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The Stanford Startup and the MIT Startup (2013)

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Re: The Stanford Startup and the MIT Startup (2013)

#61

Post by alephnerd »

neilv wrote: post #52
alephnerd wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to school out East and work out west, and consumer tech is way more of a NYC thing than a Bay Area thing because the personas and professional networks are out there. West Coast is also enterprise or business tech driven, but those founders aren't as media friendly or sexy despite being the majority (hence the Musks and increasingly Altmans hogging the limelight). Boston has potential, but it honestly isn't le…

> The elitism is rife to a level unlike in California. Awhile ago, to students at MIT, I mentioned suspiciously "MIT shop" companies, and said that, if you don't think there's people at Northeastern who could hold their own, then recalibrate worldview. There's absolutely a lot of elitism around certain NE schools known around the world, agreed. Those schools actively promote it, and it's evident in some post-graduati…

> But I also see variations on that elitism around Stanford, Google, and some other Bay Area icons.

Absolutely! And no place is without it's elitism. It's just annoying that Boston's is based on a specific identity that cannot be absolved (where you went to school for elementary, high, then college) versus something that adults have some autonomy to define (Cambridge and Somerville was much more refreshing, but the same issues persisted underneath).

That said, everyone should cut people to size whenever any form of elitism arises. It's all bullshit, we make good money - what's the point about clinging to a specific identity.

Re: The Stanford Startup and the MIT Startup (2013)

#62

Post by alephnerd »

neltnerb wrote: post #59
ben7799 wrote: post #36

The article strikes me as somewhat OK but overly critical of the MIT startup and overly forgiving of the Stanford startup. Also prior to the mid 1990s it seems like the Stanford startup thing really hadn't begun yet. You look at the old guard of SV companies and they operated much more like east coast culture. To me it seems like the modern "Stanford startup" culture arose from VC money from the investors who made to…

I would say that MIT has jumped on the entrepreneurship train (for better and worse) much more wholeheartedly in the decade since this account of an even older (!) anecdote. That's not to say that the startups aren't doing hard tech and they're still different than west coast startups. However, scientists are perfectly fine at using the scientific method for business development once you explain it to them and are mu…

> I would say that MIT has jumped on the entrepreneurship train (for better and worse) much more wholeheartedly in the decade since this account of an even older (!) anecdote.

Also, a lot more west coasters (like me and my peers) started coming out to Cambridge for school this past 10-15 years after Stanford, USC, UCLA CS/Anderson, and Berkeley EECS/Haas became increasingly difficult to get admission into.

I have plenty of Harvard and MIT friends who were rejected by those 4 programs despite being Californians.

> if you mentor them even a little bit.

MIT started working much harder to explain this in the mid '00s when it truly was much more like what this story says.

Yep! Programs like Engine helped, and I-Labs across town at Harvard as well, and YC ofc had its origins in Cambridge.

Re: The Stanford Startup and the MIT Startup (2013)

#63

Post by alephnerd »

tpetr wrote: post #56
alephnerd wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to school out East and work out west, and consumer tech is way more of a NYC thing than a Bay Area thing because the personas and professional networks are out there. West Coast is also enterprise or business tech driven, but those founders aren't as media friendly or sexy despite being the majority (hence the Musks and increasingly Altmans hogging the limelight). Boston has potential, but it honestly isn't le…

honest question, what's wrong with the CIC?

It's been sometime since I was there, but it felt like it tried to be a South Park Commons style salon, but promising founders in the Software and Hardware space had plenty of better options like Engine or I-Labs, or moving out West to join YC or SPC.

I've noticed UAV/Autonomous/SpaceTech (UAE and Saudi are on a buying streak rn) and Biotech (unsurprising) startups do fairly well in the Boston scene.

Re: The Stanford Startup and the MIT Startup (2013)

#64

Post by ijidak »

danjl wrote: post #55

The Stanford startup looks AMAZING for five years, and then, after getting hundreds of millions in investment, they realize they are only making tens of thousands in revenue, everyone starts fighting, friendships and money are lost. Meanwhile, the slow growing MIT company discovers a tangential product while developing their technology. They release the pivot product which slowly grows revenue. They build under reven…

I'd love to see the cumulative collective market cap of MIT founded companies vs Stanford companies.

My guess is that Stanford founded companies would win.

I'm an MIT grad myself. But I've noticed the incredible productivity of startups coming out of the Bay Area.

Though, not sure how much of that is Stanford grads specifically as opposed to other schools in the area (as well as graduates from schools around the country who flocked to the Bay Area).

Re: The Stanford Startup and the MIT Startup (2013)

#65

Post by ijidak »

Has anyone seen stats on the cumulative collective market cap of MIT founded companies vs Stanford companies?

I'd love a database of companies and their public valuations, tagged by the schools of the founders.

My guess is that the market cap of the Stanford founded companies would beat those of the MIT founded companies.

I'm an MIT grad myself. But I feel, given MIT's prominence as a tech institution, the cumulative market cap of MIT founded companies would be surprisingly small.

Re: The Stanford Startup and the MIT Startup (2013)

#66

Post by amirhirsch »

ijidak wrote: post #64
danjl wrote: post #55

The Stanford startup looks AMAZING for five years, and then, after getting hundreds of millions in investment, they realize they are only making tens of thousands in revenue, everyone starts fighting, friendships and money are lost. Meanwhile, the slow growing MIT company discovers a tangential product while developing their technology. They release the pivot product which slowly grows revenue. They build under reven…

I'd love to see the cumulative collective market cap of MIT founded companies vs Stanford companies. My guess is that Stanford founded companies would win. I'm an MIT grad myself. But I've noticed the incredible productivity of startups coming out of the Bay Area. Though, not sure how much of that is Stanford grads specifically as opposed to other schools in the area (as well as graduates from schools around the coun…

MIT companies in aggregate don't add up to a Google. ChatGPT did a pretty good job with these prompts and renders a pie chart with outdated valuations. Chat sharing doesn't work with the embedded pie charts, here are the prompts:

"Can you produce a pie chart of the top 10 most valuable MIT companies?"

"Can you produce a pie chart of the top 10 most valuable Stanford companies?"

(Elon Musk went to Stanford for two days so it counted Tesla.)

Re: The Stanford Startup and the MIT Startup (2013)

#67

Post by zackmorris »

jobs_throwaway wrote: post #50
zinodaur wrote: post #43

The MIT startup is like a breath of fresh air - a company that is actually doing something! Stanford style startups are a way better way to make money - but I wish people would just stop making them. Filling the economy with parasitic middle men hasn't worked out too well for us.

What about the tech economy hasn't worked out well? Americans and tech workers in particular have never been better off

I almost can't tell if you're trolling. If we look at quality of life metrics like the percentage of work hours required to rent or buy housing, then it takes about 1.5 times more hours worked to live today than it did in the 1990s when I was a young adult:

https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/05/raw-data-rent...

https://www.manausa.com/blog/wage-inflation-home-affordabili... see "Wage-Adjusted Monthly Mortgage Payments" section

Because housing costs keep going up while median wages have been stagnant since the turn of the millennium:

https://www.cbpp.org/blog/census-income-rent-gap-grew-in-201...

The last affordable years were around 1994 before the internet arrived, 2012 during the middle of Obama's terms and maybe 2020 during the pandemic.

But we've had so much corporate greed inflation to save the rich from losing any money for the 2 years that workers took off during covid-19 that any income gains by labor have been completely wiped out. $15 hourly wage? What a joke.

Sure, we have fancier video games, smart phones and even passable AI. But I can tell you straight up that in 1994 we had no concept for the level of anxiety that people live under today. I feel awful for young people born after that who think that whatever all this is is how it always was.

Had wages kept up with inflation and trickle-down economics not happened, so that the wealthy paid their fair share of taxes and we had the government services we're due like free public education and healthcare, the inflation-adjusted median US income would be twice what it was in 1994 and 3-4 times what it was in the 1970s. Well over the $70,000 mark where happiness peaks and more money provides diminishing returns. In other words, we could work for 3 months of the year and more than afford everything we have now, including savings and retirements. But the wealthy keep us down and divided because the highest profits come from struggle and war.

The financialization of tech under the Stanford model widens wealth inequality. I can't even imagine how many things would be fully automated and approaching free by now had the MIT model kept the pace of true innovation at 1960s and 1980s levels in areas like pharmaceuticals, genetics, miniaturization and other pure research. Instead we have 2 day shipping and privatized space travel, which are cool and everything, but people are homeless and dying of starvation all around the world and on our watch in proxy wars. Words like travesty don't even begin to capture how far astray we've gone.

Re: The Stanford Startup and the MIT Startup (2013)

#68

Post by hberg »

There are major cultural differences between these schools that the article doesn't touch upon. Having presented business/product ideas to classmates & colleagues at both schools, here's a gross simplification of responses I've experienced:

Me: I have an idea for "foo"

MIT reply: "Here's a list of 10 reasons why that won't work"

Stanford reply: "That's neat, and here's 10 reasons you should work on it"

One might see the Stanford response as unrealistic or patronizing, but one of these creates a culture of positive ideation (and hustle-culture startups) while the other leads to a lot of discouraged entrepreneurs.

Re: The Stanford Startup and the MIT Startup (2013)

#70

Post by jltsiren »

hberg wrote: post #68

There are major cultural differences between these schools that the article doesn't touch upon. Having presented business/product ideas to classmates & colleagues at both schools, here's a gross simplification of responses I've experienced: Me: I have an idea for "foo" MIT reply: "Here's a list of 10 reasons why that won't work" Stanford reply: "That's neat, and here's 10 reasons you should work on it" One might see…

The average thing I (as someone in the academia) hear about MIT is their press office exaggerating the importance of some research finding. The average thing I hear about Stanford is a controversy in mainstream news. To an outsider, MIT culture seems to be more about conventional nerds. Stanford culture seems to attract more than its fair share of political weirdos.
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