Not long ago, three young high-tech entrepreneurs sat with the students, talking about failure. They talked about questionable technical, financial or personnel decisions in start-up businesses they had created or worked in, about companies they had seen disintegrate, and about detours into projects they later discarded.
A question was asked about Andrew Mason, co-founder of Groupon, who had been fired a day earlier as the company’s chief executive.
“We should all be so lucky as to build a company that the investors care enough about to fire us,” Tim Novikoff, the C.E.O. of a small company making mobile phone software, said with a wave of his arm around the table, prompting laughter from the students and knowing nods from the Cornell Tech staff. A rail-thin man with the deep-set eyes of someone who could use a little more sleep, Mr. Novikoff is in his early 30s, making him the oldest of the three visitors.
“It’s a miracle if a start-up gets off the ground,” he said. “The last six months I’ve had no income, I have no health insurance. But I got to fly out to a C.E.O. conference and talk with Ashton Kutcher about mobile video for 10 minutes.”
The visitors urged the students to take risks but to expect, at least at first, a precarious existence, riddled with setbacks, that will require obsessiveness and a thick skin — and they made it sound like the grandest of adventures.
Monday, June 17, 2013
Entrepreneurs to Cornell Tech students: "It's a miracle if a startup gets off the ground"
From the New York Times profile of Cornell NYC Tech, a new university with an introductory class of eight students. The school, which is building a new campus on Roosevelt Island off Manhattan, focuses on combining research and practical work, saying that "business, technology and real-world experience are baked into the coursework."
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about mistakes,
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