Building Cornell's Startup Ecosystem: Zach Shulman ’87, JD ’90, is Director of Entrepreneurship at Cornell

[0:00]Hello. The guest today is Zach Shulman, Class of 87, JD 90. He is the Director of entrepreneurship at Cornell. So hi, Zach. Well, what is entrepreneurship at Cornell like? Well, hey Tony, it's nice to see you again. It's always fun to run into you, even if it's online. So entrepreneurship at Cornell, I'll give you a little bit of history because I think it might be helpful, helpful to you in the in the listeners. It's a university wide program office. I currently have a very interesting reporting structure where I report to a board of 13 Deans. So the Dean of every school in college, including Cornell Tech, including while in every school up here in Ithaca. And I also now report to a new vice Provost. You might have seen that Matt Marks is a vice Provost for entrepreneurship and innovation and External relations. And Matt and I are colleagues. He is a faculty member in Dyson. I've known Matt for a long time. He's he's been at Cornell for just over 5 1/2 years and I've known him the whole time he's been here. And Matt now is our first ever Vice Provost for entrepreneurship and innovation, which I think is fantastic by the way, that Cornell Central administration felt the need and the correct fit for this new position. Ownership is important. Controversial is very important and Cornell knows it as well as anybody. As you know, Tony Esther Cornell was definitely a definitely a entrepreneur. And I, I recently learned this, that although, and you probably already do, he did obviously did not invent the Telegraph, but he invented the way to make the Telegraph work by having the transmission lines go through glass on the top of poles, which are very good conductors, as opposed to wood, which isn't. And that's really how Wizard Cornell made his wealth was by coming up with this invention for making the Telegraph work. And he made it proliferate, which is fantastic. Anyway, so at Entrepreneurship at Cornell, we do things that benefit the entire Cornell entrepreneurship ecosystem. In startup parlance, we have customers, right? Our primary customers, our

[2:02]students, but we also serve faculty, alumni, staff as well. I'd say that probably 90% of our customers, our students, both graduate and undergraduate, That's important. But we know we do fun things. I like to say we put on big conferences twice a year. My office puts on four to six hackathons a year. We have an accelerator program which we fund, which is quite expensive by the way. We fund ELAB and ELAB is taught by a team of faculty in the Johnson School. We have a Co working space called ehub, which I know you've been at Tony in College Town and Kennedy Hall that we operate. We have a mentorship program which is now called Launchpad Ezra, but used to be called Blackstone Launchpad and we recently changed the name to Launchpad Ezra. We have Cayuga Forum, which is a YPIO type product for alumni who are entrepreneurs or at least thinking about entrepreneurship. So we run that as well. We do fun things like entrepreneur the year award and the student business of the year award, a bunch of competitions and things like that. I'm actually missing some actually, I'll say one more. One thing we also fund is hours, which happens every Thursday night at College Town Ehub and we basically get entrepreneurially minded students together and let them randomly connect and help each other. Sometimes there's a speaker, but we actually pay for the dinner for each of those meetings. I just wrapped up the budget process for last fiscal year, which ended June 30th and get this Tony, we spent just over $40,000 on food for that really expensive. So I might be looking for some cheaper food options, but I think it's really important to allow those students to come together and give them a space where they space in and predictability about when they when they can hang out with each other. A lot of students show up, particularly when we have a really big profile speaker. But the good thing about this is that I I don't run them. I don't, I'm not responsible for organizing. I'm not responsible for clean up. I just, I just fund the food and have it, you know, for free in

[4:02]our Co working space and let let the students take it from there. Very cool. So that's like the overall like, like all the different programs, like, well, from a student's perspective, like from an individual student perspective, they walk into it, they walk to Cornell, like what? What does it look like from their perspective? That's a great question. So when you come to Cornell as a freshman, you don't necessarily know about entrepreneurship at Cornell. I will say this, a lot of students are now coming to Cornell because of its entrepreneurial rankings and because if it's on man, because of its entrepreneurship the way that we promote it on this university wide basis. OK, So a lot of students are actually coming to Cornell because of this. But if you didn't know about entrepreneurship and we're still interested, I'm sorry if you didn't know about entrepreneurship at Cornell, but you still really interested in entrepreneurship. We have a kickoff event every September in the Hub. I think you've probably been one of those as well. And we typically get about 400 people at those events. So we put the word out. We, we have the registrar, the university registrar e-mail all students about this, which is good. And students find us. They find us by talking to their Deans. They find us by talking to faculty in their schools and colleges. And once people say, oh, I want to start a company, like a lot of people on campus know that they should be directed to our to our program for help, which is great. And I forgot to mention, you know, the concept of entrepreneurship at Cornell. In the olden days, it used to be called EPE, Entrepreneurship and Personal Enterprise. And it started as a collaboration between Johnson, the graduate Business School, and Dyson, the undergraduate Business School back in the middle eighties, 1980s. Wow. So it's been, it was, it was really started a long time ago and it just grew over time to include all the schools and colleges. Went all the way back then. Yeah, it went all the way back. And I mean, it kind of, it didn't really gain a lot of traction until the late 90s, OK. And that's when John Jaquet was hired to run the program. They had a bunch.

[6:03]They had a couple of people before John, but John was the first, what I would say really instrumental leader of the program who built the coalition of the schools and colleges, OK, and really made it clear that what we were doing is something university wide, OK. And that's important. And you know, I joined Cornell as an adjunct in 1998. I think it maybe in 97, I don't really, I can't remember, but so it was a long time ago. And then when I joined the Business School, the Johnson School full time, that was let me think that was January of 20 of 2002 when I joined. And right when I joined, I met John to quit, OK. And I fully understood what he was talking about. And when I started doing a lot of programmatic stuff for the Johnson School and entrepreneurship, John and I worked really, really closely together because he really, you know, his vision was all the schools and colleges should do their own entrepreneurial stuff if they can or want to. And because the more entrepreneurship stuff we have, the better off we are as a university. Very decentralized. Very. Decentralized. So he wasn't, he wasn't trying to control entrepreneurship in the same sense that me who have now run the office for 13 years, but John, just when John retired, I, I ended up taking his place. OK, he retired in 2013 and my goal is not to control entrepreneurship, but my goal is to promote entrepreneurship across the campus, right? And that's it. That's I think unique and I think it's important. So John started that and I continue that that tradition. Gotcha, that makes sense. So so so by promoting it, you promote like all the different small programs all get lifted up as well. Correct. So we liked it like the expression that we like to use is, you know, rising tides lift all boats, right. So there could be boats in engineering and human ecology and ILR and engineering and who I missed law school, hotel school, I mean everywhere, all the schools and colleges can have their own entrepreneurship boats.

[8:04]The stuff that we do rises the tie for everybody. So our our conferences, our hackathons, our mentorship programs, accelerator, they're open to everybody, right? So we want everyone to feel included and for that energy of entrepreneurship to be felt across the campus. Gotcha. And then all the individual programs they can like to be more nuanced, like the H1 might be more hotel focused. Correct, correct. I mean it might be real estate focused. There's even a new programs you know about the the new Baker House program. Have you heard about this? A real thing. Yeah, that that Richard Baker is starting. So it's it's completely not Cornell country. It's not it's not part of Cornell, OK. But you know, it still could be a pretty cool thing for real estate entrepreneurs, right? So that's great. It's like it's just something else that students can take advantage of, and in that case, also alumni. Gotcha. So, so the from the student perspective, they will walk into Cornell in September, they have the Big E Hub event where like 400 people come and they would learn about all these different ones. Absolutely, Absolutely. Yeah. We go through it. I, you know, it's a lot. It's a lot to absorb in an hour. But we, we try to get them exposed to everything. And first and foremost, you get them to join the listserv. Yeah, as you know, the listserv is pretty important and we want them to to join the listener so they can understand the breadth of what goes on and to be informed about what's going. On gotcha. And then like like what's the typical like, like a trajectory of an entrepreneur at Cornell? So they they show off, they come to the September, by October do they have a company and by November they have October. What's the like? Come on, Tony. Then, you know, there's no typical trajectory and it really, it really is not a typical trajectory. There are freshmen that are that have companies that are doing hundreds of thousands of dollars. There are seniors who just start. I mean, it's, it's all over the map. Honestly, what we want to do is just to get people thinking like an entrepreneur and realizing that opportunities come up. They should be taking advantage of. If they can be monetized and commercialized, all the better. But there's no like, OK, here's the road map. Like, you know, it's kind of funny.

[10:04]We actually tried to create a road map one time. It might even still be on our website. I should look, but it just isn't really effectual because students come out, they come at entrepreneurship from all different angles, right? So yeah, we want them to know about the resources and we want them to participate. We want to provide mentorship, but it's up to them really often to figure out when they want to do it, right. If you think about it, you know, ELAB, which is our accelerator program, I mean, that's mostly juniors and seniors. OK. Once in a while there'll be a sophomore that's that, that, that gets in. You know, it's, it's a competitive program. The juniors and seniors tend to be a little more formative in there and what they want to do with their companies. But sometimes there's a young, a younger student who actually gets in as well. So I, I like to say there's no road map. And I, and I also like to say the best time to start a company is when you're a student because it's very low risk, right? I mean, typically their education is being covered, not all the time. Some students pay for their own, okay, but typically students education is being covered by their parents or by a relative or by financial aid or a grant. So if you start a company and the company goes under and doesn't last, well, you're still a student, which is important. And we do think that students should complete their education, although there's always a handful that that that drop out to continue with their companies. And we're not like, we're not saying that's bad, but we do encourage students to to continue through. So one of the goals is to get them to think like an entrepreneur. Yeah. What is it like? Think like the entrepreneur? How does somebody start to think like that entrepreneur? So I think, I think one of the core things about thinking like an entrepreneur is understanding the value of input from customers. So it's not just, oh, I had this idea, let me go develop it and start a company. It's like I had this idea, let me talk to potential customers about the idea and figure out whether it's worthwhile pursuing this company. And I mean, that's called customer discovery. I think you, I think you know that. But it's, it's not about getting these potential customers to buy your product. It's about getting them to tell

[12:06]you what their needs are so that you can come up with a product that's even better. OK, And eventually customer discovery hopefully will turn into customers. I mean, hopefully, but the real key is to figure out what the customer really wants and needs. So that's like thinking like an entrepreneur. It's like, OK, let me get some input separately. It's it's making students understand that there's not one correct track to follow in life. OK, like let's use you, you live in DC. If if a student really was opposed to living in DC for some reason, so I can't think of why they would be unless they just don't want anything to do with politics at all. Like I say to them, don't go to DC. Like don't move to DC. If a student says, yeah, I really can't deal with the hustle bustle and size of New York City, I'm like, then don't go to New York City. Like go to Boston or Denver or stay in the country. Like, like you don't need to like you really need to follow your path that makes you happy. So, and I think a lot of entrepreneurs are like that. Like they're like, OK, they want to work for themselves because it makes them happy, right. Well, that's great. So think about what makes you happy and try to. Pursue it. There's the input from customers and the follow what makes you happy. Those are the 2. Yeah. I mean, I think happiness is really, really important, truly important. So I get when the student hears these two points like how do they internalize it and truly believe in themselves? I'm not always sure. Let me give you the flip side example. So if you're a student at Cornell or any big university and you want to go into investment banking or consulting, there are definitely things you must do while you're in school. OK, There's a, there's a track and you know what you need to take and you pursue that track and it's it's, it's defined. OK, it's pretty well, there's some flexibility, but but it's pretty well defined with entrepreneurship. It's not defined, but that's one of the key elements of entrepreneurship because there's no one right way way to do it. It's not defined as to what your path is. I mean, think about some of our entrepreneurs of the year.

[14:06]I mean, Tim Berry was a psychology major. You know, the guys that founded hotel.com were, you know, law school. I mean, it's like, it's like it truly is all over the map. It's not just engineers and CIS Bowers and like tech, it's a it's it's much more broadly defined. OK. So we want students to understand that. And the fact that there is no one right way to do it, that's hard for some people. Like they really want the definition and they want something that they can attach to and follow that. That's not the way entrepreneurship works. So we need to, we try to get people to think more broadly about how they might approach entrepreneurship and also and also to think about every job opportunity that they might encounter as a potential for entrepreneurship. Like, yeah, go work for a startup that's great. Work for like or even go work for a big company, learn about how it operates. Because someday you might want to start a company, right? And knowing how things operate obviously are really is critical to starting a company. So through that process, they learn like they internalize that there's no path by working. At the start, I mean, we hope, we hope that they internalize it. We hope that they internalize it and take every opportunity as a learning and take every job as a learning opportunity. Yeah, they would come back to Cornell and they would give like the during the celebration in Ezra, they would come and give a speech like the entrepreneurship of the year. So the answer is yes, but a lot of entrepreneurs come back and talk to students. I mean, I always tell people, if you know you're going to be campus and you want to get as alums that who are entrepreneurial minded and you want to get on in front of students, like let me know at least two or three weeks in advance, ideally four or five. And I'll do my best to get you in front of students. Like I'll get you to be a speaker at startup hours, or I'll get you to be a speaker to a student club that relates to entrepreneurship or venture capital. Yeah, like the students, like when they attend those, like, does that like, help them think more like an entrepreneur? Yeah, of course, it also gives them inspiration. It makes them think like entrepreneurs just to see, I mean, if you go to a conference and you see a speaker who says and they explain and they explain their entrepreneurial path and it's like all over the

[16:08]place, it gives the students the ability to say, yeah, I like that path. And now I have validation where I can actually pursue it. OK. So like those those, for lack of a better phrase, those alums are serving as role models, right? I mean the students are like they didn't have a path, so I could be OK without a path as well. Yeah, they can say. They can say, yeah, I don't need to be. I don't need to define path in my life all the time, right? And I think it, I think, produces more well-rounded people, to be honest. This is harder to measure though. Like in class, you can give them a prelim and then you take the test and then you can measure like how well they learn the material. Like how do you measure? Like somebody internalizes well that there's no path. That's a really good question, Tony. I can tell them people by talking to people, OK, and like and how comfortable they are without having a defined path or having a defined path that's quite broad. Like I want to start a company someday. Well, that's, that's a pretty broad path. What type of company? I'm not quite sure yet. Well, how are you going to figure it out? You know, make sure it's something that you like doing and, and that, and that you're good at. So I mean, I can kind of tell when I, when I talk to people, you know, it's, it's sort of funny, like, and maybe you get this question like, do, do people, do students or alums ever ask you like Tony, like what's the best way to raise money? For your startup, yeah. And like, what do you say? There's no right one right way to do it. Yeah, there's no one right way. And and whose job is it to raise money? The CEO, usually. It's the entrepreneurs job. Yeah right. So like, I can't, I get these questions like honestly, weekly, you know, like I can't help you raise money. Like, and I can't tell you exactly how to raise money other than some like basic stuff. But I kind of feel like most entrepreneurs who are able to raise money didn't have to ask how to do it right. Like they, they had some innate ideas and they also saw people and they interacted. Like, OK, I need, I need, I need a pitch deck, I need a good financial model. I need to tell a story. I need to be a good salesperson with investors. And, and that's not easy for everybody. Like that is definitely not easy for everybody. There's so much of the other stuff that like the, the, the,

[18:09]the classes. Do you have a syllabus that they follow? Like everything seems to follow like a structure structure. This is like the. Structure. Yeah, well, that's OK. You're right. Classes definitely have a structure. Even my class has a structure. Actually. It's actually highly structured. So what does your class teach then? So the class that my full semester course, which is for only undergrads is called the venture, I'm sorry, the startup and venture capital experience. And it really, it really goes through the early life cycle of an venture backed early stage company, both from the VC perspective and also from the from the founders perspective. So we talked about all the governance issues, you know, founder relationships. We talked about all the investment terms that venture capitalists use so that the people in my class understand what it means economically, which is really important. We talk about company building. So we have founders come in and talk about how they built their companies and how they raise money, right, which is obviously important. We have VCs talking about what it's like to be a venture capitalist, You know, you know, generally what is VC and then how to rate, how to run a firm, how to select companies to invest in, how to interact with founders, or I should say how they interact with founders, right? So it gives a really good picture of the of the startup venture capital ecosystem, which is fine. Separate from the lab class, so elab is like. Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah, completely separate. Yeah, it's completely separate. So, so ELAB is ELAB is a completely separate course. I mean there's lots of entrepreneurship related courses at at Cornell. My class is just one of like 80. Gotcha. So so like earlier you also said like the the how to value the input from customers. So so like you have to listen to customers and build a product around them. Like is there any classes that teach that? Yeah, Yeah. In fact, ELAB, so a lot of the startup courses that focus on business concepts and building a business. So ELAB is 1. There's also. Greg and Tom and Ken teach it where it's basically like a like the, you remember Professor Ben Daniel, But yeah, yeah. OK, so it's like his Class A

[20:10]little change, but we're basically the students have to build a business in the class. OK, so customer discovery is definitely taught like the the concept and then about how to do it, about why it's needed. It's it's all taught through through a bunch of different classes. And do they like in the class they go through the motions of like calling potential customer? Oh yeah. So it's like a very hands on class stuff, yeah. Absolutely. Like kind of like get out of the classroom and go meet with, go meet with customers. Gotcha. Yeah, for sure, for sure. Very cool. Do you have any like like specific examples of like the students who did like what are like the role model students who did like the process well, who took the classes and internalized it and then went on to do something? I mean it's funny because like some of the biggest companies were not started while the students were students. There was afterwards. Yeah, Yeah. So let me just think about like Andrew Roll, for instance. I always like to use Andrew Roll because people tend to know it, know what it is that, you know, the defense startup method Security is another one that's, you know, Sam Jones didn't, didn't it did not start method security as a student. OK. I'm thinking about the speakers that are coming in for the fall conference. A good example is actually Blackboard. So Blackboard, when it started at Cornell was called Course info, OK. And that was started by 6 undergrads and Dan Kane was the main driver of that with Tim, with Tim Chi. But you know, they started that company and they, they built it in Ithaca because it was, you know, and eventually they moved it to DC. And I should say that the DC area. But they, they started as students and they worked directly with professors. They did a lot of, a lot of customer discovery. I don't think they called it customer discovery. OK. But they were asking professors like what they needed, like what would make running a class easier Because this is just when the Internet was starting. I mean, well, not just is when it was getting big and being used by normal people, not just the government. So like they, they knew that they needed input from customers

[22:11]and the customers were the professors and they got the input and they built a product that people loved and then they eventually merged it with another company, took over Blackboard's name and, and you know, grew a big company that eventually went public. Wow, so, so so they, they came through like the entrepreneurship ecosystem at Cornell and. Yeah, but this was even before it was a big ecosystem. I mean, it was, it was a decent ecosystem in the late 90s, but it's nowhere nearly as big as it is now. Like truly newer. No, it's not even close. So it's like we don't there. There are a lot of examples of students who, by the time they graduate, are generating millions and millions and millions of dollars of revenue. OK Math GPT, have you start, have you talked to those founders yet? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they started that. They started that as students, OK. And they dropped out, Right. And they're pursuing it. I think it's still going, going quite well, actually. So that's the example. Think of another one, Max Boham, he started a company, he started a company. They applied to Y Combinator, OK. And it was like it was a company that was a it was called grade Wiz. It helped, it helped stem faculty grade assignments and saved a lot of time for Tasmania and faculty. Well, they went through YC and they completely changed their business completely. So, so Grade Wiz is now done and they him in his Co founder. These two guys started a new company in the dentistry space and the basically dental dentist office operation space. The completely unrelated, but that company's doing great. OK Like, you know, it's growing and, you know, they also dropped out. They haven't come back yet. I'm not sure if they ever will. But you know, it's not like there's a ton of those examples of students who are like hitting it out of the park right when they graduate, right? Because being an entrepreneur's. Heart, a lot of them, it's after they graduate as alums, they would start the company and then like, yeah. Exactly. I mean, same thing with the founders of Honey, you know, Ryan Hudson and Brian Silverstein, like they, they didn't start Honey as students, OK, They started shortly after and it's, and it's grown, obviously grew and got acquired by eBay, so.

[24:13]Those are usually afterwards. Yeah. Anyway, I mean, it's, it's interesting. Yeah. But The thing is that they learned that like through the entrepreneurship by Cornell that that's like long term, right? Like the customers stuff. Yeah, absolutely. Way after as well. I mean, it's all the hustle and bustle, and we love it when students start companies because they have so much energy, right? They have so much energy when they're students, they're still young, and the hustle and bustle and drive, I mean, it's just fantastic. Much What about the, the PhD like the, the entrepreneurs like they're like the ones that like have like IP and they're commercializing the IP. Yeah. What is that ecosystem like at Cornell and how it's actually overlap with the 2? I mean, we serve those customers just as much as anybody else. So often times PhDs are starting companies in a faculty members lab. So sometimes the faculty member is involved, sometimes they're not, right. Our best most recent example is Factorial, which just went public that emerged with the SPAC and just went public that started I think the name of it was Leonano or Leon Leonia. I think Leonano I think was named with the company originally. You can tell why they changed the name because it's hard to say which is good, but they were, they were in the life sciences incubator program, which is not for students, by the way. So like a pH D can enter that incubator or Praxis upon graduation. And the company started there. They do solid-state batteries. I mean, it's, it's, it's really, really cool. And there's, there's obviously overlap with Praxis with that one as well, because practice Praxis is our physical sciences incubator program. So, you know, it just took a lot of time. And the the interesting thing about about factorial, it's actually a husband, wife team. Oh yeah, yeah. Which doesn't happen very often, right. I mean there's not many husband, wife, team start starting companies because the stress level is just too high. Yeah, that makes sense. So you got the. So there's like the graduate students and professors who started. There's also students who started. Yeah, they start. They start all the time. I mean, Ava Labs, you know, was started by a faculty member, a professor, you know, gun sire

[26:14]and a PhD. I think it's John, John Woo. And now John is running Ava Labs. And Ava Labs also went through Praxis when it first started. So I mean PhD students, we love it when they start companies. They can also take the classes that they can take. Classes, but there's also there's resources through through CTL if it's a Cornell technology. So Cornell technology licensing has resources, both monetary and programmatic. CREA, which Tom Scriber runs, has resources like, I don't want to say courses, but like the hardware accelerator program, I core the Cornell's, I Cornell's and I core node. So the I core program is run through Cornell by Tom's group. So like there's lots of resources that pH DS can take advantage of for sure. That makes sense, yeah. What are the big goals for entrepreneurship at Cornell? There's so many different programs. Is the goal to get more people into those programs? Is the goal to get more startups that are at a certain stage? What are the goals? How do you measure the performance? So I can tell you what my, my, my long term goal that I want to aspire to attain is when a high school student is considering where to go to school and they they say to themselves, I want to go to a top school for entrepreneurship. I want to be in the top three. So right now I'd say we're probably in the top six, honestly. OK, I want to be in the top three. So I want, I want them to say, you know, Stanford, MIT, Cornell, right? Right now it's Stanford, MIT, Berkeley, Cornell, Harvard, even though they're on Harvard's entrepreneurship program isn't university wide at a grand scale, but they they produce a lot of entrepreneurs, right? Which is fantastic. I want to be in the top three. So, so that that that's one of my main goals. And you said some students are already choosing Cornell because of that. They are absolutely. I want more, I want more of them to do that, OK. And then obviously I want to increase our rankings, which you

[28:17]know, we're ranked highly already and you know, pitch book and LinkedIn and Bloomberg and you know, we have all the rankings listed on our website now. So we're ranked highly, but I would I would like to be even even moving up higher. OK. And then on campus, I mean, I, it's funny, we don't we don't have a way of measuring all of the students who engage with entrepreneurship. Some students start companies and we never even know about them. That's OK. That's OK. I mean, Tony, when, when Y Combinator, which has come to campus now two years in a row, OK, were you were you at the last one when they came? No, no, I heard about it like. They got here because students like a student club or two, like reached out to get them to come here. I literally had nothing to do with it. OK, so, so entrepreneurship at Cornell had nothing to do with YC coming to Cornell. Well, that's great like that. I mean, because our ecosystem is producing so much vibrancy when it comes around, when it comes to startups, that YC was like, what's going on at Cornell? We want to find out, you know, and the students had enough to drive to make it happen. Like, I absolutely, absolutely love that. This happens very organically, so rather than it's. Organically and there's no need for it to be centralized and controlled in one spot. I mean our new vice Provost, he will definitely, I mean there are certain things that fall under him. I mean, entrepreneur at Cornell falls under the new vice Provo, so does Korea, which is the economic development arm that Tom Scriber runs. Both of our of our incubators practice and life sciences fall under that as well. So it's like that might feel a little more centralized, but it's not. It's not. I mean, it's it's very much listen, any school in college at Cornell participates in entrepreneurship. That that's really exciting, how the students, they just invited, YC and YC came. So that happened like all organically. It's only to tell them to do that. It's like fantastic. I mean truly, like, it's just truly fantastic. So when a high school student like right back to the first school, like it's thinking of where to go to school, they see that YC comes to core now. That's a big selling point. I mean, I'm not sure.

[30:18]Like it's funny. Like I don't like publicize that too much. OK, I'm. Sure that some students do some digging, but they, they certainly look at like the pitchbook rankings and Bloomberg and OK, the, the various rankings where entrepreneurship is, is important and being highlighted. They look at that, they talk to students when they come to campus. You know, like a lot of students make the effort to actually come and talk and talk to other students. So I think we're, I mean, I know that we're getting more and more well known as a destination. Interesting so so like if they just show up on campus, they wouldn't like know to go on Thursday evening. There's like the. Well, the listserv, they'll know. So the first thing is getting them on, getting them on the listserv. So they, so because all of our events get pushed out, right? So that's it. Basically it's 2 steps. Get on the listserv and check your e-mail. Gotcha. Yeah, that makes sense. You gotta do that. Yeah. They would know about all the events. Yeah. Yeah. So taking perspective of the high school student again, they're at their high school and then they're applying to colleges. They talk to their guidance counselor. They like what perceptions they have on entrepreneurship at that point. Do they do like some entrepreneurship club at like, high school? Yeah. A. Lot of students are starting companies in high school. Yeah, I mean, I get, I get inbound emails all the time from perspective students telling me about their companies. I think what they're looking for is like a way to help me is the way to get them some sort of leg up getting into Cornell, which I have no say over at all. So I can't help them in that regard. But they're like, you know, they're picking Cornell because of the entrepreneurship stuff that we do and they like want to learn more about E Lab or they want to know more about our hackathons or our mentorship program. These are just examples. Interesting. So they're reaching out all the time, which is great. That just reminds me, I mean, do you know about our new makerspace that's being built? I saw the new maker space like Cornell Tech. I didn't know about the one in Ithaca. Yeah. So there's one being built in Ithaca University wide. So there's lots of not lots. There are a few places on campus that are maker spaces, but they're typically limited to a

[32:20]certain group of students like engineering or architecture, for example. Like the kind of like this equipment is for these students to in certain project teams. But we're creating, when I say we, I mean Cornell, OK, is creating a new maker space in BB Hall. So it's behind man Library. OK, OK, so behind the cals quad, there's a there's an empty building and it's being redesigned and, and, and renovated for the makerspace that's got all sorts of amazing equipment where students can actually make things. OK, So like you don't, like, you don't go there to work on clawed code and your software company. Yeah, No, you go there if you want to make stuff like you, like you've making a physical product and you want to see it. Yeah. So like, will they find it? Will students find out about that? Yeah, because they'll read about it on the list. Interesting. And we're concerned where to go. They would be like you have makerspace, I can go. Absolutely. There's actually makerspace on campus. So that way it's not just software startups, but there's also hardware startup as well and. Tony at Cornell, there's there's all sorts of startups. I mean, there's AG tech, there's agriculture, there's food companies. I mean, you know a bunch of these companies already, but there's truly a great scope and breadth of companies coming. So like you have the E hubs, the college town, Kennedy Hall, now you have us have the BB hall makers. Makerspace, Yeah, Yep. I mean, the makerspace won't be like, it won't be like an auditorium like it or a, or a big place to convene in a large group. That's not the point. We have, we already have that. It's, it's a space to make things. So it will have all the equipment that you need. I mean laser cutters and CNC machines and you know, all sorts of stuff like fancy sewing machines, like like all sorts of cool things that you need to make products. And then these tools are also flexible. You can make any like clothing you can make. You can make electronics you can make all kinds. Correct. Yep. Interesting. And anyway, they've all sorts of real know about. Yeah. It's just, it's just another new resource that's going to be online. It should, it should open. It's just being built now. Gotcha.

[34:20]Yeah, that's really exciting. That's like completely new. Yeah, yeah. We're actually really excited about it, but. Like when you talk to the student like entrepreneurs, like what's like the biggest limitation they they face? Like is it like access to customers? Is it like being able to build the product they need? Like what's the limitation? I honestly. Think the biggest limitation, I think there's two of them. One is money. Money, Yeah, because people like to start a company cost money. Like it like you can't, it costs money. Like, you know, patent lawyers don't work for free. You know, incorporating cost money. Lawyers cost money. Like it costs money. So money's one issue. And like, like, good win some competitions to get some money. Yeah, like once you know, you need to, you need to scrap, be really scrappy. The other big problem is that international students often have a hard time starting companies because of visa restrictions. Like they can start the company, but they can't work at it, which makes no sense. Like, I mean, like, like they can't hold an office or position because it'll mess up with their visa, It'll mess up their visa. So I think, I think that's actually pretty big problem and I would let if those rules could actually be changed, there's nothing Cornell can do about that, right. So there's that problem for international students and just raising money in getting money to actually start, it's difficult. So why see that they have money, but they come to Cornell once a year? How how do other schools like how do they build up this like money funnel? They don't. I mean, I mean like we have like we solve it in small ways. Like we give, we give out summer stipends for startups. So like if you want to work on your startup and you're a student who's not graduating, OK, So like if you graduate, we can't give you money. But when you're a student, we can give you money and we'll, you know, the stipends are $6000 a summer. So that enables you to work on your startup as opposed to taking a traditional internship. Yeah, because internship would have paid you, but it might not take care. So you're getting money. So we do things like that. We have competitions that that give money. But I mean, raising money is never easy. And it's not like other schools just have ogre, here's our pot of $5,000,000 that we're going to get out every year. No, it's not.

[36:21]It doesn't work that way. So the competitions like hackathons, they would provide some like winnings at the end. Yeah, Yeah. We have big idea competition. We got hackathons. We have, there's a whole bunch of competitions actually that that are run each year, yeah. Makes sense. And then what was your path to entrepreneurship in the ecosystem? Well, I. Already told you there's no one right path, right? So my path is an illustration of that. I started out as a corporate lawyer. So I was a fancy corporate lawyer in Boston at Ropes and Gray, which is a huge corporate law firm in Boston. It's out now. It's international. But when I was, this is early 90s, it was based in Boston and I moved back to Ithaca, Tony, because an old girlfriend of mine got into Cornell Law School. It's the only reason I came back. I came back with her, but when I came back, I switched law firms. I was still a corporate lawyer, but then I started teaching as an adjunct, first in the law school, in the Business School. And then the late 90s I joined a company as general counsel was a venture backed company and I, I knew all that venture capital and you know, governance and HR stuff. So I joined that company as general counsel. And then that company ended up going bankrupt in November of 2001 in the bubble time. And at the same time the Business School asked me to teach full time. So it literally like was it like within a month? So the Business School asked me to teach full time. I told my clinic because I had a job, the company goes bankrupt. I, I call the Business School back. I'm like, yeah, I'm available. They're like, great, you can start in January. So this was like, like very quick, OK. And so I started teaching full time, but then three years later I joined a venture fund. Oh wow. And I still was, I still, I still had a role to Business School, but it was not full time. It was, I think it was 60% if I'm remembering correctly. I still taught, but then I started doing a bunch of programmatic things at the Business School also that that we're not teaching, like consulting or mentoring, the Consulting Consulting Club and VR Ventures. I started a legal clinic while I was there, also bringing in speakers. So I did that until 2013 all the

[38:21]time. So let's say that was 10 years. I was working hand in hand with John Jaquet at this program that I now run. And Deb, I mean, Deb's been here for the whole time. OK, Deb Mesh. So my path went from corporate law to general counsel to teaching to having more involvement with entrepreneurship programmatic activities to now running the overall entrepreneurship program. And, and the VC fund lasted for 20 years. We just wound it down last year. OK. So and now I now because we wound that down, I now have more time to teach. That's why I started teaching again. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, it was kind of, well, yeah, a different path. But I mean, I happen to love Ithaca, so I which which helps like that definitely helps. You need to love Ithaca to live here. So for the closing question, I always ask the guest, what's the kindest thing anyone's ever done for you? The kindest thing, well, I only have one very, very, very small example. So it's I, I guarantee this is not the kindest thing someone's ever done for me. I guarantee I just, I'm just not remembering it. But just recently, so you might not know this, but I do a lot of fishing. So I, I really fish a lot whenever I can. And one of my friends who I purchased a boat from about a year ago, he's an older guy. He's like 75 now. He's probably 77. He got back in touch with me and he's moving away from Ithaca. And he like literally gave me all of his fishing stuff. Oh, wow. And he had a ton of it, like a lot of it. And I said to my wife, I'm like, I'm not going to need to buy another fishing pole for real for the rest of my life. Like I got, And that was just out of pure kindness. Like we, we had a really good friendship, you know, based on fishing and pickleball. I know it sounds kind of funny. And he just, he wanted his stuff to end up with somebody that he liked and trusted. So he gave me his stuff and I'm taking him in, I'm taking him fishing in August, you know, like, because he'll be in town, we're going to go fishing. So I don't know, it's kind of sweet. Beautiful. Thanks for sharing. Yeah, sure thing, Tony.