The University of California, Berkeley’s Skydeck incubator for student start-ups, has a decidedly un-student like feel. The incubator, which Haas School of Business, Berkeley helped establish and fund, occupies the penthouse suite of the tallest building in downtown Berkeley, with premium office space and views over San Francisco Bay.
Inside, 14 competitively chosen teams, most with at least one MBA, are developing companies based on everything from social media websites to medical devices and software. Each team can use the incubator for up to a year, receiving mentoring from Haas faculty and entrepreneurial alumni, hands-on help from Skydeck staff and the opportunity to pitch to the investors of nearby Silicon Valley.
It is the kind of extracurricular set-up that is on offer to more and more students at business schools, as the institutions realise that offering a few lectures about entrepreneurial businesses is no longer enough.