Funding Post-College Dreams

Posted on September 27, 2012 by David Randall

Read this Bloomberg BusinessWeek article on Upstart.com. I look forward to the day when targets our students.

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  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=729511792 Dylan J. Kaplan

    This article might also be good reading.

    http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57436424/billionaire-offers-college-alternative/

    The results from this project comes out next year, perhaps this will provide a clearer vision for whether or not college aged students can need a college degree.

  • Fadi

    interesting idea that has been starting to pop up in many entrepreneurial hotbeds (silicon valley, new york). The question is, do we really need a third party start-up to do this when business schools have the capacity to do exactly this, match aspiring entrepreneurs with investors. Stanford has done this for a long time and Harvard just last year opened it’s Innovation Lab, creating its own entrepreneurial incubator (legal advice, industry connections, VCs)

    -Fadi Fayad

    • DavidRandall

      Those programs are great–if you go to business school at Stanford or Harvard. In its pilot stage Upstart already covers more schools and a broader range of students.

  • zdranove

    Professor Randall,

        Have you seen the show SharkTank? upstart.com reminds me of that show but a little less theatrical. 
    Its a very interesting concept and hopefully helps people achieve their dreams!
    Maybe one day I’ll have an idea and use the resources on the site.

    Zach

  • Sarah Hu

    This is very interesting and I wish it well; success stories always leave those tingly feelings. Unfortunately I can also envision many not-so-great outcomes.

    I’m not sure I know how I feel about the 3% fee (and the 1.5% service fee). And there might be some issues with a percentage of the student’s income… assuming the percentage of income is pre-tax. If a student starts a start-up, it’s questionable whether these would immediately return a profit (within the 10 years) which is probably a separate question from whether the student would get paid by his/her own company and if so how much.

    But I do like the idea — turning students’ future earnings into a product. Why not?