afridi

The school actually does highlight John Bardeen and Nick Holonyak a ton! John Bardeen was the first person mentioned on my tour of the college of engineering and Nick Holonyak gave the keynote at my ECE orientation.

My posts were meant to highlight entrepreneurship which is why I didn't mention them (they'd be in a class of amazing innovators who studied/worked at UIUC). There's also a ton of awesome alumni that have gone on to be C level execs at big companies, but again they were omitted because these posts were specifically targeted at entrepreneurial alumni.

Max Levchin and many of the other members of the Mafia (Luke Nosek, Jeremy Stoppelman, etc.) are mentioned in the post.

They are also not forgotten on campus. Max was on campus last year and there was a ton of excitement in the college of engineering among students.

I think a balance is needed. A lot of my friends in CS graduating after 4 years of college (at a number of schools including at UIUC) feel less confident going into the industry than people I know that have gone through developer bootcamps.

Theory is definitely important, but the number of hands-on/practical courses needs to be increased as well.

Absolutely, I wasn't trying to say that the University helped start these ventures. From what I see there hasn't been a lot of support for student entrepreneurs on campus historically, but that has greatly changed (a lot of the programs I mentioned are just a few years old).

Pete Koomen's degree was a typo on my part. I've updated the blog post to reflect the correct info.

Author here. I guess I didn't really think of it in terms of starting at a specific time, I was just looking at the past. I focus mainly on tech entrepreneurship so I'd say maybe mid-90s onwards would be what I looked at.

Author of the original post here. To start of I'd just like to clarify that I'm a student at the University and have no ties to any of the administration.

The goal of the post was not to try and take credit for the successes of alumni, I rather wrote it to highlight how some of our alumni have gone on to do great things. I decided to write it after an experience I had this summer while I was interning at a VC firm in NYC. While there, I met the managing partner for one of NYC's biggest VC firms (I'll leave it unnamed) who basically said: 'oh, you go to UIUC.... they've produced one famous tech entrepreneur (Marc Andreessen), maybe you can be the second'. That's a sentiment I saw echoed throughout my time there and through previous experiences (especially on the East Coast).

In terms of the helping alumni with their ventures after graduation, I'd argue that the school has actually done a lot to help founders through the resources and early-stage funding available (a lot of these have sprung up recently). It's hard to compare it to Stanford/MIT/Harvard which are based in thriving tech cities where alumni and VCs can hop by on campus whenever.

Update: I'd also love to know (from everyone that sees this) what programs other universities have done to help alumni after graduation. Just because UIUC hasn't already done this doesn't mean we (students and alumni) can't start it. Just take a look at the awesome stuff that alumni from Harvard do for their community (http://harvard.splashthat.com/). It's entirely alumni managed + organized.

Author here. As I mentioned previously, I'm just a student and have no ties to any administration so I'm just speaking from my experience.

UIUC suing (or almost suing?) Andreessen is definitely a terrible step, but that was one event 21 years ago. In fact it happened before I was born (I'm a senior at UIUC now). Definitely a dark chapter of entrepreneurship on campus, but the goal of this post is to highlight the current ecosystem.

The university and the ecosystem is continuously evolving and hopefully we can tailor it to learn from other schools that have done a good job.

Agreed that Urbana-Champaign might not be the best place to start a company but that doesn't mean students can't start ventures while on campus and then move them elsewhere after graduation. We've been seeing that a lot recently.

Additionally, there are some benefits for startups that stay in town. Rent is extremely cheap (you can get your own bedroom in an apartment for ~$300/month) and you get access to a lot of talented students coming out of the university.

Wouldn't pay a dollar, since most of the communities I use Reddit for are now also active on Facebook + Slack.

Most VC firms that make seed investments will hear pitches from founders who just have an idea. However this would require for you to be in the VC's sweet spot in terms of vertical or that you get a referral from someone who knows the VC personally.

Not sure about the specific one you're asking about. I'd recommend looking at what seed-stage funds like to invest in your vertical and then seeing if anyone in your network has a connection there.

This was on Product Hunt last week, haven't gotten a chance to play with it yet but looks really cool - http://www.producthunt.com/tech/cymbal-2

Eclipse Luna

Startup Related (I don't listen to all of their episodes, but I do listen to several from): - Tim Ferriss Show - This Week in Startups - Geek's Guide to the Galaxy - A16Z Podcast - Harvard Business Review - Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders - Foundation

Non-Tech: - Serial (it's over but really interesting) - Undisclosed (the successor to Serial)