How to Use This Book
A part of “How to Build Thriving Start-up Ecosystems: Six Information Patterns for Success.”
In reading this book as a whole you should come away with a better understanding of the theory and practical application of information patterns to develop successful entrepreneurship ecosystems. For readers most interested in the general theory, please feel free to read straight through. For Community Information Designers who want to implement the book’s strategies in their communities, I would recommend to do a first read through to understand the overall ideas and then come back to this section before implementing any of the suggestions outlined in later chapters.
Before changing any aspect of one’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, it is important to get baseline data on the current state of founders in the ecosystem. Baseline data helps you see quantifiable changes after the introduction of specific implementations.
There are two ways to get this data. The first way is via check-ins at individual events that relate to entrepreneurship, the second is by sending out a yearly survey to all students. Each way has their pros and cons and would work best if used in conjunction with each other.
Baseline Data At Individual Events
In this method at every entrepreneurship-related event founders would check in, using a basic Google form where they input their name and unique identifier number. This method is good for a real-time understanding of how many founders participate in entrepreneurship events.
There are a few downsides to this method. One is that it would take an entire year to see the full breadth of activities founders participate in. The second is that it is hard to find and collect data from events that might be entrepreneur-adjacent. The medical school might host a seminar on starting a medical device company, the computer science school might host a hackathon. Though both these events are entrepreneurial activities, if each different school does not share data amongst the other schools, there is no way to know what activities are conducted that might be outside of your purview. Later chapters delve into the importance of data sharing across programs, and the initial collection of founder data is pivotal to this. Your role as a Community Information Designer is to search for entrepreneurial activities in adjacent schools and push to get enrollment and participation data from them.
The last downside is that moving from Google forms to a type of software to analyze the data can be arduous. One way to decrease data input time is to link the Google Form to a Google Sheet so that Google automatically inputs the Google Sheet where it can be more easily analyzed.
Baseline Data through Yearly Surveys
This “before” state data can also be collected through a school-wide or community wide survey. Since the number of potential founders is an important piece of data, it is important to push for this email to be sent to all university students and alumni, not simply those who have opted into entrepreneur-specific newsletters. This survey can also help you to pinpoint specific places of weakness that might guide you towards which patterns to try to build more into your ecosystem.
Some of the key insights you are looking to understand through this survey include:
The number of students interested in entrepreneurship
This number represents the total potential founders that want to enter the entrepreneurship pipeline. To increase the total number of founders at the beginning of the entrepreneurial pipeline, CIDs should focus on integrating the pattern of Attention Selection into their ecosystems.
The ratio of Computer Science and Technology founders to other disciplines
If you find the majority of companies started on campus are from founders in the fields of Computer Science or Technology, founders from these disciplines are often good at building a testable product, but are impeded in their progress on specifically “unknown unknown” problems. Here the pattern of Layered Schemas can help students build a more multi-disciplinary information network that can help them not just build, but build productively.
Likewise, if you have a high ratio of founders that are from non-technical backgrounds, they are likely to get stuck in the development of a testable prototype. If you have a high amount of non-technical founders (over fifty percent) you might want to focus your attention on the development of a Tactical Design Lab pulled from the pattern of the Energetic Loop.
The ratio of scalable to non-scalable companies
Within a university ecosystem there should be both a mix of founders that want to build billion dollar moonshots and founders who want to build local lifestyle businesses. If you want to encourage more founders to create larger, scalable companies, you need to understand their revenue goals and their current revenue. To foster more scalable companies at their university, CIDs can utilize the pattern of Tool-defined Edges to help their students find tools to push their ideas to larger scales.
Number of students at each stage in the entrepreneurship pipeline
If you want to understand not simply how many founders have started companies at the university, but how many have continued to build past the ideation phase, you need to understand how founders are progressing through the various different stages of company-building.
To do this, you need to categorize the various start-up activities within your ecosystem in terms of early stage, middle stage, and late stage. An example might be:
Early stage: Hackathons, Design Jams, Intro to Entrepreneurship Classes
Mid-stage: Acceptance into an incubator, incorporation services with the law school, attending more advanced entrepreneurship classes
Late stage: Acceptance into an accelerator, participation in a business plan competition
You should change around these specific examples and add your own based on the events, classes, and other resources your community has for founders. But you should have some kind of classification of early and late stage founders to give you an idea of how many founders are progressing through the ecosystem, which can give you a better sense of how productive the ecosystem is. If you can, collect data on not simply how many founders have attended an event or gone through a course, but how many have wanted to. This can help you better understand whether you need to increase demand and encourage more founders in the ecosystem, or whether you need to increase the capacity of university programs to meet the existing demand.
Tracking where founders fall out of the pipeline can help you better understand where to build connected nodes across the ecosystem, outlined in detail in the chapter Pattern of Connected Nodes.
A template survey is given below that you can alter to fit your program’s needs.
Entrepreneurial Interest Survey
What is your current academic level?
a. Undergraduate
b. Graduate
c. Postgraduate/Doctoral
d. Alumni
d. Other (Please specify): __________
Which department are you currently enrolled in?
a. Business/Management
b. Engineering
c. Science and Technology
d. Arts and Humanities
e. Social Sciences
f. Health Sciences
g. Other (Please specify): __________
How would you describe your interest in entrepreneurship?
a. Actively pursuing entrepreneurship
b. Interested but not actively pursuing
c. Curious but undecided
d. Not interested
In which field(s) are you considering starting a business? (Select all that apply)
a. Technology
b. Healthcare
c. Retail
d. Food and Beverage
e. Renewable Energy
f. Other (Please specify): __________
At which stage do you currently find yourself in the entrepreneurship pipeline?
a. Idea generation
b. Market research
c. Developing product or service
d. Market entry
e. Scaling business
Question: What is your ultimate vision for the scale and impact of your business?
a. I want to manage a small-scale lifestyle business that aligns with my personal life and values.
b. I aim to develop a small to medium size (SME) business that effectively serves a specific market or community.
c. I aspire to scale up my business for national or international reach, making a considerable impact.
d. My ultimate ambition is to build a highly successful and large-scale company, potentially reaching a valuation of over a billion dollars.
If you have started a business, how far along are you in terms of development and revenue generation?
a. Pre-revenue (Still in planning or development phase)
b. Early revenue (Starting to make some income)
c. Consistent revenue (Stable and regular income)
d. Not applicable/I haven’t started a business
If you have answered B or C, what is your monthly revenue?
a. Under $500
b. Between $500 -$5,000
c. Between $5,000-$10,000
d. Above $10,000
Have you participated in any of these entrepreneurship programs?
a. University hackathon
b. Incubator program
c. Accelerator program
d. Mentorship network
e. Design Lab
f. Legal Lab
g. Other (please specify)
