You cite a few reasons why UW turns out a lot of entrepreneurs, but I would say the most important is the Co-op Program.

I worked at three early stage companies (in Waterloo, NYC, and Germany) while going through Co-op as part of my CS degree at UW. This hit me at a formative time. Four weeks after my last exam, I founded Savvica. (We demoed Nuvvo at TorCampDemoCamp3.)

We’re now looking forward to hiring some UW Co-ops and passing on the tradition.

John

With respect to the university educational system: I’ve watched several of my former UW classmates start successful businesses (and some not so successful, but at least they gave it a shot), and in just about all cases it was because they already had the entrepreneurial bug in them and not because of what they learned at Waterloo. There are other programs out there that are even better at combining business and technology than Waterloo is, like the Skoll BASc/MBA program at UofT; and from my experience in the UW engineering program compared to those of friends elsewhere, there are “no-name” universities that have a more rigorous and perhaps better curriculum. But one of the things that sets Waterloo apart is the energy of the environment, thanks to the exceptional students and the many related business activities in the area.

Needless to say, though, there were also plenty of tech heads that wanted to stay with what they love most and didn’t really care to venture into the business aspect of technology. I think there’s nothing wrong with that; events like TorCamp/DemoCamp can help bring together people wearing different hats and hopefully lead to something better.

BTW, I think it’s an excellent idea to have smaller sections running in parallel, if the right kind of space is available.