Introducing the Summer@Highland Class of 2013!
When we opened our call for Summer@Highland applications a few months ago, the entire Highland investment team pitched in to get the word out. We came bearing pizza to almost 30 university campuses in a little over a month. We held a couple Google+ Hangouts to connect with those we couldn’t meet with in person. Nearly 900 students applied from 85 universities around the globe, and we subsequently pored over each individual application looking for the top student teams to bring into our offices this summer.
Selecting the small number of teams we can host for the summer was an enormous challenge. We were blown away by not only the amount of applications we received, but also by their caliber. The majority of teams not only have a working product, but many of them have users, partners and have achieved some insanely impressive milestones – all while being full-time students.
We ended up selecting the following nine exceptional teams from across the country (PandoDaily also wrote a nice write-up here). Please meet and congratulate the Summer@Highland Class of 2013!
Alpha (Stanford University) – Alpha is a digital university for hackers that teaches experienced developers how to build actual applications for the “real world” through project-based learning in the browser. The team is also a finalist in the BASES (Business Association of Stanford Entrepreneurial Students) 150K Challenge
Butucu (Harvard College) – Butucu, an all-freshman team, aims to help retail stores improve the customer experience by allowing them to push custom, relevant content to in-store shoppers while providing high-level analytics
Connect.com (Harvard Business School) – What if all your connections from Facebook, LinkedIn and Gmail were shown on a map? Connect.com puts all your friends on a map so you can find people when traveling, plan events and visually explore your network. The company is co-founded by Ryan Allis, previously the co-founder and CEO of iContact (acquired by Vocus (NASDAQ: VOCS) for $169 million in 2012)
EagerPanda (MIT) – EagerPanda allows educators to easily build their own custom online courses, and enables learners to connect and communicate around this content
Phyre (Boston College) – Winner of the Boston College Venture Competition, Phyre is building a portable device that makes it easy to wirelessly connect and interact with large displays from any phone, tablet or laptop
Sension (Stanford University) – A computer vision platform that makes online content engaging for the user, Sension works with a simple webcam to let anyone make videos that respond to the viewer
SkylBridge (Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania) – SkylBridge is an online talent marketplace for businesses to find top-quality yet affordable business freelancers for short-term projects
Splat (Cornell University) – Splat is a small device that transforms a smartphone into the ultimate social-gaming console, letting users play physical, in-person, interactive video games
Technical Machine (Olin College) – Technical Machine is an embeddable platform for developers to make internet-connected physical devices
Congratulations and best of luck to each and every student who applied this year – we couldn’t be happier to now have you as an extension of the Highland family and look forward to working together in some fashion over the course of your career.
And stay tuned to this blog throughout the summer to follow the progress of the Summer@Highland Class of 2013!
- Alex Taussig, Principal, Highland Capital Partners
Last week, we held a Google+ Hangout with students from Columbia, Dartmouth, Harvard, University of Maryland and Stanford in order to let them ask some questions about the Summer@Highland application and the program itself. It was a ton of fun, so we decided to host another one, and also detailed a few of the topics we discussed below.
If you’d like the chance to join the next Hangout tomorrow at 1:00pm PT, RSVP here: http://highlandsummerqanda.eventbrite.com/
And don’t forget, the final deadline to get your application in is ONE WEEK from today! Don’t wait until the last minute; apply now at http://summer.hcp.com/
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Other programs require a detailed business plan, while the Summer@Highland application only needs a two-minute video. Why is that?
We think it’s a relative waste of time to write a long, detailed business plan if you’ve barely launched. We structured the application so we could get the “minimally viable information” we need to decide if we should advance you to the next round for an interview. So, we’re basically looking for two things:
- Whether the team you’ve compiled has the wherewithal to execute on your vision
- How well you know the market and problem set you’re tackling
What else are you looking for in the video?
The main purpose of the video is to get a feel for the team, so please do NOT just submit a screencast. Other things we look for:
- How well you communicate what your product is/does
- How well you communicate your long-term vision
- What you hope to accomplish during your 10 weeks with us over the summer
What is the difference between being located in the Boston vs. the Silicon Valley office?
Boston weather is surprisingly good in the summer time, believe it or not, so you’ll all set in either case. Besides that, we suggest you choose the place where you want to base the business going forward for the purposes of hiring early employees, or finding your first customers.
Do you favor startups in certain markets over others?
Since Summer@Highland is only 10 weeks long, the program is really about speed and acceleration. We’re looking for teams that can make a big impact in a short amount of time and achieve meaningful milestones over the summer. So while we don’t necessarily favor certain markets over others, there are a few, like physical sciences and expensive hardware, that aren’t a great fit. But, we don’t rule anything out because you never know. We love to be surprised!
Yesterday we ventured over the Bay Bridge to visit a university in our farther away backyard, UC Berkeley.
Beyond the info. session we held at the Haas School of Business, we got to meet with a few other student groups that are helping inspire the entrepreneurial spirit on campus. One was the Haas Entrepreneurs Association, which is the largest student organization at UC Berkeley with over 500 members. The other was the CSGE (Computer Science Graduate Entrepreneurs), which is a smaller, more specialized entrepreneurial group that’s focused on solving highly technical challenges.
A lot of questions about Summer@Highland circled around how we evaluate team members, and with our investment focus on technology, many students asked if you have to be technical in order to apply. The answer? It depends. What we look at when we’re evaluating each team is if they have the background and credibility to execute on their idea. So if the idea is highly technical and there are no technical team members, we will likely have less confidence in your company’s success than if you did.
But really at the end of the day you should only apply (and pursue an entrepreneurial venture in general) if you have an idea you’re so passionate about you can’t stop working on it. It gets you out of bed each morning and keeps you up late at night, and feels more like a personal endeavor than a professional one. It’s that sort of drive and excitement we’re really looking for versus strictly what’s on your resume.
And on that note, only 26 days left to get your application in. Have at it!
- Amy White, Director of Marketing, Highland Capital Partners
Someone found the easter egg on our website - check it out!
So I was hacking away on Nightingale yesterday when Delian mentioned that a few guys from Highland Capital had emailed him, encouraging us to apply for their summer accelerator. I didn’t think much of it until he told me that there was secret easter egg on their site which would get us…
And remember, the Early deadline is this Sunday, March 3rd - get those applications in, and if you’re one of the first five teams to enter in the super secret code found in the easter egg, you can advance straight to the semi-finals.
What are you waiting for?
Last week, we spent some time in our backyard (and my alma mater!) on the Stanford campus (special thanks to SWIB and BASES for helping put this together). Instead of hosting an info. session that only covered Summer@Highland, we thought it would be more fun to have an informal meet and greet with some of our Stanford Summer@Highland alumni, all of whom are either still working on their Summer@Highland projects or have moved on to new ventures – either way, they’re continuing down the path of entrepreneurship.
What most impressed me was the feeling of camaraderie and support among the students who are looking to start their own companies. Many came specifically looking to speak with our alumni about their own startup ideas and learn more from their peers about how they got started. It very much emulates the off-campus startup scene in the Bay Area – there is a sense of mutual respect for what each entrepreneur is going through, and a real sense of community in terms of sharing tips, contacts and forming truly mutually beneficial partnerships.
As someone who works in a people-based business, I’ve come to learn the benefits of building your own network are immeasurable – you never know what someone you meet today may end up doing tomorrow; you may be able to help them down the road or vice versa. It’s exciting to see that Stanford students already recognize this and are taking advantage of everything the campus has to offer. Hopefully, you’re doing the same on your campus, too!
- Manish Patel, Partner, Highland Capital Partners
Jason Min and I had the pleasure of visiting several schools in the Midwest this week, including Northwestern University and University of Illinois, and oh man – although we both grew up in cold climates (Wisconsin and New Hampshire, respectively) – having spent the past eight+ years of our lives in California, we weren’t quite prepared for the weather Illinois had in store for us!
Luckily we were able to thaw out in the classroom. We had the pleasure of visiting two classes that are both focused on helping students build a business from scratch, which is a nice break from your typical textbook curriculum and something more schools should embrace, if they haven’t already.
Our first stop was at the NUvention: Web class at Northwestern, which is focused on exposing students to the entire product and business development life cycle of a software company. We got there early and were able to check out a few of the student projects, many of which are up and running already. We were impressed!
The second stop was at the Lectures in Engineering Entrepreneurship class at University of Illinois where we got to meet Dr. Paul Magelli, who has been teaching for over 50 years. In addition to a dedicated educator, Dr. Magelli is especially involved in nurturing the entrepreneurial community locally and throughout the country. He is a Scholar in Residence at the Kauffman Foundation, and was heavily involved in the formation of the Startup America Partnership. It is a rare and distinct pleasure to meet someone so dedicated to helping future generations embrace and seize success. We’re sure Dr. Magelli has touched the lives of each and every student that has come through his classroom, and only hope Summer@Highland does the same for all our participating teams.
Which reminds me … we are just over a week away from our Early deadline of March 3rd – get those applications in if you haven’t yet; and to all you students at Northwestern and Illinois: Stay warm!
- Amy White, Director of Marketing, Highland Capital Partners
Carnegie Mellon has always been a fascinating place to me (Alex). The hills remind me a bit of my home in San Francisco (as does the traffic), but the iron bridges and visible presence of heavy industry clearly mark it as a place where metal is bent and things are built the old fashioned way. Also, I remember visiting campus in 2004 as a grad school applicant and being blown away by the state-of-the-art equipment given to students for research. That’s still the case, as far as I can tell, and students put those resources to good use.
After catching up with an old friend who is beginning her PhD in robotics (more on her fascinating background here), I got together with about 15 current students, some of whom are already putting the finishing touches on their applications to Summer@Highland. After the talk, I bumped into an entrepreneur from Silicon Valley, who was in town to iron out the details of her technology license agreement with CMU. We talked a little bit about how an increasing number of CMU alumni are making it out to the Bay Area to build a company. Just a few years ago, they probably would have stayed in Pittsburgh.
Thanks to our friends at Project Olympus for setting up a great day at CMU. We hope to return the hospitality the next time you’re in California!
It was nice to travel a bit south yesterday to the home of the Bruins: UCLA!
I met with a great group of students at the Anderson School of Management. In addition to Summer@Highland, we talked about venture capital, the investment process and technology trends over coffee, cookies and cupcakes.
One thing we spent some time focusing on is how to be creative in your application. You can have a great idea but figuring out how you will stand out is just as, if not more, important – especially in a competitive market. You are never going to be the only vendor in a particular space (and if you are, it’s not going to last long), so you need to constantly push yourself to be uniquely memorable.
For instance, did you see what was on the Google homepage for Valentine’s Day? What started off as a way for Larry and Sergey to let visitors know they were going to be out of the office for Burning Man has turned into a tradition that Google users around the world look forward to.
I’m excited to see how creative you will be in your Summer@Highland application!
- Manish Patel, Partner, Highland Capital Partners
Yesterday, we spent time at both MIT and Harvard, hosting five different events at both schools in one day. That’s a lot of free pizza! We met more than 120 students over the course of the day, all of whom are interested in building technology products and are exploring their options for the summer.
What has really resonated with me (Alex) is how much the startup scene has changed over the last few years at MIT and Harvard, both schools I attended. At MIT, the $100K has always been the center of the ecosystem, but now it seems like students have access to greater resources throughout the year. Like most significant changes at universities, this one was driven by students, and now the faculty and administration have co-opted it as their own. A similar situation exists at Harvard, where right around the time I left HBS in 2009, startups became a thing people wanted to do. The creation of the “Startup Tribe” (MBAs) and “Hack Harvard” (undergrads) started a groundswell of interest which now has been bolstered by the administration’s increased support of CS50 (Intro to Computer Science) and an expanded, more engineering-focused curriculum.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, startups seem to be coming to campus to recruit, which certainly wasn’t the case in my day. My final talk of the day at Harvard Hack Night, which started at 10:10pm (!), was followed by Pooja Sankar of Palo Alto-based Piazza. She did a great job telling her and her company’s story; and it occurred to me, while sitting in the audience, that we would never have convinced a speaker of that quality, at such an early stage in her company’s life, to come all the way from California to present at 11pm on a Tuesday night.
All in all, it’s great to see entrepreneurship alive and well and my alma mater(s). Thanks to all our hosts for their hospitality, and we’re looking forward to visiting more schools to tell the Summer@Highland story. Early deadline’s coming up soon!
On Tuesday, Highland hosted a group of Stanford GSB’ers at the Old Pro in Palo Alto. The backgrounds of the folks we met varied quite a bit from the canonical MBA profile. We met at least three materials engineers, one console gaming market analyst, and a guy who used to build brain/human interfaces. And, above all they wanted to know how to use their skills in the context of a startup. Excited to see what they are going to accomplish this summer!
