What are key ingredients to create a startup culture?

Foundation Capital's Paul Holland says aspiring entrepreneurs are emerging across universities

What are a couple key ingredients that create an entrepreneurial culture and mindset at colleges? I asked Paul Holland, a partner at Foundation Capital, and the VC who's heading up Foundation Capital Young Entrepreneurs Program, or YEP, to find budding entrepreneurs across the country's schools.

"It's a rich question," he said. But Holland points to Manhattan as an example of a place that's getting the right ingredients. NY has the "momentum," he said. It has a phenomenal local environment where people want to be and live. It also has enough technologists. But the school, not surprising, that is the "Gold standard" of schools doing the best job at creating an entrepreneur culture is Stanford, mainly because of the fairly frictionless way to be able to create IP and build upon it.

I also asked Holland whether he saw more entrepreneurs across universities today than a couple years ago. While he didn't have any stats on it, anecdotally he said more students want to be entrepreneurs and build businesses.

A coupe years ago, he'd give a talk and there'd be six students. Today, "you'll have 60 students."  

(See the first segment: Foundation Capital's plans to find the next Mark Zuckerberg) 

(If you want to see the startup culture come alive, join us at our Splash SF event this Thursday. Get tickets here)