General management junior Jake Sterling has thoughts of starting a business out of state after graduation, but a new study by the University Research Corridor, or URC, might have changed his mind.
A recent report shows that graduates from the three universities that make up the URC — Michigan State University, University of Michigan and Wayne State University — have founded or acquired businesses at double the national average rate. According to the Embracing Entrepreneurship report released at the Detroit Regional Chamber’s Mackinac Policy Conference, URC alumni were 1.5 times as successful as the average U.S. business owners in keeping start-ups and acquisitions going in the past half-decade.
In other words, one in five MSU, U of M and Wayne State surveyed graduates have started a company — some, more than one.
“That’s a pretty good ratio, I’m not going to lie,” Sterling said. “If it does continue to improve, yeah, I would highly consider staying in Michigan.”
More than 40,000 of the three schools’ 1.2 million alumni were included in the survey with the entrepreneurial success spreading into every state and more than 100 countries. Nearly half of the new enterprises began or were acquired in Michigan.
“We are all pleasantly surprised by the results … (it is) really exciting and great news,” URC Executive Director Jeff Mason said.
Mason said in the past the URC has observed different sectors of the economy and the impact universities have had. In this report, he said the URC wanted to concentrate on what schools were doing from a research perspective.
Mason praised the colleges’ growth in entrepreneurship activities, which he said produce outstanding alumni.
“There’s more support within the campuses for this activity which bodes well for the future,” Mason said.
After graduating from MSU in 2006 with a finance degree, Mike Vichich became a consultant for Accenture. Although he got to travel the world and stay in fancy hotels, his true ambition was to “build something that solved those problems, not just tell someone to solve them.”
Last year, Vichich co-founded Glyph to help consumers maximize credit card rewards, reduce interest rates and improve credit card scores. Glyph is headquartered in Michigan with an office in New York City, and has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Business Insider and Yahoo! Finance.
“Michigan is a great place to start a tech company,” Vichich said. “There’s a lot of smart people coming from MSU and U-M.”
Vichich said his involvement with students consulting for non-profit organizations during his time at MSU was “one of the most beneficial things” he did.
“The entrepreneurial culture (in Michigan) is something that doesn’t exist in the same extent as elsewhere, but I think that’s starting to change,” Vichich said.
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