to conclusions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_small_numbers Edit: Actual Wikipedia entry = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insensitivity_to_sample_size
But statistics tells us that small samples are more prone to extreme outcomes.
This seems to be a problem in all scientific fields, a quick google search came up with this article from Nature: https://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v14/n5/full/nrn3475.html?...
> Olin College, a small engineering school in Needham, MA, which graduates around 75 students per year So its a tiny college with an emphasis on starting a company? At Stanford your numbers are being diluted by colleges whose student body don't tend to start a company (e.g. humanities, pre-med).
What if the segment of Stanford students whose area of study is comparable to that of Olin? What would the ratio be then?
Sometimes I think that startup is for those who have nothing to lose. Kids in Stanford probably have weighted their feasible career more than a free throw. It is also strange to me this Olin School is trying to beat Stanford with a single statistics. What are they trying to do here? To prove they are better than Stanford? Or to let kids dropping out of Stanford and apply to them? Or to make a fame by taking on a part…
You seem to be projecting quite a bit.
Before jumping to conclusions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_small_numbers Edit: Actual Wikipedia entry = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insensitivity_to_sample_size
This. This article is one of those "Hey this area is the area with the lowest cancer rates". But statistics tells us that small samples are more prone to extreme outcomes. This seems to be a problem in all scientific fields, a quick google search came up with this article from Nature: https://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v14/n5/full/nrn3475.html?...
But that said, I've got a kid looking at colleges and I'm gonna suggest he look at Olin.
Two comments: 1. First and foremost, go Olin College! It sounds like a really special place where liberal arts and engineering are valued. I wish more colleges followed this model. 2. It's not very surprising and likely a statistical quirk that their per capita founding rate is so high. After reading this piece on why the highest and lowest cancer rates by county in the US are in rural counties, I am seeing this stat…
A startup does not always equal a business.
Unfortunately we now live in a mindset where the ability to raise capital is the yardstick of success. The yardstick of a business, however, has never changed. It's profit.
How many of these ventures are actually profitable? Not to hate on the school, but if the companies are not profitable then they are basically being taught how to raise capital, not how to run a business. They could be producing Clinkles and Juiceros. Remember that VC funding is also just a gamble that they may make it. Statistically most VC-backed companies don't make it. So that alone should not be a measure of success.
I think a better stat would be percentage of startups out of a school that make it to profitability. Take the NBA 3-point approach. You have to have a minimum number of attempts to be considered. Likewise, a school would have to have a minimum number of startups to come out of it. Then from there you measure the percentage of those startups that are profitable after some agreed upon average age.