π Issue #100: Decoding the Entrepreneurial Power of the 5Cs
In this centennial edition, HMC Professor Josh Brake discusses how education in a collaborative liberal arts environment creates the necessary foundation for innovation and creativity.
π¬ Welcome to issue #100 ofΒ Between the Lines
Good morning & happy Thursday. After over two years of sharing Claremontβs entrepreneurial spirit and the inspiring stories of its daring founders, we've arrived at a remarkable milestone β Issue #100!
This week, HMC Engineering Professor and author Josh Brake delves into the unique liberal arts environment of Claremont, unraveling some secrets behind its entrepreneurial success. Itβs a Claremont world out there. π
~ Josh, Miles, Pat
π’ π₯ Community Voices: Range and Relationships β the Secret Sauce of the Claremont Colleges
Author:
Josh Brake is an Assistant Professor of Engineering at Harvey Mudd College where he has been on the faculty since 2019. He has a Ph.D. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Caltech and an M.S. and B.S. in Engineering with an electrical concentration from LeTourneau University. In addition to his day job at Mudd, he writes a weekly Substack newsletter, The Absent-Minded Professor, where he reflects on education, technology, and human flourishing and shares how you can live a more purposeful life using a prototyping mindset. You can find more about Josh and his work at
.Claremontβs Startup Success
βTo him who observes them from afar, it appears as though they are scattering and dissipating their energies, while in reality they are channeling and strengthening them.β β Santiago RamΓ³n y Cajal
On Between the Lines and through StoryHouse Ventures, Josh and Miles have consistently demonstrated just how successful Claremont entrepreneurs and Claremont-founded startups have been over the past couple of decades:
βIn the past decade alone, Claremont founders and startups have raised $46B+ in venture capital dollars, which ranks Claremont 3rd amongst all U.S. universities after Stanford and Harvard, and 47 of these startups have exited or are currently valued at $500M+.βΒ
The natural next question, however, is why? Why would a collective of small, relatively unknown liberal arts colleges on the West coast that are more than an hour away from any big city, produce this type of entrepreneurial success? Thinking about this led me to reflect on a few of the largest contributors to my success thus far and distill the elements that I believe are at the heart of what will drive the success of my students at Harvey Mudd and across the Claremont consortium.
The Influence of Range and Relationships
Except for the year I spent in kindergarten at a school in my hometown, I was homeschooled until high school. While itβs not for everyone, homeschooling was a great experience for me. The curriculum that my mom used to teach my brother and I had set readings and assignments for each day of the week but with much less external structure than a traditional elementary school day.Β Homeschooling gave me freedom and space to explore not only the topics covered in the curriculum but those that piqued my own interest as well.
As a kid, I remember getting up first in the morning around 6 a.m. when my dad left for work and hitting the books. If I was especially efficient, I could be wrapped up with the problem sets and assignments I was individually responsible for before a late breakfast at 9 a.m. After breakfast, my brother and I would venture outside and, if the weather was mild enough, my mom would read our read-aloud books to us while we walked around the lake. In less favorable weather conditions, weβd walk laps at the mall with all the retired folks.
Being able to finish up my assigned work for the day so quickly left lots of time for other activities: from reading to Little League, to digging forts in the woods or building ramshackle huts from scrap wood (in case you were wondering, it had two stories, with siding, and surely violated almost every building code in the book). These experiences offered me the space to embrace play and to begin to build a foundation of creativity and self-direction that has served me well later in life. It afforded me the increasingly rare opportunity at a very young age to experience and dive into a wide range of activities, skills, and interests. My days were far less structured and pre-determined by a classroom schedule and were instead filled with opportunities to learn and experience something new.Β
What was impactful during my homeschool years continued through high school and college. At my undergraduate alma mater, LeTourneau University in east Texas, I was fortunate enough to learn under professors who not only cared about pouring technical information into me but also helping to form my character. They invested in me relationally, in the same ways as my mom did homeschooling me for all those years.
As an assistant professor of engineering at Harvey Mudd, my perspective on my work is indelibly marked by the relationships Iβve had with teachers throughout my life. I want to pour into my students in the same way that my teachers poured into me, helping them to develop not just in their field of expertise, but also, and more importantly, as people.
Why Relationships Power Budding Entrepreneurs
While I was never a student at one of the Claremont Colleges, as a professor I have some theories about the conditions that lead to the innovation and entrepreneurial success that is regularly documented by Josh and Miles in Between the Lines. For me, it boils down to two main features of a Claremont education: relationships and range. These two elements, which were so influential in my own development as a young person from elementary school at home through college at LeTourneau, are at the heart of what makes an undergraduate education in Claremont resonate with the students, faculty, and staff that make up the community.Β
One of the special things about a college as compared to a university is that the incentive structures are well-aligned to serve undergraduate students. Iβm not saying that you canβt get an excellent undergraduate education at a big university. But, itβs undeniable that in an institution with graduate students and a greater emphasis on research, publication, and grant writing, the attention of the faculty will be split between those tasks and their teaching.Β
The undergraduate years are particularly formational, that time of life when students branch out on their own and begin to think deeply about their place in the world and the influence they want to pursue. One of the beautiful and I think underrated aspects of the undergraduate years is the combination of energy and naivety. I often remind the students who work in my research lab of this. While they think their relative lack of experience in the field is a disadvantage, I like to flip that idea on its head. In fact, their lack of knowledge is a distinct advantage. They donβt yet have the cynicism that often comes with four-plus years of graduate school and dozens of failed experiments. Just like the two-story mini Waldorf-Astoria I built as a kid, theyβre so enraptured with the wonder of it all that they can create something beautifully creative. One of the reasons that I enjoy working with them so much is having a little of this creative spark rub off on me.
This type of direct and frequent interaction with undergrads is one of the things I love most about teaching at Harvey Mudd. At the Claremont Colleges, undergraduate students get top billing. This means that the institutional incentives are aligned to enable and encourage faculty to spend time developing relationships with students both in the classroom and outside of it. Iβve had many wonderful and deep conversations with students outside of class either on campus over a cup of coffee or after pizza around a fire at my house. This relationship means that students have a direct connection to their professors, with all the attention, technical insights, and connections that come along with that.
The benefits of these interactions extend beyond personal relationships as well. The size and scale of the Claremont Colleges make it easier for students to access professional opportunities that are formative for their trajectories when they leave college: money to support research experiences during the summer, funding to purchase supplies and equipment for building experiments in the lab, opportunities to take leadership roles on research projects, and perhaps most importantly, access to lots of time and attention from faculty. These types of experiences are critical for developing the skills and confidence to succeed after graduation and are just a few of the advantages of being a big fish in a small pond.
Being a big fish in a small pond is often used pejoratively as if to say the size of the fish is an illusion created by the diminutive surrounding environment. This is not universally true and doesnβt apply to either the students or faculty at the Claremont Colleges. Students in Claremont regularly turn down bigger, more well-known places to come here. The same holds true for the faculty who are at the top of their professional games and regularly pull in external research grants on par with their colleagues at larger institutions. Itβs not that either students or faculty are at the Claremont Colleges because they couldnβt be at an R1 university somewhere else. Itβs just that by and large theyβve chosen a different path for the environment they want to be a part of, one that is more aligned with undergraduate education than they could achieve at a larger research-focused institution.
How Range Powers Budding Entrepreneurs
In addition to relationships, the other major component of a Claremont education that contributes to the success of Claremont founders is range. The small size of each individual college means that students can explore a wide range of interests. Instead of choosing between playing a sport, helping to lead a club, or working in a research lab, students have much greater freedom to curate their own college experience and build their own experience with pieces from each.
This varied set of experiences helps to build a strong foundation for students to flourish as individuals and as professionals and resonates deeply with the thesis of writer and journalist
βs book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. In it, he makes a case that in our world of increasing specialization, the wise move is to develop a broad foundation rather than specializing as early as possible. He pushes back on Malcolm Gladwellβs 10,000 hours hypothesis which suggests that mastery comes from dedicated repetition and argues that while that may work in some controlled domains like chess and golf, the real world is much more dynamic and noisy. In the real world, having a wide range of experiences makes it possible for you to pivot and flexibly adjust to the ever-changing environment around you. One of my favorite quotes in the book comes from Spanish Nobel laureate Santiago RamΓ³n y Cajal, the father of modern neuroscience:To him who observes them from afar, it appears as though they are scattering and dissipating their energies, while in reality they are channeling and strengthening them.
The Claremont Colleges cultivate students with range. All of the colleges embrace a liberal arts curriculum, requiring students to meaningfully engage with the humanities, social sciences, and the arts throughout their degree. There is a strong culture of cross-registration where students from one college will travel across the consortium to take a class in a particular area from a department that specializes in that area. So you end up with Mudders taking humanities at Pomona and Scripps, Claremont McKenna students traveling to Harvey Mudd to take computer science or engineering classes, and Mudders heading to Pitzer for an environmental analysis class. Not only does this help students to develop breadth as individuals, but it also helps them develop relationships with other students and faculty.
The Power of a Liberal Arts Consortium for Entrepreneurs
Taken by themselves, each Claremont College is relatively small. But what folks who are unfamiliar with the consortium donβt see is the web of relationships that students build while theyβre here, both with fellow students, faculty, and staff. These relationships combined with the ethos of a liberal arts education that embraces range create an excellent environment for launching entrepreneurs. From this point of view, the number of successful companies that have emerged and continue to emerge from Claremont founders should be no surprise at all.
As the work and career landscape continues to shift, a liberal arts education rooted in range will become even more valuable. The recent waves of development in artificial intelligence like the large language models which have burst on the scene over the past year are just the beginning. The continued push in these developments create an opportunity for a liberal arts education to add value by continuing to cultivate graduates with a wide range of competencies, experiences, and relationships.
Double down on a broad foundation developed in relationship
These days there is a lot of consternation about the future of higher education in the air. The pandemic and technological shifts powered by artificial intelligence have certainly accelerated many of these concerns. While there are certainly challenges to be addressed, I believe the focus on range and relationship at the heart of a liberal arts education and the unique liberal arts educational experience at the core of the Claremont Colleges will continue to serve students well. Building range will provide students with a broad foundation to be able to learn and adapt to evolving challenges and prepare them to lead with wisdom and poise when the opportunities present themselves.
While we often fixate on the ability to find answers, a much more important skill is knowing how to ask good questions. Solutions tend to be relatively brittleβthey are valid only under a certain set of conditions. One good question, on the other hand, can be enough to sustain an entire career.
The range and relationships at the core of a liberal arts education at Harvey Mudd and the other schools within the Claremont consortium create the necessary foundation to train students to ask good questions: a deep embrace of curiosity, a wide base of knowledge across technical fields, the humanities, the social sciences, and the arts, and strong relationships both with professors and peers which unlock collaborative synergies. If change is the only constant, you want to develop a strategy that enables you to flexibly adapt. Range and relationship will help you do just that.
π€ Claremont Introductions: Sean McQueen & LaunchScience
Claremont grad Sean McQueen (CMC) is a machine learning engineer and is the co-founder and CTO of LaunchScience β a platform that helps companies launch products better. Before starting his own company, Sean was a senior software engineer and tech lead for Beeswax (acquired by Comcast) and an ML Engineering Manager for Twitter. He founded LaunchScience to build a complete GTM solution to help other product and marketing teams specifically solve the problem of launching new products.
Sean recently announced that LaunchScience is now out of beta. If you want to explore the platform, sign up below for a free 30-day trial.
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πΌ Whoβs Hiring?: Reality Defender & Delos
Claremont grad Ben Colman (CMC) is the co-founder and CEO of Reality Defender β a deepfake detection platform that identifies AI-generated content in milliseconds using synthetic media detection algorithms. The company recently completed the Comcast NBCUniversal LIFT Labs Generative AI Accelerator and is piloting its technology with NBCUniversal to explore solutions for securing its outbound content in the public space. Theyβre hiring for several open roles:
Freddie Huynh (CMC β95), Georgi Dinolov (HMC β11), and Dong An are the co-founders of Delos Financial Technologies β a FinTech marketplace that facilitates the buying and selling of non-bank-originated consumer assets. By successfully promoting the responsible buying and selling of loans in their marketplace, Delos is contributing to increased access to credit. Theyβre a venture-backed start-up with a unique track record in credit risk, analytics, and asset management. Theyβre currently looking for a Head of Engineering to join their founding team. If youβre interested or know someone whoβd be perfect for the role, check out the opening:
π£οΈ Conversations on the Interwebz:
This weekβs top listen π§
Venture Daily recently invited Claremont grad and legal AI expert Jake Heller (PZ β07) to discuss his companyβs journey from being YC-backed, its relationship with Union Square Ventures, to its recent $650M acquisition. Jake is the co-founder and CEO of Casetext β the developer of the world's first AI legal assistant, CoCounsel.
Claremont entrepreneur and CEO Colin Read (CMC β06) joined The Wednesday Match Play podcast to talk about his hospitality technology startup, Whoosh. He shares the founding story of his company, where its name came from, and the solutions it provides to leading golf clubs around the country.
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Great read! Inspiring from the perspective of a freshman at CMC. Keep up the good work.