alone; so, in recent years, Cornell has invested in providing budding entrepreneurs with more opportunities to make it to the big leagues. In 2008, the eLab business accelerator, a program that provides funding and mentorship for a select group of on-campus startups, was founded. In 2013, LifeChanging Labs, another incubator for startups, started mentoring its first batch of companies on campus. By 2015, the aforementioned Blackstone Launchpad was founded, a program that has its own space at Kennedy Hall, where students can come in to discuss startup strategy and receive mentorship. In 2016, a collaborative space was provided for aspiring entrepreneurs when eHub opened in both Kennedy Hall and Collegetown. Throughout these changes, Cornell professors who have taught entrepreneurship courses have recognized this remarkable surge in interest. Professor Fleming, who teaches “HADM 4130: Entrepreneurial Management,” noted that her class was consistently full with a mix of grad students, seniors, and juniors. Meanwhile, Professor Streeter, who teaches “AEM 3249: Entrepreneurial Marketing and Strategy”, said of the change: “15 years ago, if you asked a group of incoming freshman, ‘How many people here think they will start a business’? You might get a couple of hands. But now, if you ask, ‘How many of you think entrepreneurial ventures are somewhere in your future?’ Almost everybody would raise their hand.” While she is cognizant of the efforts on behalf of Cornell, Prof. Streeter is convinced a generational shift in how to approach life itself was also crucial in the rise of entrepreneurship at the school. The millennial generation, in her eyes, gravitates towards concepts such as autonomy, independence, and wanting to make meaning as well as money in one's careers. Naturally, entrepreneurship was the perfect call for this desire. So, with this meteoric rise in activity in the Cornell entrepreneurship scene, another question was raised: had the entrepreneurship gold rush at Cornell paid off? A simple scan of startups listed on the Cornell Startup Tree site led to a decidedly mixed conclusion. While the 555 startups listed on the website was a significant improvement over previous years, it wasn’t a full 555; rather, a number of the startups had long been abandoned, left twisting in the wind. A common problem with a number of the startups listed on Cornell Startup Tree is a failure to endure. For instance, startups such as “2 Guys
Uncorked” and “1903 Labs LLC,” while promoting interesting ideas (2 Guys offered accessible wine reviews and 1903 Labs LLC made easy to use event creators), have shuttered operations and deactivated their web page. Others that have followed suit in similar fashion include: Bionic Sight LLC, Korean Youth Model Nations, Deal Angel, Atmospheir, Everest, Hypernet, HubVR. All of these companies, while developed on an interesting premise, have failed to survive. On the other hand, there are stillrunning startups that are underwhelming, despite earning recognition from Cornell. Matador Finance is one of these. Despite winning the “Big Ideas Competition” in 2017, earning a cash prize and a spot in the Life Changing Labs Summer Incubator, the entire sum of its business is a short online course that aims to increase financial literacy. Despite being successful in its mission, it doesn’t do much to move the proverbial needle. A similar one is CladNetwork, which is a news website that shares news taken from other websites and aggregates it into one location. While currently running, it offers little in original content, and its premise of aggregating news has been stolen by apps such as New 360 and Pulse. Still, it would be wrong to say that the entrepreneurship program has missed the mark because Cornell startups hold a high attrition rate. Professor Fleming pointed out that, along with the fact that startups in general did not hold a high success rate, there was an obvious reason for the high rate of failures of startups at Cornell: a lack of experience. Having evaluated a string of startups during a previous career in private equity, she had found that the greatest predictor of success for startups was the experience the entrepreneur possessed. As she put it, “The vast majority of entrepreneurs fail in their first venture.” Only through failed experiences can entrepreneurs learn from their mistakes. That experience, however, was in short supply amongst Cornell students. It’s commendable when Cornell student startups do make a significant impact and become profitable. The list of the success stories includes: DAKA, a program that helps Chinese students find schools abroad; Ancillare, a company that increases cost efficiency for pharmaceutical companies; PureSpinach, a grower of fresh spinach through hydroponics; and RedRoute, an app that makes travel more efficient through AI technology. There is another point to
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consider; simply judging the success of the Cornell’s entrepreneurship programs by the success and failures of startups is rather one sided. What about the students who never engaged in startups? Professor Streeter raised an interesting argument when she pointed out that most of the students who took her entrepreneurship classes would not go on to create their own startups; rather, they would take, as she called it “the good job track.” She laid out this hypothetical: “You go to your parents, and you’re like, ‘I just spent four years at Cornell; I could go to a startup, or I could start at this company in marketing, management, or consulting which would pay me now.’” For most of her students, the good job track was hard to resist. That didn’t mean her teachings had fallen on deaf ears; in her eyes, quite the opposite happened. When her students went to a corporate setting, they would work on identifying a business opportunity, understanding a customer’s problem, derive a solution, and figure out a business model – in other words, exactly what an entrepreneur would do. Her classes, and on a larger scale, the Cornell entrepreneurship program, was not aimed solely at the students who wanted a career in entrepreneurship. Rather, the goal was to educate students on the entrepreneurial mindset and send them off into their respective careers more dynamic employees. That kind of impact is hard to measure. It’s why trying to gauge the success of the Cornell Entrepreneurship program doesn’t come down to just successes and failures of the startups; instead, it comes down to what students took something away from it. Did future entrepreneurs gain valuable experience with their first startup to prepare them for their next one? Did students heading off to work at a corporation gain skills to prepare for their careers? Cornell, in recent years, has looked to answer both questions in the affirmative. From its investment in startup accelerators to its expansion of the entrepreneurship curriculum, it has hoped to provide a more dynamic element to its educational experience. There hasn’t been a Facebook-like breakthrough yet on campus, but that shouldn’t be the focal point. Cornell’s Entrepreneurship Program, instead of booming, is on a gradual upswing: a rising tide that lifts all students.