College Startups
And A Tale of Two Cities
Let me tell you a story:
Once upon a time, there were a group of friends in college interested in technology and entrepreneurship. In this city, there were many restaurants, and these restaurants sympathized with the crazy college-student work hours and stayed open late into the night to provide food after the dining halls closed. Unfortunately, these businesses didn’t have the capacity to deliver the barrage of 1am orders, and the students didn’t have an integrated and easy way to order delivery.
Equipped with coding skills, our main characters believed they could carve a niche in the space. While the market was dominated by companies such as GrubHub and Seamless, they believed that their product could target the local audience in a way that these companies didn’t. They built out their product, and within the first week of launching they got many orders…
At this point, the story has (at least) two possible endings:
(Ending #1) …within the first week of launching they got many orders, and that number grew, and grew, and grew. The company partnered with more and more restaurants and opened in more and more cities and eventually became a nationally-known company.
(Ending #2) …within the first week of launching they got many orders, and that number grew, and grew, and then the operation was abruptly halted by the university administration, which demanded the students stop business or face disciplinary action.
Those stories aren’t made up.
The first ending is the story of DoorDash, a Stanford-based startup that partnered with local businesses to deliver late-night food to students at Stanford. Eventually expanding to SF, Boston, DC, Chicago, LA, etc. They have raised almost $60M in 4 rounds and have been wildly successful as a company.
The second ending is the story of Instanomz, a Harvard-based startup that partnered with local businesses to deliver late-night food to students at Harvard. Once they gained traction, they were approached by the administration and told that they had to shut down, strike a deal with the HSA (Harvard Student Agencies, a monopoly on businesses that serve Harvard students), or face disciplinary action.
Now, let me start by saying that: I am not presenting this as insult or criticism, simply an observation about differences on campuses. I agree that these two aren’t identical cases. It is true that Instanomz was breaking a Harvard rule of a entering dorms as a 3rd party delivery service, but I can’t imagine DoorDash didn’t break some obscure rule in the student handbook. Or, if they truly didn’t, it’s possible that those kind of rules are stifling to innovation, and simply shouldn’t exist.
I am presenting this because I do not believe that all campuses are equally welcoming to innovation. And I think that when so many administrators are concerned about how to bring innovation to campus, a lot of them simply miss the point.
In some respects it’s almost paradoxical. On one hand, these are great universities that are doing their part to encourage innovation. At Harvard this means: having a new building for innovation; it means having a showcase for innovation; it means having an award for innovation in certain sectors.
On the other hand, in some respects it’s almost Social Network esq, that the administration acts as a barrier to innovation rather than a support, forcing students to choose between innovating and facing disciplinary action, or backing down. And that’s not how it should work. When universities are trying to increase innovation, they should encourage it, not hinder it. Encouraging innovation means that they need to be willing to let it change the way the world works.
It reminds me of a story that gained a lot of publicity about a year ago. A handful of students at Yale built a better way to index course data, called Yale Blue Book Plus (Yale Blue Book is the name of their course evaluations). The administration blocked their site and told them that if they didn’t remove it, it would result in disciplinary action.
If universities want more “innovation,” they need to be aware that innovation comes at the cost of changing the way students explore course data; they need to be aware that it causes students to run websites from their dorm room; and they need to be aware that sometimes it leads to disruption of monopolies and late night food delivery. Innovation comes at the cost of potentially disrupting the way we currently do things and changing our perspectives on the world. And so, if universities want to encourage more innovation, they need to focus on first building a culture that is open to growth and trying new things.
