For over a year, Mike Alvarez Cohen<\/a> had been studying UC Berkeley\u2019s rise as a leader in entrepreneurship and startups.<\/a> He compiled case studies of world-changing company founders and their startups. He assembled examples of how campus innovators built an ecosystem that encouraged big ideas and led to hundreds of new business ventures annually.\u00a0<\/p>\n But in reviews of early drafts, a common argument emerged. People told him Berkeley\u2019s success was inevitable given the campus\u2019s proximity to Silicon Valley.<\/p>\n Cohen, the campus\u2019s director of innovation ecosystem development, understood that viewpoint. He\u2019d heard it before and didn\u2019t completely disagree. But as the principal author working on a book about Berkeley\u2019s innovation history, he wondered: Was it actually true?<\/p>\n Brandon S\u00e1nchez Mejia\/UC Berkeley<\/p>\n He found his answer in February while reading archival documents chronicling the evolution of college campuses in the 20th century. For most of Berkeley\u2019s history, into the 1990s, the campus was openly apathetic \u2014\u00a0even hostile \u2014 to industry. Many Berkeley leaders and faculty viewed business collaborations with disdain, arguing it was inappropriate to profit from research initially paid for by taxpayers. Some even looked down on applied research. <\/p>\n It was only through focused, intentional changes and a gradual shift in culture that the campus recognized the value and became a leader in collaborations with industry, including startups.\u00a0<\/p>\n In that moment, Cohen realized Berkeley\u2019s rise to a startup powerhouse was anything but guaranteed. He had his hook \u2014 and subtitle \u2014 for the book he\u2019d wanted to write for years.<\/p>\n Startup Campus: How UC Berkeley Became an Unexpected Leader in Entrepreneurship and Startups was published this month<\/a>. The 214-page book stitches together the eras of Berkeley\u2019s innovative history, from its early days of open hostility to its current place as a top-ranked institution for generating new ventures and startup leaders.\u00a0<\/p>\n Free digital copies are available for students, faculty and staff. A new website invites people to share their startup stories<\/a>. Additional events sharing the book and its stories are planned on campus throughout the semester.<\/p>\n \u201cThe publication is like a startup\u2019s exit into an IPO or acquisition,\u201d Cohen said. \u201cIt\u2019s not the end of the journey, but it\u2019s a culminating milestone.\u201d<\/p>\n The book is broken into six chapters. Each chronicles a different phase of Berkeley\u2019s innovation and entrepreneurship network, from the pockets of faculty in electrical engineering and computer science who initiated a culture of innovation in the 1960s to the complex web of programs and accelerators that grew in the 2010s and the next wave of collaborations today.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cNearly 100 faculty, staff and alumni contributed to this story,\u201d said Chancellor Rich Lyons, who wrote the book\u2019s foreword. \u201cIt\u2019s built on our research strength, our culture of questioning and our drive to make a difference. This is a new model for higher ed, one where scholars and entrepreneurs work together to scale impact for society.\u201d<\/p>\n Speculative fiction to reality<\/p>\n Cohen initially workshopped a story idea about Berkeley\u2019s innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem in 2017 with Caroline Winnett, the executive director of Berkeley SkyDeck. Winnett even had a title: From Ivory Tower to IPO. But Cohen shelved the concept until a clearer story throughline and arc were apparent.\u00a0<\/p>\n That time was right in late 2023. By then, Berkeley had established itself as a leader in innovation and entrepreneurship and was ranked No. 1<\/a> in venture-backed startups founded by undergraduate alumni. Meanwhile, campus culture, from leadership down, had embraced entrepreneurship \u2014 a far cry from the attitude just a few decades earlier.\u00a0<\/p>\n The book\u2019s emergence, like the rise of our startup campus, was anything but a solo effort.<\/p>\n Mike Alvarez Cohen<\/p>\n \u201cExecutive leadership wasn\u2019t just supporting innovation and entrepreneurship,\u201d Cohen said. \u201cThey were championing it.\u201d<\/p>\n He emailed the pitch to Lyons, who was then the campus\u2019s first innovation and entrepreneurship officer. Lyons wrote back quickly and enthusiastically envisioned a campus-wide effort.<\/p>\n By February 2024, the project was officially underway.\u00a0<\/p>\n Laura Hassner, the campus\u2019s executive director for innovation, entrepreneurship and the Berkeley Changemaker<\/a> program, was also on Cohen\u2019s initial email. She said the book project, which was made possible through the Project Tipping Point Fund<\/a>, was ambitious \u2014 and necessary.<\/p>\n \u201cWe knew Berkeley was punching above our weight in innovation and entrepreneurship, and it was time for the world to know,\u201d Hassner said. \u201cWith his deep knowledge of I&E and his experience as a published author, Mike was absolutely the right person to lead this donor-funded effort.\u201d<\/p>\n Brandon S\u00e1nchez Mejia\/UC Berkeley<\/p>\n While this is Cohen\u2019s first work of nonfiction, it\u2019s not his first book. It\u2019s not even his first book about UC Berkeley.\u00a0<\/p>\n Under the pen name Singularitive Ranch, he\u2019s written a four-part speculative fiction series involving Berkeley researchers, rogue experiments and future-shifting events. It\u2019s a hobby he\u2019s had for years that draws on his experience in Berkeley\u2019s technology licensing office working with researchers and their innovations that have changed the world.<\/p>\n \u201cThis hobby taught me that the best stories are character-driven,\u201d Cohen said. \u201cSo with this nonfiction UC Berkeley book, a big challenge was finding an arc for the story, especially without having one individual as the protagonist. Instead, the campus is the protagonist, and the arc is its unexpected journey to entrepreneurship excellence.\u201d<\/p>\n Going from project launch to published book in 19 months is \u201catypical,\u201d Cohen said. Especially considering he, Hassner and Darren Cooke, another key project supporter who serves as the campus\u2019s interim chief innovation and entrepreneurship officer, weren\u2019t working on the project full-time.\u00a0<\/p>\n But Cohen said it was important to convey \u201cour public university\u2019s immense societal benefits to California, the nation and the planet, especially these days with all the scrutiny and skepticism about American higher education.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Cohen said he views the book\u2019s narrative sections, sidebar stories, program descriptions and chancellor\u2019s foreword as a playbook for how other universities can think about melding teaching and research with innovation and societal benefit.\u00a0<\/p>\n And while his name is listed as the principal author, Cohen said Startup Campus was only possible with the dozens of people who shared stories, edited drafts and pushed the book to publication.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m particularly proud to have been a part of the team that wrote the story about part of what makes Berkeley special,\u201d Cohen said. \u201cThe book\u2019s emergence, like the rise of our startup campus, was anything but a solo effort.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Key takeaways \u2022 Berkeley\u2019s emergence as an entrepreneurship and startup leader was far from guaranteed. \u2022 Startup Campus…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":130498,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[28,158],"class_list":{"0":"post-130497","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entrepreneurship","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-entrepreneurship"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130497\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Mike](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/MikeCohen_Cropped-scaled-e1756408179806-686x1024.jpeg\")
Mike Alvarez Cohen<\/p>\n![\"Laura](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/StartupCampus2025-2-1024x683.jpg\")
While Mike Alvarez Cohen (right) was the principal author of the book, he credited Laura Hassner (left) and Darren Cooke (center) with helping to make the book a reality. <\/p>\n