News from the World of High Growth Student Startups | GrubHub | Packback Books | #Entrepreneurship #Dissertation

Been awhile lots of research and busy with new opportunities at George Mason Universities. The Campus is indeed the frontier. Three items from the frontier…

University of Chicago Booth School high growth startup GrubHub has filed for an IPO. From winning the Edward L. Kaplan New Venture Challenge to raising millions in venture capital, Matt Maloney‘s startup has been on the move.

Big celebrations in Chicago and at 1871 as a student startup from Illinois State, Packback Books, appeared on Shark Tank last week. They closed a deal with Mark Cuban. The company, founded Kasey Gandham, Mike Shannon and Nick Currier offers short term, pay per use digital textbook rentals. Kind of like renting a movie from itunes etc. Big changes in #highered #textbook market!

My dissertation, The Campus as Frontier for Entrepreneurship: High Growth Student Startups at U.S. Universities, will be completed in April 2014. The dissertation will include a case study, a database of high growth student entrepreneurs, their firms, and universities. Additionally, the work will propose 5 archetypes of high growth student entrepreneurs and will suggest a frontier framework for evaluating U.S. higher education and its value. I look forward to sharing this work as I complete by PhD from GMU’s SPP.

 

 

 

 

No Venture Backed IPOs in Q2 — 1st Time in 30 Years

For the first time since 1978, no venture backed firms completed an IPO during the second quarter. Mark Hefflinger over at Digital Media wire has a nice posting on this ‘non-event.’

I have always believed that the focus on venture funding is overblown as a vast majority of new firms do not access the VC markets. That said, the statistic (from the National Venture Capital Association) is pretty staggering and underscores the stalled mentality that has gripped our markets (credit and equity).

From the post:

For the first time since 1978, there were no venture-backed initial public offerings (IPOs) during the second quarter, according to a new report from the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA).

The absence of IPOs follows an exceptionally slow first quarter, in which just five venture-backed companies went public.

In the first half of 2007, 43 companies went public.

The NVCA characterized the trend as a “capital markets crisis” for the start-up community.