7 minute read
Marking 10 Years of Building: Information, Design and Startups
M A R K I N G 1 0 Y E A R S O F
Information Technolog y, Design, and Startups
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From top: Mike D’Eredita, John Liddy, and Bruce Kingma. All three had a hand in building the iSchool’s program in Information Technology, Design, and Startups in 2009.
“Why aren’t students building things?”
STEVE SARTORI
SUSAN KAHN
DAVID BRODA
This is the question iSchool adjunct faculty member Mike D’Eredita asked himself more than 10 years ago — a question which would lead to a program that would inspire hundreds of Syracuse University students to think differently and take risks. “I always viewed demonstration and building as the ultimate learning experience, for anybody,” D’Eredita said. “You learn your limits, you learn what you can do. You can sit in class and learn Java, but have you built anything? What have you done?”
D’Eredita still remembers the pitch he made to the iSchool’s Board of Advisors to launch an innovation class. iSchool faculty member Bruce Kingma, who was serving as Provost for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the time, had already been in talks with Dean Liz Liddy about using money from the Kauffman Campus Initiative and from a Chancellor’s Leadership Project grant to start an entrepreneurship program, so it was easy for D’Eredita to garner support.
Dean Liddy gave D’Eredita a few minutes to speak at an iSchool board meeting and he remembers a buzz when he was done. He said a few student entrepreneurs were also at the meeting and when the board saw how dedicated the students were, they were eager to back the vision.
According to D’Eredita, universities often accidentally lead students to believe there is only one path after graduation — make a resume, get hired, and work. He said he doesn’t believe every student needs to be an entrepreneur but they at least need to be shown it is an option.
As a rowing coach for years, D’Eredita had an idea to curate a similar student-athlete type environment around student entrepreneurs. He envisioned teams, coaches and practice time — basically a small community. With the backing of Kingma, the iSchool board, and Dean Liddy, a program staff began to form. It consisted of many people from across campus as well as from across the city (all of whom are included in the sidebar on page 23.)
“It was really thanks to a combination of a supportive administration like Liz Liddy and Bruce Kigma among others, fused with supportive community members,” D’Eredita recalled. “It was important we had all of these champions of this program and that it spanned across not only the University but also the city.”
Together, this team was able to launch a trial run of a course in fall of 2008. It was a single class called Technology Entrepreneurship and it was co-taught by
Information Technolog y, Startups BY ALEXANDRA ARCHAMBAULT ’18 G’20
D’Eredita and Nasir Ali, then Executive Director of the Syracuse Technology Garden — a hub in downtown Syracuse that helps to create technology-leveraging start-ups, fosters the development of entrepreneurs, and supports the innovation ecosystem throughout the Central New York region.
This initial class was an immediate success and fostered the online reputation management company BrandYourself, that is still around today with locations in New York City and Lancaster, Pennsylvania. After the triumph of the first course, the team wanted to expand.
“We quickly realized one course wasn’t enough; these students needed more time to develop their ideas.” D’Eredita said.
In 2009, a year after the initial class, the Syracuse Student Sandbox was introduced. At first, it wasn’t even a course, just an opportunity for students to work on their business ideas downtown in the Tech Garden.
Since D’Eredita envisioned the program functioning like an athletic community, the founders agreed they needed to seek out a Sandbox “Head Coach.” They found that coach in John Liddy. At the time, Liddy was an entrepreneur in the area and was working on his MBA in Syracuse University’s Whitman School of Management. He had worked with his mother, Dean Liddy, on a company called TextWise, as well as on his own companies. Due to his connection to Syracuse, his wealth of knowledge, and his dedication to helping others find success, he was an obvious recruit.
Once John Liddy joined the program, D’Eredita and the others would co-teach the first classes and when students had a viable business idea, they would be passed along to the Sandbox for refinement and coaching.
Liddy recalled when he started working in the Sandbox he was essentially babysitting the students as they worked through their ideas. He quickly realized it was more helpful to let students figure out what worked and didn’t using trial and error rather than just telling them what to do. Sandbox students gather for a team meeting during the 2012 summer session.
SUSAN KAHN
Mike D’Eredita at left with students Phil McKnight, Gieve Kazerouni, and Josh Jackson, representing their venture, Promptous, at an entrepreneurship event held in the Blackstone LaunchPad in 2018. “I found it was just important for me to help students understand how to think like an entrepreneur and to identify good ideas,” Liddy said. “It wasn’t about getting them to raise a lot of money, it was about getting them to see opportunities. Even if the company they were working on didn’t work out, they developed skills to make something else work in the future. Sure, we have successes but regardless, all of these students can benefit from what they learn here.”
With the program growing, the team decided to make the Sandbox a registered University course as it was the easiest way to both market it to students and to ensure they were still continuing to attend their other classes while building their ventures. It quickly occurred to the team to lump all of the new entrepreneurship course offerings into an official university minor to provide structure. D’Eredita said that at the time, they never wanted it to become a full-fledged major as they wanted students to maintain interests in other disciplines, and weave entrepreneurship into them. John Liddy (standing) advises an early student venture in the Sandbox.
The resulting minor was called Information Technology, Design and Startups (IDS), and consists of three classes that students can take consecutively. What’s The Big Idea — a class structured to help students think like an entrepreneur — Idea to Startup — a class to help students develop business ideas — and finally, The Sandbox — a class dedicated to allowing students to work on their companies under the guidance of mentors in the Syracuse Student Sandbox.
Despite humble beginnings, the IDS program was a clear success. Soon after its start, hundreds of students across all disciplines, and even from other colleges and universities, were finding their way to the IDS program and realizing they, too, could think like an entrepreneur. Additionally, Kingma said that institutions across the world were reaching out to him asking how they could cultivate similar programs. Today, ten years after its launch, D’Eredita said over 1,500 students have engaged in at least one of the program’s three courses. Beyond that, student teams in the program have collectively won over $1 million dollars in funding while still in school, and since leaving school, almost $40 million in funding. Although the Sandbox has recently moved from its home downtown in the Tech Garden to the Blackstone LaunchPad in Bird Library, it still serves the same purpose it did upon its inauguration — allowing students to push their minds in ways that a traditional classroom education does not. n
Syracuse Student Sandbox participants pitch their companies at an early ‘Demo Day’ at the Tech Garden in 2012.
The individuals below were all responsible for helping the iSchool build and grow the IDS program. They are noted with their role at the time, as well as their current role, if it has changed.
NASIR ALI Executive Director of the Syracuse Technology Garden (now Managing Director of the Startfast Venture Accelerator and CEO of Upstate Venture Connect) SEAN BRANAGAN Tech Garden (now Director, Newhouse Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship) KATHLEEN BRANDT Professor, VPA DON CARR Professor, VPA ANN CLARKE Dean, VPA (now Associate Professor, VPA) BRADEN CROY Assistant Director, Student Sandbox (now Program Manager, Blackstone LaunchPad) MICHAEL D’EREDITA Professor of Practice, iSchool (now Director of the Keenan Center for Entrepreneurship at Le Moyne College, and Adjunct Professor at the iSchool) ANDREW FARAH Graduate Assistant (now CEO at Density) TORY GENTES Graduate Assistant (now Immersive Ethnographer) LINDA HARTSOCK Executive Director, Tech Garden (now Executive Director, Blackstone LaunchPad) STACEY KEEFE Executive Director, Enitiative (now Project Manager, St. Joseph’s Health) BRUCE KINGMA Provost for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (now Professor of Entrepreneurship at the iSchool) ELIZABETH LIDDY Dean of the iSchool (now retired) JOHN LIDDY Director, Student Sandbox BILL PADGETT Professor, VPA ELIZABETH RUSCITTO Graduate Assistant (now Director of Developer Relations at HubSpot) PETER SCOTT Professor of Practice, Whitman MARCIE SONNEBORN Adjunct Professor, Whitman (now Professor of Practice, iSchool) MEL STITH Dean, Whitman (now retired) JOHN TORRENS Professor of Practice, Whitman GISELA VON DRAN Professor, iSchool (now member, iSchool Board of Advisors) CRAIG WATTERS Professor of Practice, Whitman