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I disagree completely, at least for young entrepreneurs. I started a hosted email company in high-school, and while it never really went anywhere, it was the s

I disagree completely, at least for young entrepreneurs. I started a hosted email company in high-school, and while it never really went anywhere, it was the single greatest thing on my resume. It made me stand far above most other applicants, proved that I could start and complete something interesting, and gave me a lot of real-world experiences to talk about in an interview, as opposed to the standard "In this database class I took..."

tptacek 17y ago
By all means start a company instead of playing World of Warcraft, hanging out at Denny's, and going to Fall Out Boy concerts. You're right. Starting a company is basically risk-free when you're in high school (though note that it's not risk free when you're in college; getting a degree would be an incredible pain in the ass for me now, and I traded that opportunity for a startup win in the '90s).
- drusenko 17y ago
  There's a lot of free time in college, if you can keep your time organized. It's very possible to (a) get decent grades (GPA 3.3-3.7), (b) learn something in the classes that are interesting, (c) hang out with friends, party like it's 1999, get laid, and (d) work on a "startup" (more like a side-project at this point) for 10-20 hours per week. If you're effective for those "startup" hours, you can have something to show for it in a year -- maybe a business worth pursuing, maybe just an amazing addition to your resume. In any case, going to college and working on a startup shouldn't necessarily be exclusionary, unless the startup proves to be successful enough that it makes sense to drop-out or finish your degree remotely.