School:Michigan Technological University
Contents
Overview
Michigan Technological University is a world class research university looking to further encourage the startup culture on campus. Many of the resources available to students come from other students in the form of events and clubs. This wiki page will serve as a running record of the resources available to students on the Michigan Tech campus.
Student Entrepreneurship
Faculty Entrepreneurship
Landscape Analysis
Michigan Tech trains and equips some of the best engineers in the country. The Houghton Smart Zone and associated resources provide an excellent support structure for new businesses, and contests such as the New Venture Competition inject much needed funding into the startup culture at Michigan Tech.
Despite these resources there has not been widespread proliferation of student led startups at the University.
In speaking with several would-be founders, the bottleneck seems to be finding talented individuals who compliment the needs of the startups. Students not involved in the startup culture at Michigan Tech, and whom have progressed far enough through their curriculum to add significant value to a startup, seem to be reluctant to add another responsibility to their busy schedule.
Furthermore it’s challenging for founders to find the top-talent at Michigan Tech to involve in their projects. Current methods rely on unstructured social connections and in many cases settling for whomever agrees to help.
The current enterprise and senior design structure is great for connecting motivated students to funded projects and have been very successful in creating some truly incredible results. However in our observations it seems that often times the students involved with these enterprise teams are more engaged with the engineering challenge and less so in the viability of their project as a business.
Put simply, we believe there is often a disconnect between those passionate about engineering, and those passionate about creating a business.
If there were a way to connect founders with the top self-motivated talent within the University, one of the final bottlenecks for a thriving startup culture would be removed. We believe we can remove this bottleneck by merging the engineer successes brought forth by the enterprise and senior design structure with students who have demonstrated business acumen and are passionate about transforming their idea into a new venture.
