The Reason BYU Doesn’t Have More Successful Startups
How can we get BYU to pump out EVEN MORE successful startups?
BYU has become a launchpad for tech. Qualtrics, DOMO, Omniture, PluralSight, Owlet, SimpleCitizen… the list seems to go on and on. So while BYU is pumping out fantastic startups left and right, I can’t help but think what BYU could do to get to the next level. How can we make Silicon Slopes a household name like Silicon Valley? How can we get BYU to pump out EVEN MORE successful startups?
In the past few months, I’ve worked for two venture capital firms. Contrary Capital is a decentralized university-focused fund investing in student-run startups at the top universities across the nation. Section Partners is a Palo Alto fund that provides financing solutions for late-stage founders. These have allowed me to view both sides of the startup-spectrum: startups who hope to make it big, and startups who have successfully made it big.
So, what’s the difference?
This is the question asked by every greenhorn entrepreneur, and there is no simple answer. There are so many things that have to go right for a startup. It’s amazing that any of them even become profitable. However, after hearing pitches from dozens of BYU startups, there seems to be one common issue.
BYU startups don’t have technical founders.
If you look at today’s successful companies, you’ll notice they almost always have technical founders or early technical employees. Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Larry Page are all computer scientists and engineers. The majority of startups I deal with at the late-stage fund include at least one technical founder.
At BYU, we are lucky to hear a pitch from a team with an information systems major, let alone someone with a STEM degree (sorry, information systems, you are only half STEM). The teams are chock-full of accounting, finance, and marketing men and women who either know enough code to squeeze by or they decide to give up a sliver of equity to a local dev shop to build a minimally viable product (not recommended, by the way).
Why is having a technical founder such a big deal?
If you have a tech-heavy product, hopefully this is obvious. But BYU has pumped out a lot of companies that aren’t super tech heavy. While Podium, Qualtrics, and SimpleCitizen are leveraging technology and changing the world in incredible ways, they aren’t necessarily pushing the bounds of technology like some AI and machine learning companies in the Bay (think autonomous vehicles). However, they still all involve extremely complex software that your average coder can’t write. Do you still need a technical founder if you aren’t super tech heavy? While it’s not necessary, it is strongly advised. Every tech startup has some form of user interface, whether it’s a phone app or website. Most include an intense backend. In the beginning stages of a startup, being able to pivot and adjust in a short amount of time is crucial, and very difficult if you don’t have a technical founder.
So why don’t BYU startups have technical founders?
There are two main reasons.
1. There is a barrier between STEM students and business students. As an engineer, I’ll be the first to say that engineers are weird. Business students don’t exactly head over to the engineering buildings when looking for a good time. On top of that, many engineers spend all their time with their heads buried in their textbooks and TI-84 calculators. While there are dozens of STEM students who are interested in entrepreneurship, the general sentiment among BYU engineering students is to work for a few years before you start your own venture.
2. BYU’s business school is WAY ahead of our STEM programs. Our accounting and finance programs are consistently top-ranked. We seem to kill it in case competitions, putting ourselves in a league with schools like Harvard and Stanford. After taking a few business courses and walking through the Tanner Building, it’s no surprise that Utah is an entrepreneurial hotspot. And while BYU still has some of the brightest engineers and computer scientists, we are nowhere near institutions like MIT, Stanford, and Carnegie Mellon. Cool technologies have come from the Crabtree Building like folding bulletproof shields for police officers, super-high mileage cars, and optical flow drone technology. Unfortunately, there seems to be a disconnect between the technology and bringing it to market. Tom Stockham, the CEO of Experticity and a great mentor, once told me “there are plenty of good ideas, just not enough people to turn them into businesses.”
There isn’t an easy fix, but I’d like to propose a couple of solutions.
Dear Business Students:
While it is possible to succeed without a tech founder/product-centric employee, DO YOUR BEST TO GET ONE ON YOUR TEAM. You will have a better product, it will be easier to adapt and pivot as time goes on, and you are more likely to succeed. Even if your business model doesn’t revolve around something that is tech-heavy, in today’s digital age it is crucial to at least have someone who can build a killer website. And while the business school may be ahead of the engineering programs, that doesn’t mean all STEM students suck or there isn’t any cool tech here. Take a day and visit one or two of the STEM professors on campus. Feel free to shoot me a message and I can connect you with a professor whose work you might find interesting. They can show you some of the tech they are working on, you can bounce ideas off them, and they can point you towards their top students who might be able to help. It’s quite possible that there are some programming wizards who are knocking at your door begging to be a part of your startup, but odds are you are going to have to find them. If you are still in the drawing board stage, even better! STEM people naturally think differently than businessmen and businesswomen, and can offer unique insights. Invite them in and get some ideas.
Dear STEM Students:
So… sorry about that whole comment about us not being on the same level as MIT. I know that probably hurt. But just because some school is ranked higher than BYU doesn’t mean that we aren’t smart, capable students. However, we do have a few flaws we need to work on. First, we need to get out of this mindset that we can start a company in a few years, after we have graduated and worked in industry. Now is the time! You don’t have a family depending on you, you have all the energy in the world (depending on your daily Red Bull consumption), and you are exposed to some of the greatest research in the country.
Second, we need to stop pretending we don’t have time. I get it. I’m an engineer too. We pride ourselves in taking on some of the hardest majors at BYU. And while our classes are time-consuming and difficult, we need to realize that we aren’t too busy to get involved with a startup or start our own. Stop pretending like you spend every waking moment in the Clyde step-down lounge. And if you do spend every waking moment in the Clyde step-down lounge, you need some serious help. While my academic record may not be as stellar as it was freshman year, the time I’ve spent in extra-curricular activities has put me in a much better position than if I were to get a 4.0. And let’s be honest, who even gets A’s in 300-level engineering classes anyways?
Dear BYU Administrators/Donors:
If you want to invest in BYU entrepreneurs, INVEST IN STEM. The new engineering building is a great start. But the building is just that: a start. In order to be a real competitor, we need to invest in our professors. The real value of BYU. STEM students need entrepreneurial minded professors who can show them how to lead, disrupt, innovate, and think outside the box. Professor Anton Bowden is a fantastic example. Not only is he heavily involved in biomechanics research, but he is also part of Rubi Life, a BYU startup that just won $40,000 at the 2017 Utah Entrepreneur Challenge.
Another issue students face is the focus on core classes. The average engineering student is at BYU for 5 years completing their major, and most will never step foot in a business class, let alone the Tanner Building. There are no business certificates or programs available for engineers, only one business class is available as a technical elective, and getting a business minor takes another year (especially after a LDS mission, 6 years for an undergrad degree is hard to swallow). This means that by the time we graduate from BYU with a minor, our counterparts will have finished medical school or will have had 4 years of experience under their belt. In order to compete with entrepreneurial powerhouse universities, we need to make more business curriculum available to students while still allowing them to graduate before their hair turns grey. There is no easy solution, but this is a discussion we need to have.
BYU is an incredible university, and arguably the reason Utah is becoming a hotbed of startups. While Silicon Slopes is just Silicon Valley’s kid brother, technology is the catalyst that can boost us up into the big leagues.
