Entrepreneurship @MIT: The good, the bad and the ugly

MIT is known as one of the best, if not the best, science and engineering university in the world. After interacting with more than 400+ undergrads and graduates as an Entrepreneur in Residence, I am sure it is fair to say the fame is well deserved and is absolutely true.

However, as entrepreneurship becomes more and more important to solve the world’s biggest challenges, so is MIT’s responsibility to prepare the next generation of students for success. Unfortunately, and to my surprise, I was disappointed with MIT’s entrepreneurship prowess; so disappointed and frustrated that I decided to resign only after 9 months on the job.

This post is intended to be a guide for students deciding to come to MIT solely due to their Entrepreneurship and Innovation (E&I) education. It is also an attempt to encourage current MIT students to demand more from faculty and staff.

The students I’ve had the privilege to work with are some of the best, the nicest and the brightest in the world. I deeply care about them and I believe they deserve much more from a high caliber institution such as MIT.

So here is what I found out.

The Good

1. MIT has 5 schools, the engineering school being the largest and the most important. My observations mostly derive from what I’ve seen at Sloan, the business school. They are not representative of the whole MIT ecosystem, which is very diverse and decentralized. So take my points with a grain of salt;
2. I was responsible for advising students willing to start companies in the US and also emerging countries due to my hybrid entrepreneurial background. The sheer variety of students at MIT is absolutely amazing and made my job an amazing experience. I’ve interacted with PhDs, MBAs, undergrads, and alumni from all schools. Not at any point in time did I have problems with the students or was I treated unfairly by them. Many of them became friends for life. For their patience and kindness, I am eternally grateful;
3. MIT has plenty of resources for future entrepreneurs. Besides the usual E&I classes and great professors, there are many competitions where students can train their pitching skills or even win some substantial money to start up. On the other hand, entrepreneurs in residence, whose whole job is to give students practical advice, are an extremely helpful resource. Kudos to MIT to take entrepreneurship as a serious discipline;
4. The majority of the staff and professors I have interacted with at MIT are genuinely nice and hard working professionals whose dedication to students is commendable. It would be unfair to say anything on the contrary;
5. Overall, the atmosphere at the University is pretty chill and nice. It is a place I would strongly recommend for young people interested in science and engineering.

The Bad

1. My main gripe about how E&I is treated at MIT is related to the school overall attitude and mindset about entrepreneurship. MIT is a place that has thrived historically and still thrives on research. Actually, half of the institute income comes from research. I suspect that, as it was born this way, there is a positive bias on the superiority of scientific research over pragmatic entrepreneurship. In other words, MIT is still, at its core, an academic institution. Although this is hardly a surprise, I expected an E&I philosophy more in line with Stanford, which is way more pragmatic and market focused;
2. Due to the point above, I felt we were not equipping the new generation of entrepreneurs with the tools and the mindset to succeed in this fast-changing new world, driven by software and ecosystems such as Silicon Valley, Seattle, Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen or Tel Aviv. Though both students and E&I faculty may know the trial and error, fail fast approach of software startups, the mindset has not really been internalized, nor is it well practiced. My fear is that, as software gets more and more influential and disrupts other industries, students become less competitive by not adequately learning and practicing the software framework;
3. Entrepreneurship is about breaking rules, trying new things, learning from your peers and following your heart. I understand there are frameworks and methodologies that might be useful to some entrepreneurs, but I think MIT takes them too seriously. While the institute knows well there is no “one size fits all” when doing research, science or engineering, this approach has not spread out to the MIT E&I ecosystem. The current MIT framework for entrepreneurship may give the students the wrong impression that only this methodology must be followed, as it is not only recommended but enforced in classes, mentorship sessions and other programs inside the institute. For me, this is a red flag and contrary to the principles of real entrepreneurship;
4. Some entrepreneurial practices taught at MIT are really old school. For instance, students are told to have their first paid customer as soon as possible, whereas the reality of most successful tech startups is that the focus should be on growth and customer satisfaction rather than short-term revenues. The influx of money in the venture capital industry after the 2008 crisis changed everything. I am not saying this view should prevail, but that both ways should be taught. Students could then decide what is best for them.
   Another aspect that called my attention is the customer discovery process taught at MIT. Students spend months, if not an entire year, trying to figure out their customer through a lengthy and ineffective framework. It is basically a structured interviewing process that will result in a flashy powerpoint. No one is instructed to, actually, launch a real MVP to see what happens, capture e-mails from real customers or test the effectiveness of Facebook and Google ads. These more pragmatic ways of customer discovery have been successfully practiced by tech startups everywhere in the last decade.
   Competitions and classes of entrepreneurship at MIT still put emphasis on business plans and financial projections for early-stage startups. Professors and mentors spend countless hours discussing and evaluating those projections. Entrepreneurs who have raised money from sophisticated investors in the last decade know that business plans are a total piece of fiction. They are not important, at least for early-stage tech startups, for the simple fact that no one can predict the dynamic behavior of digital customers. So, investors generally make a big bet on the team, their execution track record and a solution that addresses a problem in a large market.
   Students are simply not told how to raise money, what a term sheet is, what terms are favorable or how to negotiate with venture capitalists or even angels. This is inconceivable in 2018 as most startups will end up raising money at some point in their lives;
5. I found MIT staff, professors, and even some EIRs, with some rare exceptions, to be really judgmental about students’ ideas (compared to other ecosystems such as Silicon Valley). In my view, this is not the role of real mentors. Nobody really knows what is going to be the next big thing, and censoring students, specifically first time entrepreneurs, does a lot of damage to their self-esteem, execution capability and ends up delaying the learning process. No one should be an authority in entrepreneurship because entrepreneurship is constantly reinventing itself. The role of mentors should be to be a sounding board, share experiences, connect students with other people and make sure they follow their gut feeling. MIT is marketed as a place of disruptors but I found this to not be true at all. The collective E&I mindset is pretty conservative compared to Silicon Valley, China or Israel;
6. The quality of many mentors who advise students on E&I is generally subpar. Few professors and staff have started a company before, thus, though willing to help, they are not able to provide practical and current advice. Even the ones who have been entrepreneurs in the past might be outdated and don’t even realize it. Mentors and advisors in E&I should be people with recent battlefield experience or co-founders transitioning from startups. Perhaps hiring more people outside the Boston ecosystem would also help to bring a new perspective.

The Ugly

1. The part that was really hard for me to swallow about E&I education at MIT is the lack of benchmark with more sophisticated ecosystems. Competition is global, and by not learning from what others are doing, you basically give the students, specifically the beginners, a false illusion of competitiveness. The academic bubble is very real. For example, students at MIT should know that startups in the Bay Area or China generally launch MVPs in less than 60 days (anything later than that should be a yellow flag). Also, they should learn that winning a business plan competition represents ZERO traction in the eyes of investors or that, having a few thousand or even millions of users does not matter much if the retention rates are low. This point makes me angry because I’ve seen, over the last years, dozens of lives being shattered by the belief (on the part of founders) they are good entrepreneurs when, in fact, they are not. I’ve seen people lose all their life savings, their houses, and even their families because they did not know what awaited them or how competitive they really were in their market. Benchmarking is not only a good practice but also good policy;
2. The point above is caused, in my opinion, by the ignorance and arrogance of the ones assigned to run and teach entrepreneurship at the institution. Boston infamously missed the Internet and it seems that people here have not learned anything from it. It does not help that most people at MIT seem to despise and underestimate Silicon Valley. This is what I noticed in conversations with staff and faculty from all walks of life. I’ve heard crazy things like “Silicon Valley does not innovate”, “what happens in Silicon Valley is not real” or “we have the best mentors and the smartest people in the world and we shouldn’t be concerned”. To me, it looks like pure jealousy as Silicon Valley and China create and headquarter 80%+ of the most valuable companies and unicorns in the world;
3. Many times, during my conversation with staff and professors, internal politics seemed to be more important than the satisfaction of our customers, the students. Actually, I was surprised at how student "un-centric" MIT is, at least in E&I education at Sloan. I tried to bring all these issues to the appropriate channels many times, presented data, a consistent and simple rationale but I was always brushed off due to the fear of internal retaliation and power plays from colleagues. I found it disappointing.

Overall, my experience as an EIR was much more positive than negative thanks to the awesome and brilliant students I met and some great colleagues who share my concerns. I hope that, soon, MIT can provide a better environment for entrepreneurship to flourish on the campus.

While this reality doesn’t arrive, my advice to prospective students interested in entrepreneurship and innovation is to apply to Stanford or Berkeley or start their own companies instead of coming to school. I suspect they’ll be able to learn much more.

For the ones still at MIT, my advice is to hang on in there and, after you graduate, move to the west coast, China or Israel to learn from the best in tech entrepreneurship.

My 2 cents.

p.s.: To know more about my background and experience, please check my Linkedin profile.