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If MIT alumni seceded from their respective governments and formed their own nation, the companies founded in their newborn country would have the 17th largest economy in the world.
That’s according to a report issued last month by MIT and the Missouri-based Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, titled “Entrepreneurial Impact: The Role of MIT.” Surprisingly, MIT didn’t give it much publicity.
Maybe the venerable Cambridge institution didn’t want to toot its own horn, speculated lead author Edward Roberts, an MIT professor and former Boston venture capital investor, when I talked with him last week.
Among other tidbits from the report:
• Massachusetts has 6,900 active companies founded by MIT alumni;
• Age 20 is the new 30: The sweet spot for founding companies is now the late 20s, compared to the 1970s, when mid-30s was the most popular age bracket;
• Worldwide, MIT alumni appear to be founding companies at a rate of more than 900 per year.
The Kauffman study focuses on the economic impact of companies founded by MIT alumni. But as Roberts himself pointed out, founders are only part of the economic engine needed to make startups and innovation successful.
When Roberts co-founded Zero Stage Capital in 1981, the firm spent a year and a half trying to find lawyers who could structure term sheets for its $4.5 million first fund, he said. In 2009, you can’t throw a paper coffee cup out the window of Mass High Tech’s Federal Street newsroom without risk of hitting a startup lawyer. Many firms double as sweat-equity VCs, writing up term sheets for next to nothing if they think your company shows the promise of yielding big billable hours in a later IPO or acquisition.
When I talked to sources for last week’s story on the TechStars Boston incubator, the bewilderment of first-time entrepreneurship was a constant theme. Most successful founders acknowledge they’d still be at square one without seasoned veterans and advisers that helped pull their companies through. Some of those advisers are serial entrepreneurs, but many had never founded a company. The most recent example is Don Bulens, a serial CEO (and Suffolk University MBA) who last year took EqualLogic Inc. to a $1.4 billion acquisition by Dell Inc.
The Bay State’s startup support system is what makes this area fertile ground for innovative ideas, and there’s no doubt that ecosystem has many roots in Kendall Square. That observation leaves me with one question: If all the MIT-diploma-bearing investors, bankers, lawyers and tech business veterans seceded and formed their own union, where would that state rank in the list of the world’s economies — and would I be able to get a decent office lunch catered there?
Extreme Website Makeover
A trio of media, software and design firms put out news of an interesting sweepstakes last week. One winning company will receive a brand-new online “you” at an extreme website makeover party to be hosted by Metropolis Creative Inc., SHIFT Communications LLC and RatePoint Inc. on April 29. The sponsors are promising better brand messages, search engine optimization and social media apps.
In addition, I’ve got some makeover suggestions of my own. Here’s a handful of style points for anyone who wants their website to get a second date with me.
1. State where you are. You will not lose face among the nerdarati if they know you have an office.
2. Tell people how to get in touch with you — unless you’re a startup in stealth mode, in which case a video of goby fish will do nicely (see http://byledge.com).
3. DO NOT auto-run video or audio. ESPN.com, this means you.
4. Finally (marketing gurus, are you sitting down for this one?), somewhere on your home page, give your full, legal company name. In case you have not heard, the dot-com boom is over. You’re a business — an Inc., a Corp., an LLC — not a warm, squishy new concept.
There you have it: edgy web fashions that will separate you from the herd, brought to you by a bunch of people who surf others’ websites for a living, the Mass High Tech newsroom.
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