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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)

#71

Post by ioblomov »

vineyardmike wrote: post #15
photochemsyn wrote: post #9

Intellectual property generated at universities that accept any taxpayer funding whatsoever should belong to the taxpayer, meaning any US citizen should automatically have access to that IP under a free non-exclusive license. If you don't like this, tell the billionaires to go back to funding private research centers (e.g. Bell Labs) and they can own all the IP generated there outright. Otherwise, it's just a ripoff…

> Intellectual property generated at universities that accept any taxpayer funding whatsoever should belong to the taxpayer Not everything generated at a university that takes tax money is government owned, but everything the government funds is available to the government. > private research centers (e.g. Bell Labs) Companies like Google or Apple have been funding tons of research. I worked for a government research…

Bell Labs, with all its ground-breaking, Nobel-winning research—from the transistor to UNIX and the cosmic microwave background to information theory—is an extreme outlier because, outside of rich governments themselves, only the unlimited resources of a government-sanctioned monopoly could fund basic research that, at the time, would have no obvious utility. Though the fruits were smaller in scale, Xerox PARC is another rare example.

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

#73

Post by sterlind »

jobs_throwaway wrote: post #58
sterlind wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The enshittification of the Internet? Search results overrun with SEO, internet-connected dishwashers, toxic social media full of dark patterns, discarded Juuls littering the streets, ads on paid streaming services that cut half their content because of mergers, meanwhile the planet is burning. Yes, there's a burgeoning middle class of engineers who design those Juul pods and build those ad networks, but imagine if a…

That all sounds dramatically preferable to an economy that follows what you suggested and companies like Google, Facebook, Netflix, Salesforce, etc etc don't exist because we haven't solved desalination yet

Wanting Salesforce rather than clean drinking water is a rare take, I'll give you that.

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

#74

Post by beryilma »

Symmetry wrote: post #54
neilv wrote: post #14

The article names its archetypes not entirely fairly, based on my experience at three MIT startups. Two were novel-tech academic spinoffs, and the third was alumni applying/integrating COTS tech driven by customer problem domain. Of those three, two were business-thinking much like the article's "Stanford" archetype. The other had, like the article's "MIT" archetype, a period to develop tech from the lab, and a chall…

SBIRs can be useful, but they can also be a trap where a company just keeps going after SBIRs and never takes the technology to market.

There are entire companies in Boston/Cambridge area whose business model is to get perpetual SBIR grants back-to-back and never produce anything of commercial value. And they pad themselves on the back for being innovative companies. It is almost like there is collusion between these companies and grant-giving agencies.

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

#75

Post by galdosdi »

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…

Me: I will write software to help salesman plan their route when they travel.

MIT: the travelling salesman problem is NP-complete so your idea is impossible

Stanford: you should build an MVP that just randomly sorts the destinations and see if that's good enough first, then pivot to what customers really want

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

#76

Post by pbronez »

beryilma wrote: post #74
Symmetry wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SBIRs can be useful, but they can also be a trap where a company just keeps going after SBIRs and never takes the technology to market.

There are entire companies in Boston/Cambridge area whose business model is to get perpetual SBIR grants back-to-back and never produce anything of commercial value. And they pad themselves on the back for being innovative companies. It is almost like there is collusion between these companies and grant-giving agencies.

Yup - “SIBR Mills” The Federal government has very complex and specific rules for buying things. It’s a big, important market but hard to crack. Thus the most successful players tend to be really good at selling to the government… regardless of whether they’re really good at what the government needs.

The government knows this and thus tries to create programs that streamline the process while retaining sufficient controls to steward tax payer funds effectively. SIBR is one such program. They’re useful, but not immune to exploitation by sales specialists.

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

#77

Post by aurareturn »

ijidak wrote: post #65

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…

You don't need to do any research. Just look at Google. It should dwarf all MIT startup companies combined.

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

#78

Post by addicted »

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

For like 20 years. The job market for tech workers is hell right now and is only gonna get worse
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