"Can you imagine the impact on society of 20k freshman attending some Y Combinator-esque hacker / entrepreneurial program every year?"
I'm at the University of Waterloo in Canada, we have something that is (conceptually) similar to your idea, but it falls flat on its face for a few reasons. First, a bit of background:
- It's a residence where entrepreneurial-minded students can apply to live. The hope is that close proximity of a bunch of smart, ambitious people will serve as a pseudo-incubator for startups.
- The residence hosts workshops and invites speakers to shed some insight on the startup process, and hooks students up with technological resources (servers, bandwidth, hardware, etc) to build their projects. The residence takes no stake in any companies.
Now, I was there for its inaugural semester, and the whole thing fails for many reasons:
- Unlike YC, which draws from a pool of talented hackers and businesspeople, the residence draws from a pool of untalented, ambitious dreamers. Of the 70 or so people selected to live there, I can count the number of capable hackers on one hand - the rest were hopelessly unable to code at any level that approaches hacker proficiency. Most people were CS or engineering majors, most people also fail at producing their own side projects. There were people who could write Java, but didn't know what MySQL was - in short, the people there were technically incompetent, and even the ones who were able, didn't have the huge breadth of skills necessary to put on many hats.
This is a problem to most, if not all colleges - the number of people who have the depth and breadth of skill necessary to run a small, lean startup simply do not exist in large enough numbers at a single college. Maybe if 10 schools gathered together they'd have enough talent between them to pull this off.
- Zero business knowledge. The vast majority of the ideas that came out of that place were your standard "build app, pray for users, show ads to them, ???, profit!" formula. There were several econ majors selected to live there, I suppose in hopes that they will provide some business knowledge. They too were clueless about business models and weren't much help at all.
I did meet a couple capable people there that I still keep in touch with, so I suppose it's not all that bad. But IMHO building an incubator during college is a waste of time, especially at the scale you're suggesting. You can't will a successful startup into existence - you need talented people, and good luck finding 20k talented college freshmen with a strong portfolio of past work and entrepreneurial drive.
I'm at the University of Waterloo in Canada, we have something that is (conceptually) similar to your idea, but it falls flat on its face for a few reasons. First, a bit of background:
- It's a residence where entrepreneurial-minded students can apply to live. The hope is that close proximity of a bunch of smart, ambitious people will serve as a pseudo-incubator for startups.
- The residence hosts workshops and invites speakers to shed some insight on the startup process, and hooks students up with technological resources (servers, bandwidth, hardware, etc) to build their projects. The residence takes no stake in any companies.
Now, I was there for its inaugural semester, and the whole thing fails for many reasons:
- Unlike YC, which draws from a pool of talented hackers and businesspeople, the residence draws from a pool of untalented, ambitious dreamers. Of the 70 or so people selected to live there, I can count the number of capable hackers on one hand - the rest were hopelessly unable to code at any level that approaches hacker proficiency. Most people were CS or engineering majors, most people also fail at producing their own side projects. There were people who could write Java, but didn't know what MySQL was - in short, the people there were technically incompetent, and even the ones who were able, didn't have the huge breadth of skills necessary to put on many hats.
This is a problem to most, if not all colleges - the number of people who have the depth and breadth of skill necessary to run a small, lean startup simply do not exist in large enough numbers at a single college. Maybe if 10 schools gathered together they'd have enough talent between them to pull this off.
- Zero business knowledge. The vast majority of the ideas that came out of that place were your standard "build app, pray for users, show ads to them, ???, profit!" formula. There were several econ majors selected to live there, I suppose in hopes that they will provide some business knowledge. They too were clueless about business models and weren't much help at all.
I did meet a couple capable people there that I still keep in touch with, so I suppose it's not all that bad. But IMHO building an incubator during college is a waste of time, especially at the scale you're suggesting. You can't will a successful startup into existence - you need talented people, and good luck finding 20k talented college freshmen with a strong portfolio of past work and entrepreneurial drive.