Build vs Support: Startup Ecosystems Explained

Note: The following contributions are personal impulses from Max Eckel. They represent individual reflections and are intended to stimulate discussion and further thought.

Many university startup ecosystems don’t fail because they lack activity. They fail because institutions try to replace it. Startup ecosystems are not built from scratch. They emerge. People with agency find each other. They share interests. They start helping each other build. That’s already an ecosystem.

The mistake many universities make is a classic one: A make-or-buy decision gone wrong. Instead of asking “What already exists, and how do we support it?” they default to “Let’s build our own structures.” Programs. Formats. Platforms. All internally owned.

The problem? You don’t just build on top of the ecosystem. You start competing with it. You pull attention away from grassroots initiatives. You miss the alumni who are already active. You create parallel structures that feel… irrelevant.

I was reminded of this watching Smartup WHU. No mandate. No budget logic. Just students noticing gaps and moving fast: They wanted access to technical talent so they partnered with CODE University of Applied Sciences and ran a hackathon. They wanted exposure to builders that came before them so they brought in alumni to talk about Rocket Internet SE (thanks Srećko Džeko, Julian Dames, Soheil Mirpour, Christoph Gamon).

And that’s not just a panel topic. It’s the mechanism. Rocket Internet didn’t emerge from a university strategy. It was alumni building companies, recruiting from WHU, funding the next generation, and doing it all in Berlin. Completely outside the institution. And yet deeply connected to it. That’s also why the center of gravity of the ecosystem isn’t Vallendar or Düsseldorf. That’s what real ecosystems look like: Not centralized. But strongly networked. 

So what is the role of a university? Not to outcompete SmartUp. Not to replicate what students or alumni already do better. The role is infrastructure. A visibility layer. A routing layer. And simple things like easily accessible rooms, a shared email domain, communication channels, etc. Make the ecosystem legible. Show people where to go. Connect the right people faster. Amplify what already works...without trying to own it.

Because the best ecosystems don’t scale through structure. They scale through people who feel responsible for building them. That’s the difference between an institution… and a community that compounds.

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