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This is part of my Series on University Entrepreneurship.

Upon spinning-off 13 companies from Columbia University in FY 2009, we at the Venture Lab realized that we’d now eclipsed the century mark with over 100 spinoff companies historically. We were also heartened by the fact that over 30 of these had been venture-backed at some point in their life-cycle, over 20 had either been sold or gone public and among them they had created in excess of 1500 jobs and raised over $1 Billion in venture capital.

It’s a testament to all the great work being carried out by the faculty and grad students in the 7,000 plus labs at the University, by the business school’s entrepreneurship center and by the talented entrepreneurs and investors who stepped up to take fledgling ideas and transform them into commercial ventures.

It’s also just a snapshot of the emerging behemoth of university entrepreneurship being loosed upon campuses around the country.

(Above find just a few of Columbia University’s portfolio companies)

For Part Sixteen in in this Series, click here

This is part of my Series on Entrepreneurial Culture.

I was really inspired by an article I read in this weekend’s NY Times penned by Larry Dorman. It’s about a gentleman by the name of Bill Powell, a veteran of WWII, a great-grandson of Alabama slaves, and a man who endured enormous indignities and discrimination but nonetheless persevered in achieving his entrepreneurial dream. His particular ambition was to design, build and run his own golf course.

Upon his return from the war no bank deigned to give him a loan and he was essentially denied the rights accorded to him in the G.I. Bill. Unbowed, he managed to scrape together some seed money for his venture, borrowing from his own brother and from two black physicians. He then proceeded to handle the rest on his own and slowly and steadily built a golf course from scratch. He finished with the front nine in 1948. After earning the means to buy some more land, he completed the back nine thirty years later- in 1978.

Today his Clearview Golf Club of East Canton, Ohio is on the National Register of Historic Places and Mr. Powell, who is now 92 years old, will shortly be receiving the PGA’s Distinguished Service Award.

I write quite a lot about entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial culture and you can find my various posts on this subject here. These two passages below, however, said it all to me and embody somehow what being an entrepreneur is all about:

“He did much of the heavy work himself, clearing brush, pulling out fence posts and hauling away stones in a wheelbarrow. He seeded the fairways by hand, sometimes helped by Marcella, who died in June 1996 after 56 years of marriage.”

“He and my mother planted most of the trees you see there bordering the first hole,” she [his daughter] said. “When you think about what he was able to accomplish here, with everything that was arrayed against him, it really is quite amazing.”

For Part 6 of this Series, click here.

Breaking the Century Mark: Celebrating 100 University Spinoffs at Columbia University

Profiles in Entrepreneurial Courage: The Story of Bill Powell