Interview with Howard Marks, Co-Chair of Start Engine and CEO of Gamzee & Paul Kessler, Co-Chair of Start Engine and Principal and Founder of Bristol Capital Advisors.
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“We can’t even find enough teams to fund.”
This is the reason why LA powerhouse accelerator Start Engine is buckling down on its efforts to populate the LA startup scene with major (and genuinely entrepreneurial) manpower, Start Engine co-chair Howard Marks and Paul Kessler said.
By reaching out to large companies and universities around the country, Start Engine hopes to reach its goal of spending its capital on 120 startups a year. Start Engine already started down this path in March by partnering with Accenture, which has about 300,000 employees and $30 billion revenue, and soon will be “announcing some very large new partners who are joining Accenture” and Start Engine, Marks said.
“What does it mean to partner with Accenture and other companies like them? Well, the truth is that big companies worldwide are scared. The threat of disruption to their businesses is very real. How can you defend against that? To innovate and stay current, you can’t work within your own company culture - that’s where StartEngine’s entrepreneurs come in. Like Commandos, our teams move quickly can effectively solve problems that are impossible within the culture of a large company. But to do that, our entrepreneurs need introductions to the movers and shakers of those organizations, which we provide during our 30 day needs analysis program. I’m not aware of any other accelerator doing this” said Marks.
To find talent, which is clearly in short supply, Start Engine is going directly to the source - schools. They’re talking with entrepreneurial students at colleges such as Arizona State University, University of Michigan, Princeton, and Columbia - (in addition to some of LA’s own universities) to encourage them to come to LA.
“Everyone is going around thinking: can I be the next big entrepreneur? It’s very sexy,” Marks said.
If you were looking for the next big hit, where would you search? Probably in the same places as everyone else. And that’s the problem. Clearly there is untapped potential at top engineering schools nation-wide that is being ignored. This is unfair and is flushing good talent down the drain.
So now the question is - Which schools aren’t getting the credit they deserve? Which under-rated schools should funds like StartEngine begin tapping into? To answer this question, StartEngine has produced a College Funding Index, set for release shortly.
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Everyone knows Stanford, Harvard, and schools like them produce countless entrepreneurs per year that go on to build great companies. But unfortunately even the Crimson and the Cardinal combined can’t churn out enough startups founders to address every market need in our current climate.
This funding index and commitment to top universities is all in the name of bringing startup enthusiasts to LA -- and then keeping them here: “We interview teams and make sure they want to be an entrepreneur for a lifetime. Not just, ‘I am going to try this now and in 3 months if it doesn’t work I am going to go find a full-time job,’” Paul Kessler said.
Once these “truly entrepreneurial types” have caught LA’s startup spirit, they can then, of course, take advantage of all the resources available at Start Engine (initial investment, office space, mentorship by top C-level execs, access to elite members of the tech community, and legal services to name a few) and further Start Engine’s goal of making LA a top tech city.
