Bridge Hall at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California (Photo by Charles Clinton)
HOW CAN A SCHOOL increase the number of startups founded by its
students and faculty—and improve those startups’ chances of success?
Provide them with wide-ranging support and solid funding at the earliest
stages of their businesses. In that spirit, three U.S.-based schools
have committed to new initiatives meant to turn their communities
into startup ecosystems:
The University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business
in Los Angeles has created a new venture capital fund to invest and
receive equity in early-stage startups founded by USC students, alumni,
faculty, and staff. Initially supported by donations, the USC Marshall
Venture Fund will not only give early-stage USC-related companies the
resources they need to grow, but also train students in venture investment,
involve alumni, and motivate donors to support USC ventures.
“Learning to strike a balance between high risk and dramatic reward
remains an essential business skill, one often best taught through practical
involvement,” says USC Marshall dean James G. Ellis.
The 17 members of an investment
committee will act as advisors to
students who will help evaluate entrepreneurs’
applications for funding. The
committee comprises representatives
from venture capital firms, local incubators,
and entrepreneurial organizations.
The school plans to invest in ten to
12 startups each year, and each startup
chosen will receive between US$25,000
and $50,000. All realized gains will be
reinvested into the fund to ensure its
sustainability.
To accelerate the commercialization
of student-founded ventures,
the University of Texas at Dallas has
partnered with Capital Factory, a
Dallas-based early-stage tech investor
that just opened its Dallas offices in
2018. Through the partnership, select
UT Dallas student founders and their
teams will have access to Capital
Factory’s co-working space, as well as
education, mentorship, networking,
and products and services that will
help them build their businesses. An
incubator will host a calendar of events
open to the public.
Both UT Dallas representatives
and Capital Factory executives hope
that the partnership will help make
downtown Dallas a hub for students’
entrepreneurial activity. Among those
supporting the partnership is Bryan
Chambers, the new vice president
of Capital Factory’s accelerator and
investment fund. Chambers, a Dallas
investor who also has served on UT
Dallas’ entrepreneurship faculty, views
collaborations such as the one between
the university and Capital Factory as
a critical way to boost startup activity
in the cities of Dallas-Fort Worth,
Houston, and San Antonio.
“Currently, Texas captures a mere
2 percent of national venture capital.
To say Texas is underrepresented in VC
would be an understatement,” Chambers
said in a January interview with the
online publication Dallas Innovates.
“By collaborating with more partners
across the state and investors nationwide,”
he adds, “we hope to influence
the overall amount of national venture
capital Texas receives.”
Santa Clara University in California
is currently soliciting funding to create a
central hub to guide and coordinate the
innovation and entrepreneurship efforts
of its students across campus. The Center
for Innovation and Entrepreneurship
(CIE) will coordinate existing efforts
at the university related to innovation
and entrepreneurship, including startup
competitions and mentorship programs
at the Leavey School of Business; virtual-
and augmented-reality experimentation
in the College of Arts and Sciences’
Imaginarium; the use of the Maker Lab,
a prototyping space at the School of Engineering;
and the Entrepreneurs’ Law
Clinic at the School of Law.
The CIE also will coordinate new
initiatives, such as courses in design
thinking, design challenges and
hackathons, joint programs in product
innovation or new-venture management,
and faculty research on overcoming
barriers to innovation. The CIE will
infuse all of its entrepreneurial programming
with three characteristics:
the Jesuit perspective on responsibility,
morality, and ethics; real-world experiences;
and an entrepreneurial mindset,
particularly one that focuses on innovations
that create value or solve socially
meaningful problems.
“The graduates of the future likely
will have ten or more jobs—in many
cases in fields that have yet to be
envisioned,” says Caryn Beck-Dudley,
dean of the Leavey School of Business,
who worked with many stakeholders
to coordinate the new CIE. Future
graduates, she adds, “will need skills
and aptitude for reinvention. Across all
disciplines, our students will be more
agile and adaptive if they are part of an
ecosystem that instills a passion for
innovation and entrepreneurship.”