Yesterday, we spent time at both MIT and Harvard, hosting five different events at both schools in one day. That’s a lot of free pizza! We met more than 120 students over the course of the day, all of whom are interested in building technology products and are exploring their options for the summer.
What has really resonated with me (Alex) is how much the startup scene has changed over the last few years at MIT and Harvard, both schools I attended. At MIT, the $100K has always been the center of the ecosystem, but now it seems like students have access to greater resources throughout the year. Like most significant changes at universities, this one was driven by students, and now the faculty and administration have co-opted it as their own. A similar situation exists at Harvard, where right around the time I left HBS in 2009, startups became a thing people wanted to do. The creation of the “Startup Tribe” (MBAs) and “Hack Harvard” (undergrads) started a groundswell of interest which now has been bolstered by the administration’s increased support of CS50 (Intro to Computer Science) and an expanded, more engineering-focused curriculum.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, startups seem to be coming to campus to recruit, which certainly wasn’t the case in my day. My final talk of the day at Harvard Hack Night, which started at 10:10pm (!), was followed by Pooja Sankar of Palo Alto-based Piazza. She did a great job telling her and her company’s story; and it occurred to me, while sitting in the audience, that we would never have convinced a speaker of that quality, at such an early stage in her company’s life, to come all the way from California to present at 11pm on a Tuesday night.
All in all, it’s great to see entrepreneurship alive and well and my alma mater(s). Thanks to all our hosts for their hospitality, and we’re looking forward to visiting more schools to tell the Summer@Highland story. Early deadline’s coming up soon!
Neat summary of our visit to Harvard and MIT this week.
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