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Grab A Bunk In The Dot-Com Dorm
airrage writes "According to this Washington Post article, the University of Maryland has created "dot com" like dorms complete will all the necessary executive perks: wood desks, leather chairs, wireless, whiteboards; all to encourage entrepreneurship. Apparently, it's working too. Twenty of the students have created their own start-up firms, and six are already generating revenue."
if I recall correctly there was language in all the paperwork I signed when I went to school that said something to the effect of 'everything you do while you're attending college belongs to the college'.
Yeah, that sounds about right.
Don't like it? Don't go to a major university.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Here in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the universisty I went to set up a similar program, named Instituto Genesis (Genesis Institute). You can check their web site in portuguese for more info.
The success rate is high, with graduate companies making good profit. A coincidence (or not) I work at one of those companies, and we are doing very well. The initial support given by the program was a very nice push.
If they really want to teach these kids to run companies, they should set up an office that looks like their parent's basement, complete with folding chairs, ramen noodles for food, and a barely functioning PC. That's how real businesspeople do it.
Actually, that's not how many businesspeople do it. If you want to hold interviews, interface with a customer, and do anything besides be a little code monkey, the nice surroundings and furniture will help. Would you trust the guy in raggedy clothes with a three-legged desk or the one in a sharp suit and an oak table? The former might be a better coder, but only the latter could sell code to an end customer.
Sure, many businesses do get started with little to work from, starting with only the capital in the founder's pockets. But a business is a hell of a lot more likely to be successful when the owner has a proper place to file things, have meetings, and talk to customers.
I think I can answer some of the questions you guys have about the program, I was interviewed by the reporter and a current participant of the program.
Question: Who owns the IP of the products and company?
Answer: The students and their supporting professor (if any) own the IP. The program has special arrangements with the university to leave the companies formed in Hinman as independent entities. If such an arrangement didn't exist, the program would not be here today. In fact, we even have servers that use the university's bandwidth. The School of Engineering and School of Business have been incredibly supportive of the program and we have the Deans' full backing. So if any companies become successful the only thing they expect is for us to donate back to the school. However, this is not true for non-Hinman students or if the technology used by the company was researched by a professor on the university's dime.
Q: Why the 3.0 GPA requirement?
A: While the application does say 3.0, the director has made many special exceptions for driven students. I myself had a 2.9 GPA when I enter the program (I'm a CompSci, so sue me). It's mearly there to scare off people that only want to join the program to take advantage of the extra nice housing.
Q: Where's all the money getting spent? Why buy all the nice furniture?
A: Because we often have very prominent CEOs and corporate execs giving speaches, it's important that we appear professional. For example, we've had the CEO of Webmethods, Polycomm, Microstrategy, and a host of many other local and national CEOs swing by for talks. We also use the conference rooms as shared conference space for client meetings. If you think about it, one very nice conference room split among 6 companies is pretty cost effective.
Q: Porn companies? ;)
A: No. Not yet
Q: What kind of technologies do you guys have? :)
Any more questions?
A: The first and 2nd floors of the apartments have full wireless access and all rooms have access to IP-phones donated by Avaya. We also have tele-conferencing units donated by Brian Hinman. On top of that, we have a 5 computer tech lab that's accessible to all Hinman students. The computers are brand spankin' new Dells all with flat planel monitors. The sys admins had to put screen guards on the damn things to keep the business majors from poking at the screen.
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might already be redundant, but here goes :
A US university is investigating claims a porn film was shot in one of its halls of residence.
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