This article is featured in the 2025 Homecoming Special Issue.
In the world of venture capital, a name like Sequoia Capital carries a unique weight. It’s the firm that placed early bets on giants like Apple, Google and WhatsApp, and its investment decisions are closely watched as a barometer of future success. So, when Sequoia leads a $30 million Series A round for a company, the tech world takes notice.
This September, that company was Juicebox, co-founded by Ishaan Gupta ’26. Gupta’s venture is part of a remarkable trend: in 2025 alone, six separate startups born out of Dartmouth, including Lopus AI and Operand, have been accepted into Y Combinator — the world’s most prestigious startup accelerator that launched companies like Airbnb and Dropbox. This summer, Hank Couture’s Leap Year Fund invested in six student startups, three of which operate out of Dartmouth.
As Dartmouth’s name begins to carry new weight in the startup world, the College’s support must evolve from fostering a niche interest to fueling a core competency. While the College cannot and should not invest directly in every student-led company, it must do more to create an environment where entrepreneurship is a viable, celebrated and well-supported path. It is an unfortunate reflection of our culture that everyone seems to know which juniors have Goldman Sachs internships lined up, but few know anything about the latest funding cycles of Dartmouth startups, let alone what those startups actually do.
Dartmouth is a small school far from the venture capital-saturated ecosystems of San Francisco, Boston or New York. Our career pipelines are famously established, often funneling graduates toward consulting, finance and established tech firms. These are paths known for their stability, not their risk. Yet against this backdrop, a cohort of students is choosing to build, not just join.
This burgeoning entrepreneurial spirit creates an urgent and exciting challenge for the College. With so many startups emerging from our dorm rooms, the demand for a robust, supportive infrastructure has never been greater. To its credit, Dartmouth has a foundation in place. The Magnuson Center for Entrepreneurship is a vital resource, and dedicated professionals do a fantastic job of supporting founders with mentorship, space and initial seed funding. Programs like the Venture Studio provide crucial early-stage validation.
However, the Magnuson Center operates like a startup itself. It is agile and resourceful but potentially under-equipped for the scale of opportunity now at Dartmouth’s doorstep. The success of our students often subverts the inherent constraints of our location and size.
Dartmouth must deepen its commitment to the Magnuson Center, not necessarily by diverting general funds, but by empowering it to tap into a powerful, willing resource: our own alumni. There is a clear and compelling case for establishing a dedicated, alumni-funded endowment for entrepreneurship. Successful graduates who have benefited from the risk-taking of a new generation — those who have built companies, led venture firms or simply believe in fostering innovation — are uniquely positioned to understand this need. By channeling their capital and expertise directly into the Magnuson Center, we can expand critical grant programs, grow the mentorship network and ensure that the center’s resources scale with student ambition. This creates a virtuous cycle: today’s alumni invest in tomorrow’s founders, who then become the next generation of supporters, permanently weaving entrepreneurship into the fabric of Dartmouth.
The success of Juicebox and the Y Combinator cohorts is a proof of concept. It demonstrates that Dartmouth students not only possess the vision, tenacity and skill to compete on the global stage, but also that they have the ability and the courage to take risks. The College now has a choice: to treat this as a fortunate anomaly or to recognize it as the beginning of a new legacy. By investing seriously in its entrepreneurial infrastructure, Dartmouth can transform this moment of success into a permanent pillar of its identity, ensuring that the next great idea from a student in Hanover has every possible chance to become the next Apple or Google. So go out and build.
Opinion columns represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
