How to Use This Book

A part of “How to Build Thriving Start-up Ecosystems: Six Information Patterns for Success.”

There are several ways to read this book. For readers most interested in the general theory of information patterns, feel free to read straight through and skip this section. For Community Information Designers who want to implement this 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 implementation. This section outlines how to collect baseline data on the current state of founders in the ecosystem to help CIDs quantify the impact of implementations made.

CIDs can collect the data needed in several ways, including via check-ins at individual events that relate to entrepreneurship, or surveys directly to students. Each method has its pros and cons and ideally 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 with a form where they input their name and unique identifier (can be done using Google forms). This method is good to gain a real-time understanding of how many founders participate in entrepreneurship events to see how this number changes over time.

There are a few downsides to this method. One is that it takes 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 held at different schools outside of entrepreneurship programs. The medical school might host a seminar on how to start a medical device company, while the computer science school might host a hackathon. If each different school does not share data amongst other schools, there is no way to know the breadth of the entire ecosystem. Later chapters delve into the importance of collaboration across programs, and the initial collection of founder data is pivotal to this effort.

Baseline Data through Yearly Surveys

This initial state data can also be collected through school-wide surveys. 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.

Below is a survey template that can be modified for your specific school:

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. Building product or service

d. Finding first customer

e. Market entry

f. 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. Business class

h. Business Plan Competition

i. Other (please specify): _____

Analyzing the Data

With either data collection method the goal is for CIDs to have a baseline understanding of where their founders are and, in turn, where to concentrate efforts to improve the entrepreneurship ecosystem.

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 percentage of Computer Science and Technology founders compared to other disciplines

If you find the majority of companies started on campus are from founders in the fields of Computer Science or Technology fields, founders from these disciplines are often good at building testable products, 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 more productively.

If you have a higher percentage of founders that are from non-technical fields, they are more likely to get stuck in the development of a testable prototype. For these founders they would most benefit from the build out of a Non-technical Accelerator.

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 CIDs want to foster more scalable companies in their ecosystems, the pattern of Potential Achievable Action Maps and the suggestion of a Collaborative Toolbox can help their students find tools to push their ideas to larger scales.

Number of students at each stage in the entrepreneurship pipeline

If CIDs want to understand the full pipeline of entrepreneurs at their university, it is imperative to map the progress founders make through the different stages of company creation. 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

CIDs should change around these specific examples and add their own based on the events, classes, and other resources their community has for founders. By knowing how many founders progress through the different stages of entrepreneurship this provides an understanding of how productive the ecosystem is and find where there are major drop off points.

Ideally for events or classes that fill up, CIDs should also collect data on how many founders wanted to access a certain resource. This can help you better understand whether you need to increase demand and encourage more founders to this point in the ecosystem, or whether you need to first increase the capacity of university programs to meet existing demand.

With baseline data that provides an initial understanding of the current entrepreneurship ecosystem, you can more confidently begin the work of improving it.