In the Sunday Globe this week, Scott Kirsner posed the question, "Does Boston Have Too Many Startups?"  The article seemed to try to make the argument that all our little startups should just be employees at bigger startups (disregarding how bigger startups, start out...).

The article is really best summed up in the quote in the article by Craig Driscoll, "companies that hope to grow need to do more than complain about how tight the talent market is." I find it fitting that coincidentally, Ryan Durkin, COO of CampusLive (and mentee of Mr. Driscoll as a Highland Capital portfolio company) writes about attracting talent today.

I've spoken with a number of friends about the article and had some interesting Twitter conversations as well and wanted to highlight some of the key points that came from them.  (Note: Kirsner sought out some thoughts which you can see on his Globe blog here.)

If you saw David Cancel's presentation at Angel Bootcamp or read Healy Jones's recent post on how founders in Boston are "Students who stay," you know that the issue of student retention is on the mind of a number of members of our community.   In honor of Scott Kirsner's "Innovation Month" and his challenge to local bloggers to write about "something that is happening -- or should be happening -- here to make the innovation scene in New England even better?"  I'd like to share how I think we can dramatically improve our retention of students: Hire them.

Entrepreneurship is cool again. HBO has a TV show. Government is embracing it on the city, state and national stages.  Colleges are launching new programs to further embrace entrepreneurship and to help their students create new businesses. The final frontier is upon us now: High School students.  As we reach down to them to excite them about startups, let's do the right thing: Encourage them to get technical degrees in College.