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 challenging changing of gears to be cutting-edge product-driven.
Also, a fourth MIT startup, which I recently almost co-founded, even before I joined the nascent team, the inventor-CEO had already done impressive customer-oriented legwork, and found Bay Area advisors, more like "Stanford" in the article.
> The team has 9 PhDs and just hired an MBA to start finding customers.
This is a problem, if none of the PhDs happen to have non-academic strong experience in product, nor in industry team engineering.
An academic environment will tend to make people think they know more than they do, about things academia doesn't know.
Also, academic degree and career paths in some ways reward the opposite of how I think people in a startup, or other effective company, should be thinking. (Unless the startup is more the VC growth investment scheme kind, which can be mostly about appearances.)
One MBA (even if very experienced) probably can't, by themself, counterbalance all those experience gaps, nor those lessons to unlearn.
> The MIT startup has no sales to customers, but possibly a DARPA grant to develop their technology.
I don't know about the more involved DARPA grant-writing, but SBIRs do seem to be popular seed-ish funding: https://www.sbir.gov/
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.
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 revenue, never take investment money, and share revenues. Everyone gets rich and stays friends, and the VCs get nothing.
I remember this article was extremely eye opening for me as a recent grad in 2013 Boston.
I think it's hard for people to understand today how much less the ideas like lean startups, Paul Graham essays, customer validation, etc had penetrated software engineering mindset in early 2010's, at least outside of SFBA.
As an east coaster the MIT startup hypothesis tracks very well. It's not just MIT but most startups out here i've been involved with. They're generally moonshots of tech, "guaranteed" to sell bc you have to buy bc the tech is superior. :)
Since following HN years back i've been trying to speak up at these companies with ideas like building a brand, market test-fit, etc and been given the cold stare. Thanks to this article I now see it's cultural. Typically these founders have relevant experience in their field, so they "know" there's a fit without testing and prefer to remain in stealth mode until the big reveal.
That comparison ignored the part where MIT (the University) screwed the deal.
Things are changing, but startup in MA are playing hard-mode and don't get any extra points for doing so.
Discussed at the time:
The Stanford Startup and the MIT Startup - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6715864 - Nov 2013 (85 comments)
As true today as it was back then. At MIT the atmosphere is around hard tech startups. That's even what the MIT accelerator specializes in https://engine.xyz/
I remember going to a conference at Stanford and I overheard more than one group of students talking about Sam Altman. Around Cornell I hear a lot of conversations of students who, on the other hand. think getting ahead is getting ahead in academia. I definitely find grad students are interested in hearing about adventures in startup land but they aren’t steeped in that the way Stanford students are.
I don't know why, but as a non-American, this seems to be more of a Nerd vs Jock kinda thing. Am I correct in my interpretation?
A 10% projected improvement in a bulk chemical process isn't that useful unless you're already in the industry. It's not enough to justify entering the industry. 2x, though...
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.
There's another type: the Stanford Startup that can't find product-market fit so it markets itself as an MIT Startup.
My insomniac brain automatically filled in "prison experiment" after Stanford, and then I started to think, what if startup-VC-founder-unicorn culture is all an elaborate psychology experiment?
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.
Avoid being a cliche by hustling and bring something awesome with tech too. The two aren't mutex.
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 of the taxpayer by state-subsidized 'entrepreneurs' which makes a mockery of the whole free-market capitalist competition system they claim to support. Ultimately, we end up with a system of aristocrats gambling at casinos who are given government bailouts every time they make a stupid bet - which is not sustainable over the long run.
Funny how MIT sounds like europe in this example..
What is (maybe better left) unspoken are the kinds of errors attributable to both strategies. The really great tech that never makes it to consumers and is lost, only to be rediscovered years later--MIT. Garbage software that consumers are tricked or forced into using--Stanford.
Might as well called Stanford B2C and MIT B2B. Yeah, B2B needs more capital since they are building a plant while B2C is really about sourcing materials, packaging and marketing. Completely different businesses, different CapEx and OpEx models, different risks and different investors.
I find this kind of rhetorical device tiring to read when it goes on and on like this. Once I read the conclusion I felt like I'd be cheated and it could have just said that in the beginning.
Wow so finance school startups and engineering school startups are different?
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 tons of money in the first .com boom.
As someone who has spent my entire career in the Boston area (but have worked for SFBA HQed companies too) my perception has been that the MIT influence and the general cultural difference has some of the following elements:
- East coast is much more conservative in business approach
- Fake it till you make it is far less common here
- For a long time it was unheard of for a Boston area company to try and go public or seek an exit without showing a sustainable, profitable business model
- Companies here are basically never founded on breaking the law and hoping you become too big to fail and the law has to be changed
- Way less focus on consumer tech here
- Way less adtech influence (but that has grown)
- Way less tech businesses based on trying to ruin traditional jobs and way less focus on trying to convert people to gig jobs.
Some of the sports betting tech is here which is a black eye on the area IMO.
There is some stuff in the Theranos vein that just seems like it would be very hard for it to have happened on the east coast.
But over time now the east coast is being influenced by the Stanford culture and things are getting a little less conservative and a little more likely to be get-rich-quick and/or shady.