What BASES Will Do Differently
Startups are our best vehicle for effecting change in the world. They let the drive and naivete of the new entrepreneur compound into engines of the global economy.
The catalysis of capital and the sacrifice of founders have birthed new technologies that in many cases have redefined the human condition.
Stanford has long stood at the epicenter of Silicon Valley, being home to much of the aforementioned innovation that has transformed the world.
Yet with all of this school's success, there has been a dilution of entrepreneurial culture. Status and wealth have attracted people who see entrepreneurship as a means to an end, having lost sight of the lever it offers to push the frontier.
This Startup Theater has repelled much of Stanford's talent, fragmenting them across campus with no place to congregate, nowhere for those who see through the theatrics to find others who can help refine their ambition.
This is a tragedy. Stanford has aggregated many of the most brilliant people from around the globe, placing them next to the largest collection of risk capital ever assembled, yet, because of Startup Theater, there remains an enormous amount of latent potential.
Here is how BASES plans to fix this.
It starts by restoring our shared pedagogy. The stories of history's greatest companies carry an incalculable wealth of knowledge we fail to sufficiently study. The Seven Powers should be memorized, the early heroics of SpaceX and Jobs's obsession with beauty need to be canon. There needs to be reading clubs, friends listening to podcasts together on runs, talking about the most salient lessons they've learned at every meal of the day.
To this end, we must spend our time with up-and-coming founders. We should be going on factory tours where we can wear the shoes of the CEO, at blackboard lectures getting a taste of the engineering problems these businesses are actively solving, asking as many questions as we can think of and then talking for hours afterwards.
When we engage with investors, we must expect the same standard from them, to teach us. Instead of superficial dinners we should demand VCs convey their insights on what it takes to build a successful business, to let us in on the evolving opportunities they see at the edge, and to connect us in turn with the best founders they've had the chance to work with, bringing them along to share what the journey is like from both sides of the table.
We have to get back to building. Late nights should be spent obsessing over research, grinding away on a project, or getting up on a whiteboard and wargaming the future together. When someone starts working on a startup, they need to lecture us on the engineering and unit economics, proceeding to have the group grill them on every single detail.
This can't be limited to just undergrads either. Masters, PhDs, and post-docs offer an incredible breadth of expertise that, if cross-pollinated with the healthy arrogance of undergrads, promises to unleash brilliance. Yet graduate students are those most put off by the theater, requiring that we repair their trust by simply getting back to work.
If startups are our best vehicles to change the world, then restoring a mature entrepreneurial culture is a task to be treated with reverence. The character of the future will be shaped by the companies started today. It is a beautiful thing to live at a time so ripe with opportunity, and BASES intends to play its part in forging the founders who will define our generation.