There is something very unique about the area around Stanford University. The area is home to start-ups of all types from iPhone game developer Tapulous (Tap Tap Revenge) to Facebook. I know a Computer Science professor who holds his office hours at the University Cafe in Palo Alto. Stanford offers an iPhone software development course to equip grads with relevant and timely capabilities. Larry Page and Sergey Brin (founders of Google) were both computer science grad students at Stanford. They even have a 5,000 member Business Association of Stanford Entrepreneurial Students (BASES) that supports the goal of building “the next generation of entrepreneurs by facilitating networking, discussion, education, and hands-on experience with real world people and problems” that is supported by the local VC industry. It’s not just about entrepreneurial programs but the way they are integrated with the computer science and engineering programs that makes Stanford a major supplier of talent to the entrepreneurial eco-system in Silicon Valley. These are the people that take the high risk, high reward jobs at the endless number of start-ups in the Valley. They are also the people who go on to start their own companies. They are the technology-savvy entrepreneurial life-blood of start-ups.
How are we doing at fostering a generation of entrepreneurs from Canadian computer science and engineering programs? Nowhere near what I see in Silicon Valley on my monthly visits.
A critical factor in building a sustainable venture capital industry in Canada is a having a large volume of transactions and a deep entrepreneurial talent pool to both work at and launch start-ups. Venture Capital is a numbers game and we need many more start-ups than Canada is currently producing from which to choose a select few to fund that will be globally competitive.
To help achieve this, Canadian universities need to graduate more students from technical sciences programs that want to work in start-ups and become entrepreneurs as opposed to just “employees.” Many of our universities and colleges fail to inspire technical sciences students to create start-ups. The best of our best computer science, engineering and other technical students should be equipped to create companies. It is critical that Canadian educators re-tool the relevance of their programs. And, as an industry, we must collaborate with universities on initiatives like Stanford’s BASES. All of this is necessary if Canadians are to compete and create globally.
