Programs for student founders at Stanford
A compendium of VC-sponsored entrepreneurship programs for students
At Stanford, there is an abundance of VC-sponsored offerings for engineering students who want to start a company. In general, there are two types of programs: a school-year program to help students build (basically a stripped-down accelerator) and summer internship placements. Some funds do one; others do both.
The current slate
Of the funds that come to mind, these five have the strongest branding and offerings on campus. For students who are reading, these are the funds I would keep an eye out for.
Pear: Best name recognition. Pear runs several programs: Pear Competition (~$100k check pitch competition), Pear Garage (program for engineering students). I helped with Competition and Garage my sophomore year.
Neo: Small cohort but strong community. They select for students who are generally passionate about their problem space, able to build quickly (have full-stack experience, which is surprisingly a rare skill within Stanford CS), and are kind and curious people. Neo runs Neo Scholars.1
Floodgate: Floodgate runs Reactor and Outliers (crypto-focused) for student founders. I did Floodgate’s Building Breakthroughs program my freshman year and loved it. Ann Miura-Ko (cofounder of Floodgate) also runs the highly selective Mayfield Fellows program, which counts Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom among its alumni.
Kleiner Perkins: Fellows program. Great portfolio startup placements: Stripe, Figma, Slack.
8VC: Fellows program. I did this program sophomore summer.
Common challenges programs face
For VCs who are reading, my general observation is that a lot of firms want to build relationships early with talented engineering students but struggle to find the correct approach. There are three main pitfalls I see across the programs. They are often:
Not aligned with students’ technical interests (e.g. the programs focus on teaching engineering students business / “startup” skills).
Not aligned with students’ long-term goals. There are student founders who prefer to continue growing their technical skills (so that they can build a company in that area) or work on side projects, which often become startups. They choose not to participate in the VC programs, which are often targeted toward students who want to build a startup now2.
Time-commitment heavy. Few students have time to travel off campus to attend a fund-sponsored program each week. They might get better traction building on their own rather than participating in structured activities.
For these reasons, some of the best potential founders I know actively avoid the VC programs, especially the ones that take place during the school-year, even if they are strongly interested in entrepreneurship.
My advice for VCs is to have a clear profile of the students you would like to recruit. What skillsets do they have? What communities are they involved in? Gather a few of these students as your “design partners,” schedule chats with them, and ask about their core interests and career priorities (and really listen). See where you can help. Is it recruiting? What are the companies they are hoping to get into, and can you connect them with those companies? Or is it access to people they look up to — top founders, engineers, researchers in academia? Shape your program around this core group of students’ needs and wants.
Opportunities
Build for win-wins.
Questions, comments, thoughts? Please drop them below.
A lot of students like Neo because unlike other funds, which only place students at their own portcos, Neo places students at top startups like Notion and Ramp, even if they are not in the Neo portfolio. For finalists in the program, Neo grants access to their internal recruiting platform -- students can apply directly for an internship or request an informational interview, etc.; they also offer students an investor database that is similar to VC Guide.
Wanting students to startup companies now makes sense. Funds are under time pressure to deploy capital. But I think putting this kind of time pressure on students is dangerous for two reasons. For a student who chooses not to join your program, you might miss out on building a relationship with them (especially if they start a great company down the line). For a student who does join (and is a potentially great founder), you might steer them onto the wrong path.
Here’s an example: say you have a top CS student who does a lot of research and wants to do a PhD. If they start a company now, it might end up being a consumer social or edtech company that will not scale, especially because the startup might not even be in the problem space they’re most passionate about. However, if they focus on their core research and work on hard technical problems, they might develop a useful set of skills that unlocks a different type of business. Think Naveen Rao (Nervana), Jonathan Frankle (MosaicML), Ion Stoika (Databricks, Anyscale).
Counterexamples would be Sam Altman (Loopt), Spenser Skates (Amplitude). Re. Loopt, there is an interesting piece from Jessica Lessin in The Information about how Sam Altman is using the same media playbook for OpenAI.