Waterloo Trek – Summer 2010
While back in Toronto for my grandma’s 90th birthday I swung by my alma mater, the University of Waterloo, to catch up with friends, professors, and students. Fantastic trip.
Caught up with classmates Dave (founded Aeryon), Prem and Jay (at Tangam Gaming), Ryan and Dan (doing corp security and display hardware at RIM), Melanie (Maxtech) plus former profs Larry Smith and Catherine Burns and her first year Systems Design engineering class, and met other students via IEEE Student Branch and Computer Science Club events.
I gave a couple talks on life after Waterloo—largely chatting about career paths of my ‘02 computer engineering class. A number of us went on to US grad schools (Berkeley, Harvard/HBS, MIT, Cornell, Stanford, etc.), lots are doing amazing things in technology (Apple, Palm, RIM, Google, XBox, startups, etc.) plus a bunch switched outside the tech field (to Bain, UBS private wealth management, finance, etc.).
Also had some slides on the Stanford MBA experience (If you’re looking for more checkout: 9 days in Paris & Beirut with Stanford MBAs, Friday as a Stanford MBA, How to Crash Parties using Social Media, Warner Bros, Batman, Oscars, Hulu).
Very glad to share info about what happens to Waterloo engineers after graduation—there was a dearth of this material when I was in undergrad.
Some observations:
- Raw talent in this region is impressive, certainty comparable to Bay Area and Seattle, though people’s aspirations seem a lot more modest—focus is on 10^6-7, not 10^9+.
- There’s a pretty dramatic difference in student-alumni interaction. At Waterloo, the norm is for students not to reach out to alumni for help and advice, and at Stanford it’s the opposite.
- More Waterloo alum should be coming back on campus and connect with students (and not just for recruiting)—there’s tremendous value in creating community.
Some new ideas I picked up:
- Partake in the Silicon Valley culture, but don’t be captured by it. Silicon Valley has a lot of energy and excitement, but there’s also a lack of diversity, and more herd mentality than many realize—and because of this, it’s also much less entrepreneurial than people think.
- Competitive advantage comes from discovering other people’s mistakes. Examine the strategy of players in the market, look for factual mistakes they’ve made, then look for mistaken assumptions. Your competitive advantage will come from seeing what they’re doing wrong.
- It’s important to distinguish among entrepreneurial ventures, lifestyle businesses and money-making schemes. Entrepreneurship is about creating something from nothing and changing the world in a positive and material way, a lifestyle business is something that makes a bit of money and plods along year after year without a ton of growth, and a scheme is something you’re not passionate about, but makes a quick buck. They’re distinctly different and you should have a clear idea of what you’re after.
