Trends

Although we cover a lot of early stage start-ups on College Mogul, a lot of the most successful internet companies that we know today were also founded by young entrepreneurs. Take Jawed Karim, he left the University of Illinois to start PayPal, and then YouTube with two of his colleagues, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen four years later. After selling PayPal (a business that helped inspire WePay ) for $1.5 billion, he then received $64 million dollars worth of stock when Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion. All while doing this, he managed to continue his studies to receive his undergraduate bachelor's degree in computer science and Ph.D. from Stanford University. Startup Blog Cont. »

"The cost of launching a tech venture is continually falling, due to a large number of interrelated technical, social, and financial factors." - The statement couldn't be more true, it's simply becoming easier and less expensive to build and launch a startup compared to 5 years ago, or even last year. It's part of the reason why there are more startups founded in undergraduate universities, business grad schools, and by young entrepreneurs who have small savings, if any, to seed their ideas. At the same time, some of these early stage companies create very viable and attractive investment opportunities for venture capitalists. Earlier this week, I spoke with Bijan Sabet, General Partner at Spark Capital who not only agrees that "students make for great investments", but also invests in those young entrepreneurs. He's led investments in Tumblr, which was started by David Karp when he was 19, and Twitter. Startup Blog Cont. »

The same way Hollywood breeds superstars and celebrities, the internet has quickly become a medium for people to gain their own fame, power, influence, and stardom. Just take Michael Arrington from TechCrunch, the rise of his popular blog landed him on Time’s 100 Most Influential People in the World list. Anyone can gain instant “stardom” or popularity over night if they post a hit video on YouTube. Then there are the founders and visionaries who build billion dollar companies while dozens of conferences, events, and tech parties have sprung to glamorize even the dumbest of startups. Virtual worlds, such as SecondLife, have even popped up giving rise to new microcosms and social environments that utilize the internet, computer screen, and 3-D representations of real life to facilitate communication and interaction between people around the world. No matter how you look at it, the internet has helped form a new ecosystem.

Sarah Austin, a student and entrepreneur at Parson, seeks to cover this new micro fame on her blog Pop17.com where she calls herself an online lifecaster and video journalist. She describes Pop17 as a two-to-three minute daily exploration to track, analyze and understand the new cultural phenomenon of online micro-celebrity. Her site has video interviews, news, and personal musings on how these trends/success stories came to be while profiling who these new influentials are. The site and concept is similar to how we cover college startups and entrepreneurs. Startup Blog Cont. »

Tatango is a dead simple, free group texting messaging service that grew out of Derek Johnson's basement to a company that now serves over 300,000 users across the nation. The startup helps groups, organizations, sports teams, college cheerleaders, and similar type groups blast messages to their members via SMS or voice message. Although simple, it helps solve a variety of problems such as effectively reminding peers of group meetings last minute or staying in the loop about what's happening on campus by subscribing all of your favorite groups. The model is attractive because it can be applied to any organization or business on or off campus and has a viral component that helps propel user adoption. You can send messages from your browser or conveniently from your phone - perfect for when you're on the go.

How do they make money? That's simple too, just attach a brief 30 character advertisement at the end of each message. This model is not only appealing to investors since it builds on the rapidly expanding mobile marketing industry, but likewise to marketers themselves as it allows them to send highly targeted messages to their target markets right on their cell phones. The isolation of the ads helps to increase brand awareness while their actionable nature bolsters their overall value, thus producing high CPM rates. 4info, a startup that utilizes the same model, has been able to charge marketers $0.05 per impression (a $50 CPM rate).

Startup Blog Cont. »

Congratulations to Barack Obama! So, what can we expect from our new President in terms of Tech Policy? Here are the highlights from this video for his blueprint for change regarding technology:

Click on the video to the left to view.

Improve America's Competitiveness

1. Double basic research funding

2. Make R&D tax credit permanent

3. Enforce anti-trust laws

4. Immigration reform

Create A Transparent & Connected Democracy

6. Online access to government data

7. Enable tracking of federal grants, contracts, earmarks, and lobbying contracts

8. Enable participation in government forums
- Ask questions in real time
- Offer suggestions
- Comment on legislation before signed

Encourage A Communications Infrastructure

9. Provide universal broadband access

10. Raise broadband speed standards

11. Connect schools, libraries, and hospitals

Support Science & Technology Education

12. Encourage technological literacy

13. Educate next generation of scientists and engineers

Employ Technology To Solve Our Nation's Pressing Problems

14. Electronic medical records

15. Improve healthcare

16. Reduce error

17. Lower costs

18. Invest in clean and renewable energy

19. End oil addiction

20. Create more jobs

The Boston Globed reported that Babson College received a whopping $10.8 million gift from the Lewis Charitable Foundation to establish an institute to support teaching, research, and outreach in social entrepreneurship.The Lewis Institute at Babson College will aim to develop strong leadership in the increasingly popular area of entrepreneurship.

Education is an important element needed to further develop the critical path for social entrepreneurship. Dedicated research and a deep understanding of the widespread issues such as education, healthcare, transportation and communications infrastructure, sustainability, energy and environmental protection, which are primarily responsible for variance in societal value, is paramount. Not to mention, the very nature of the institute should centralize talent and bolster collective intelligence.

Another major plus is the intent to set up a seed fund to plow money into the industry. Here are some more of the details:

Entrepreneurship

• Lewis Social Venture Seed Fund and Lewis Social Venture Hatchery to provide venture capital and resources for social ventures
• Green Collar Venture Competition to support ventures dedicated to environmentally sensitive undertakings

Academics and Research
Startup Blog Cont. »

According to a Business Week and study by Boston Consulting Group, "10 million people said they are considering starting their own businesses in the future." The number is the largest seen in 25 years. This comes as no surprise to us as interest in entrepreneurship is rapidly expanding among the Generation  Y demographic. The same study showed that "6 million people actually followed through and started those businesses, and one-third of them are doing business globally."

In the future, entrepreneurs will be young as well as old, more feminine, and more global than they are today. Another observation from the 9,500 interviews of university professors and teachers of entrepreneurship programs, small-business owners, and bloggers, who write on the subject, revealed that many entrepreneurs can actually be called "accidental entrepreneurs." Why is this? Business Week explains:
There are 20 million businesses—out of the 26 million businesses total in the U.S.—that have no employees. We found that a good portion of them don't call themselves small-business owners, but freelancers or hobbyists.
Why are there more Gen Y Entrepreneurs? Startup Blog Cont. »

Every entrepreneur is always thinking about the issue of funding. Running out of money is one of the common reasons why startups with great potential close down. The right amount of money at the right time is crucial. Young entrepreneurs find it even harder to arrange for funds because not only do we not have any considerable savings, our fledgling networks would rarely consist of accredited angel investors.

For the average entrepreneur, self-funding is the most common, but I think it'll be different for young entrepreneurs. If you either have a business or are planning to start one, how do you plan to fund it? Tell us and our readers!

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CNET News.com reporters Michael Kanellos and Carl-Gustav Linden recently met with Steve Jurvetson to discuss how the downturn in the broader economy will impact venture capital firms. For those of you who don't already know, Jurvetson is a leading venture capitalist in Silicon Valley, best-known for his involvement in Hotmail, Interwoven, Kana, and Skype. He is a managing director at the presitigous venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

When asked how much the economic downturn has changed the venture capital, Jurvetson's response was positive. He claims that in an up or down market, there will always be ideas. The market for innovation and entrepreneurship should not be considered volatile with respect to broader economy; in his experience, entrepreneurial activity can almost be thought of as a constant,or even continuously accelerating.

Jurvetson positions himself as somewhat of a maverick or rebel when describing his investment mantra:

"I don't really care what the venture industry thinks...We want to invest in unique ideas that can change the world. We don't even care what industry they fall into, but ideally they're driven by some major disruptive force, as a different way of looking at the economy and venture opportunities. I know that 10 years from now we will be investing in something that relates to that."

Over the next five years, Jurvetson sees a lot of money going into emerging clean tech and nanotech. He states that nanotech companies have yet to establish a business concept; most of the action is happening on the R&D level. Until the industry adopts more clear business models, Jurvetson claims that internet-related companies will be the bulk of his investments.

For those of us who are scared that internet investments will decline as the fears of Bubble 2.0 grow stronger, we may find consolation in the following: Startup Blog Cont. »

According to the Kauffman Foundation and a New York Times article, there are now more than 2,000 universities that offer at least one class on entrepreneurship, if not an entire course of study. This confirms the growth of collegiate entrepreneurship since there were only 253 in 1985 with approximately 16,000 students enrolled, compared to now with over 200,000 students.

This trend is likely to grow; college diplomas are becoming less valuable because they are essentially "a dime a dozen". As the population of college grads grows it will become the bare requirement for a job, forcing people to pursue a graduate degree to reach the same status with what could have been achieved with a college degree many years ago. I'm glad students are starting to realize the importance of building their own assets rather than someone else's.
The traditional career path of long-term employment for a single corporate giant has become less appealing to a new generation of graduates, as starting and running a small business has become more desirable. In fact, small business is generating about 75 percent of all new jobs in this country, according to a report in 2006 from the Small Business Administration.
There is still a question of whether entrepreneurship can actually be taught in school. The same New York Times article discusses whether or not it can be done in an effective manner: Startup Blog Cont. »