I teach entrepreneurship for about 50 student teams a year from engineering schools at Stanford, Berkeley, and Columbia. For the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps this year I'll also teach around 150 teams led by professors who want to commercialize their inventions. Our extended teaching team includes venture capitalists with decades of experience.
The irony is that as good as some of these nascent startups are in material science, sensors, robotics, medical devices, life sciences, etc., more and more frequently VCs whose firms would have looked at these deals or invested in these sectors, are now only interested in whether it runs on a smart phone or tablet.
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