Good point, but as an undergraduate from the school of Biomedical Engineering. I can say for sure most undergrads in this building have never realized the possibility of beginning a startup in their career. The startup culture is largely, and almost entirely isolated to the CS department.
Hey PStamatiou, thanks for your comments! As I mentioned in a reply to a previous post, this entire program was literally hacked together in the past 3 months by two undergraduate students with no money and almost zero reputation with the school. From the very beginning we've always wanted the Startup Semester program itself to be recognized as a full-time internship (Akin to simply withdrawing for a semester to work on their startups, what many students are actually doing). Unfortunately, we haven't been able to sway Georgia Tech administration to our side. What we're left with is a "pilot program" to test our hypothesis.
You're right. It is a little harsh that non-technical founders will have to look for someone technical themselves. We really wish we can implement a feature like that in the future. For now, a minimum viable program is all we can do with our own full course loads.
At the end of the day, we gauge our success on changing attitudes, not having our startups appear on Forbes. If we can change the culture at Georgia Tech just one cohort of entrepreneurs at a time, more students at Georgia Tech will begin to think much like you.
Hey dpeck, glad to hear your views on Startup Semester. Just to put our side in perspective as well - Startup Semester was the result of two undergrads at Georgia Tech who were frustrated at the silos of "schools" that never work together and a culture that seems to look forward to "getting out". We spent all of the last 3 months putting this program together for less than $50 with the goal that we ourselves would be able to learn from it and simultaneously benefit the community.
To answer your concern more directly, our long-term mission is to create a physical entrepreneurial hub on campus that all majors are welcome to participate in. The purpose is to connect the entrepreneurs of all the schools at Georgia Tech - Industrial Design, Computing, Engineering, Business etc.. - to really build great products and businesses backed by an effective cross-functional team. In our experience, we've never encountered a senior design team with business students, designers, and engineers working together. We may be wrong, but it definitely seems like students are agreeing. At the very least, we're hoping this program could help us, and perhaps a few other misfits like us. :)