At Stanford University, where venture capitalists lecture and even fund student start-ups, innovation thrives.

The Stanford Entrepreneur Network lists 14 different groups, and Sun Microsystems, Google and Yahoo founders, to name a few, designed products on campus.

Its tech-teaching evangelists have even managed to convert English majors to Silicon Valley devotees.

Take Preston Rutherford of CoolIris, a Palo Alto-based image-browsing startup.

The 22-year-old began an internship at CoolIris in spring, graduated in June, and will soon join the tech support staff full-time.

But joining a startup wasn't always his goal, he said. He majored in urban studies and spent earlier summers at a property company and a respected architecture studio back home in Tucson, Ariz.

"I had a plan. I was really interested in affordable-housing development," Rutherford said.

Then senior year rolled around. Having completed his major, Rutherford branched out and took a class on entrepreneurship taught by Tom Byers.

Byers, brother to the Brook Byers of venture-capital giant Kleiner, Perkins Caufield & Byers, runs the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, which promotes the teaching and research of entrepreneurial thought, on campus and worldwide.

Rutherford said Byers' class "changed his life," opening his eyes to the world of innovation.

The student had also been getting e-mails from a fraternity brother, Josh Schwarzapel, encouraging students to try his new product, CoolIris. Rutherford's other friends spoke often of starting companies and changing the world.

So while Rutherford was primed to become an architect, working for a tech company suddenly "just made sense," he said. It's what the people he admired were doing. He started at CoolIris and loved the collaborative spirit, the ideas floating around, and most of all, the freedom.

"You can do anything you want. Create something, own it, make it happen — push it through."

Will he ever go back to his goal of creating low-income housing?

Maybe, Rutherford said. For now, he's passionate about startups and the visionaries who drive them. Starting something from nothing is addictive, he said.

— Arden Pennell