HN Explorer

Ask HN: Which universities provide the best environment for startups?

5 points by newsisan ↗ HN
Obviously, Stanford will be at the top.

But then what would you have?

MIT? Berkeley? Princeton? CMU? Cornell? Caltech? UIUC? UCSB? UCSD? UT Austin? U Michigan? UCLA? USC?

As an Australian, the process of choosing which to apply to is much more difficult because I can't ask my classmates/counsellors these questions!

7 comments

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ahsanhilal
UIUC - University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Though I may be biased since it is my alma mater. They have the Technology Entrepreneurship Center, as well as a great Research Park. Most of the startups are more big data focused, or come straight out of R&D projects. They also have the National Center for Supercomputing Applications located there; so all in all great technical resources at your behest. How you utilize them is a completely different part of the equation. Inevitably, startups are more dependent on the founders and their zeal than anything else.
steventruong
MIT has some partnership programs with Stanford and also host an entrepreneurship competition now where the winner can win money as well. See here: http://mit100k.org/

There's also this: http://www.vlab.org/

As a disclaimer, I'm not associated with MIT and never attended or even been on their campus so I can't say much other than the above. I come from the Stanford side of things. Although I did attend some VLAB events.

abbasmehdi
I know caltech is trying to be but isn't. It's way more academic.
achompas
NYU is a great school to start a startup right now. This month alone we have:

> Fred Wilson speaking on campus about biotech startups,

> NYU Startup Week, with discussions on raising investment, working at a startup, etc,

> and a hackathon sponsored by hackNY[0], a fellowship for students interested in founding or working at a startup.

NYU is also 10 minutes away from General Assembly[1], possibly the largest tech co-working space in Manhattan.

[0] http://hackny.org/a/

[1] http://www.generalassemb.ly/

Disclaimer: I'm a grad student at NYU, and I actually chose this program over others because of the startup environment in New York.

onlawschool
I think that the University of Chicago is cultivating a great startup culture at Booth.

The Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship has some amazing resources: http://www.chicagobooth.edu/entrepreneurship/

The Booth School of Business has at least 6 Nobel Laureates as professors: http://www.chicagobooth.edu/

The New Venture Challenge (http://research.chicagobooth.edu/nvc/) has launched companies like http://grubhub.com, http://benchprep.com, http://bu.mp, http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/, http://www.prepme.com/, etc.

hansy
Georgia Tech is a great entrepreneurial hub in the South. I would highly recommend looking them up and also checking out their affiliate program, ATDC: http://atdc.org/

I know they run incubator-like programs specifically for undergraduates, so that's pretty cool.

I live in Atlanta right now, so feel free to contact me if you're curious about anything. Also, I graduated from the University of Michigan a few months back, so I know a bit about their tech/entrepreneurial culture as well.