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Are there any unicorn co-founders who didn't attend prep school and Ivies?
It seems like everyone from Gates to Blecharczyk went to private prep schools and then on to Harvard or Stanford. Is there anyone who DIDN'T have this advantage who made it in the world of startups and VC?
- giancarlostoro 11y agoNotch made Minecraft, I don't think he went to any fancy schools, though I'm only speculating. Edit: David Karp is another great example I suppose. He made Tumblr, and doesn't even have a high school diploma.
- oh_sigh 11y agoTravis Kalanick went to a public high school and dropped out of UCLA. But really, this is the wrong question. Even if there were 0 examples of what you asked for, it doesn't mean one can't come along.
- pedalpete 11y agoYou mention Bill Gates to Blecharczyk, what about Steve Jobs and Woz (Woz went to Berkley, though I'm not sure that is considered in the same league as Stanford, I could be wrong). How about Stuart Butterfield (Slack), he went to University of Victoria in Canada. Here is the unicorn list according to Crunchbase http://techcrunch.com/unicorn-leaderboard/ http://techcrunch.com/unicorn-leaderboard/ go through the co-founders, I think you'll find only a small percentage went to prep schools or Ivy Leagues.
- melling 11y agoWoz dropped out of Berkeley in 1971. Perhaps we should use the past tense when comparing the two schools?
- atmosx 11y agoFrom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Software_Distribution#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Software_Distribution... "[...] Also in 1975, Ken Thompson took a sabbatical from Bell Labs and came to Berkeley as a visiting professor. He helped to install Version 6 Unix and started working on a Pascal implementation for the system. Graduate students Chuck Haley and Bill Joy improved Thompson's Pascal and implemented an improved text editor, ex.[2] Other universities became interested in the software at Berkeley, and so in 1977 Joy started compiling the first Berkeley Software Distribution (1BSD), which was released on March 9, 1978. BSD was an add-on to Version 6 Unix rather than a complete operating system in its own right. Some thirty copies were sent out." I don't think that in 1975 Berkeley was all that bad for future computer scientists. Seemed like a pretty good place to be actually.
- pedalpete 11y agoI didn't mean to suggest that great things don't come out of Berkeley, but it isn't normally talked about in the same list as Harvard, Stanford, etc. Same with University of Illinois, where Marc Andreesen helped create Mosaic and launch the consumer internet. I suspect most universities can tie themselves to some modern massive success.
- patio11 11y agoThis seems like a silly thing to spend five minutes of your time researching, as that is five minutes that isn't building a company (unicorn trajectory or otherwise), but be that as it may the answer is "Yes, of course there are founders of companies at all levels of success who didn't go to private prep schools and then Harvard/Stanford/etc." I had five pegged off the top of my head, plus the obvious answer of "Run down the list of foreign-born founders you know." I'll elide naming them to avoid even the appearance of suggesting there is something magic about particular universities: all of their companies speak for themselves.
- woah 11y agoIt doesn't seem to silly to research aspects of the startup ecosystem that one is part of.
- caseysoftware 11y agoOnly if that is a factor contributing to or reducing the likelihood of success. If it's completely orthogonal, it is a waste of time because that's time you could use doing/learning something that does contribute.
- bigmanwalter 11y agoIf you know of any way to conclusively test whether or not something will eventually be useful I'd love to hear more about it.
- aidenn0 11y ago> This seems like a silly thing to spend five minutes of your time researching, as that is five minutes that isn't building a company Is learning for the sake of curiosity now a complete waste of time? I've never spent a single minute building a company, so how many of those minutes are a waste of time?
- mrdrozdov 11y agoDo the founders of Intel and Alibaba count?
- vecter 11y agoThe founders of Intel went to prestigious graduate schools. Gordon Moore went to Berkeley for undergrad and Caltech for his PhD. Robert Noyce got his PhD from MIT. Andy Grove got his PhD from Berkeley.
- mrdrozdov 11y agoPrestigious graduate school is far from a private high school. Wikipedia on Andy Grove: "He escaped from Communist-controlled Hungary at the age of 20 and moved to the United States where he finished his education."
- zamland 11y agoThere are a lot of founders: Wish Slack Credit Karma Uber (both founders) Xiaomi Minecraft Tumblr There's a lot. I suspect question comes from status anxiety. I don't really think it matters.
- saidajigumi 11y ago> I suspect question comes from status anxiety. I don't really think it matters. Depends on your perspective. If it's mere "status", then no it doesn't matter. Everyone has Buddha nature, etc., etc. But from the perspective of "does privilege matter?" you'll get an entirely different answer, which is why people in tech are paying a lot more attention to questions like this. A very, very narrow slice of the population has any possibility of becoming a founder at all, much less of an ultra-high valuation tech startup. That slice is far from random, it encodes a lot of history we're not too proud of, and it is not just a star awarded for merit. If you're reading this and this word "privilege" doesn't make sense in context, it's time to do some homework. There's a lot being written on the 'net about this now, but I'll throw this out as random current starting point: http://gregorykatsoulis.com/2015/07/and-it-worked/ http://gregorykatsoulis.com/2015/07/and-it-worked/
- force_reboot 11y ago>If you're reading this and this word "privilege" doesn't make sense in context, it's time to do some homework. I think 99% of people on HN understand exactly what you mean by privilege here, even if they don't agree with its implications. But I would ask you to consider that telling people to "do some homework" reflects a certain privilege that liberals have in certain circles. In particular, the privilege that goes with not having one's views challenged (again, in certain circles), and therefore assuming that it is your job to educate everyone else. I certainly don't go around telling people to "do some homework" if they haven't heard of the welfare theorems of economics, even if it would be very useful for them to know it.
- giltleaf 11y agoI think he was just saying that a lot of times "privilege" as jargon is a little different than the word's common usage. So, if you were making a point where the welfare theorem of economics made sense to bring up, you might post a link and say something like "it's important to understand this if you want to continue the conversation." In my opinion, what he did was completely appropriate, not condescending, and helpful and I wish you wouldn't have just blindly classified the action as a liberal tendency.
- wwwong 11y agoBeing someone who's against the obsession with pedigree in SV. I've noted a few that came up outside of the Ivies: Jan Koum, CEO/Founder of Whatsapp - San Jose State Aaron Levie, CEO/Founder of Box - USC Suhail Doshi, CEO/Founder of Mixpanel (almost a unicorn) - Arizona State Logan Green, CEO of Lyft - UC Santa Barbara
- saryant 11y agoIt's from the last tech go-round, but Rackspace co-founders Pat Condon and Dirk Elmendorff went to Trinity University in San Antonio.
- obrero 11y agoYou're correct, if you look at founders from Gates to Blecharczyk, this is what you'll generally find. A few exceptions have been mentioned in the thread. It's something to bear in mind. I mean, of essays written and so forth - if you're say, black - they don't apply to you. This is obvious - how many black unicorn co-founders are there? I mean you rarely see a black programmer in the Bay area, never mind a unicorn co-founder. Most essays about joining startups, starting startups etc. are for the class, age group etc. of people who already joined or started startups. There's no warning labels that these things are not possible for certain people, but those people should understand that. I mean it goes to all kinds of things, even what languages to program in. People ask why things like Lisp never made it big - well, most people don't have the time to devote to it. I mean even the idea of making something original a few people love, and putting making money off - it's a wealthy person's prerogative. People not born to the manor have to make money now, no matter how smart or hard working they are, and the amount of time they can devote to long-term or even medium-term goals is limited. This is how those who control the forces of production have set things up, and it's important for you to know it. People born on third base like to pat themselves on the back about how brilliant they are. They used to say they were put into their position by God, but in the modern world they have changed that to saying they have better DNA.
- LargeCompanies 11y agoUnicorn = lucky white or south asian man. YC alums (majority) & Founders with VC = Ivy Leaguers
- atroyn 11y agoI have a dozen or so friends who have done YC who aren't even American, let alone from the Ivies. Don't make things up.
- santaclaus 11y agoStanford isn't an Ivy...
- trentmb 11y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_League#Other_Ivies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_League#Other_Ivies
- bobosha 11y agoDrew Houston - MIT (not Ivy)
- angli 11y agoI'm not quite sure this gets to the heart of what OP meant. In tech, MIT is probably better than (or at least as good as) most Ivies.
- steven2012 11y agoTechnically Ivy League is just a sports conference, it has nothing to do with academics. But most people conflate it with the cluster of top, elite schools on the East Coast, including MIT. So OP probably did mean MIT.
- SamReidHughes 11y agoI've seen made this sort of public/private university distinction before, for the purpose of generalizing (humorously) what kind of person you are, and engineering schools were declared to be honorary public schools. So, not necessarily, in fact, I'd wager probably not.
- wesleyy 11y agoKik, Ted Livingston, University of Waterloo
- santaclaus 11y agoJack Dorsey of Twitter and Square dropped out of NYU and went to Catholic school.
- santaclaus 11y agoAirbnb was founded by RISD grads.
- mwhuang2 11y agoBrian Chesky (Airbnb) attended Rhode Island School of Design.
- jeremyt 11y agoCofounder of thumbtack here. I grew up in East Tennessee, attended public schools through high school and then got my bachelors at the University of Tennessee. For the record, I never went to a better school because nobody ever told me that I could. My high school graduation rate was somewhere around 50%, and when the guidance counselors found out that I got a scholarship to the University of Tennessee, they pretty much made a plaque to commemorate the success and then moved on to the other kids. It's a problem I'd like to work on in the next couple of years. However, while I'm opining, I might add that I could be the exception that proves the rule. All three of my cofounders were Ivy educated, and a heavy proportion of our early investors and advisors were either connections from their social network or people who they met at the various Ivy networking functions. I'm really not sure what to say about it. It's just how the world works. People like to help people that they know, and when you go to an Ivy League school it just so happens that the people you share a dorm room with are going to be in a much better position to help you than my freshman year roommates at UT. The UT alumni Association, bless their hearts, can't seem to see any purpose for contacting alumni except for donations and to organize football watching parties. My most successful friends from back home are lawyers, doctors, and small business owners. My cofounders' most successful friends from back home are venture capitalists, Stanford professors, and finance types.
- TACIXAT 11y agoI thought the name of your business sounded familiar. I have a tab open right now for an accountant. Nice site!
- aidenn0 11y agoIf the guidance counselors had given you advice, it would likely have been wrong. After hearing a few friends in College complain about terrible advice from their counselors, I thought it might just be that people only tell the bad stories. So, I asked every single one of my college friends (mostly Seniors) at the time specifically if they had gotten advice from a guidance counselor, and whether they thought it was good. This turned up more stories of bad advice, but nothing positive. This was at a state school in Indiana, so maybe just midwest guidance counselors are bad, but it's still troubling to me.
- Anish123 11y agoLook at Flipkart from India. Valued at over $15Bn USD. They attended the IITs in India yet build a world class company :) So to answer your question, there are people who still make it big despite not having attended the Ivies!!
- hammerdr 11y agoFWIW, IIT is an extremely prestigious school system in India that has historically been geared toward the upper echelon of Indian society like private and ivy league schools have been in the United States. There have been some efforts to rectify that through quotas, though from anecdotes of colleagues it sounds like it hasn't really been solved (e.g. no proper support system leads to disproportionate dropout rates) https://www.quora.com/Do-you-think-Scheduled-Castes-SC-Scheduled-Tribes-ST-and-Other-Backward-Classes-OBC-reservations-at-premier-institutes-like-IITs-are-justified https://www.quora.com/Do-you-think-Scheduled-Castes-SC-Sched...
- aravingd 11y agoDon't rely too much on quora on the caste question. It is dominated by the privileged. Please read other material that like http://ambedkar.org/ http://ambedkar.org/ and http://roundtableindia.co.in/ http://roundtableindia.co.in/ . There a lot more sources as well. The problem of our country is that how hounded we will be if we talk in support of the caste system where the majority are from the upper caste. See the recent trouble with starting a ambedkar-periyar study circle at IITM for an example. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/services/education/after-iit-madras-ban-ambedkar-periyar-study-circle-spreads-to-other-campuses/articleshow/47501675.cms http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/services/educat...
- hammerdr 11y agoOh, for sure. I picked a source that had a lot of opinions that differed from mine as to consciously oppose my bias :) Thanks for the other links!
- thewhitetulip 11y ago
- oldmanjay 11y agoLet me ask you a question instead; what do you hope to learn from this? What do you want to be true?
- DGAP 11y agoI get where you're going with this. My interest in entrepreneurship exists independently of the current "startup" scene, so the fact that it's dominated by the upper class doesn't dissuade me from my current goals and interests. My goal isn't to blame any lack of success on the unfairness of our quasi-meritocracy. It is interesting though to see a group of people who convinced that they are on the progressive side of history admit that much of their success has been achieved through the connections they made at their elite schools and through their parents, which seems like the way business has always been done. But what do I know, I'm just a middle class guy who went to a state school.
- jackcn 11y agoI've been reading Hacker News for a long time, and until now I've resisted creating an account. It used to be that this forum was a collection of scrappy founders, talking about building out their companies or particular engineering techniques, or the latest front-end library. A lot of posts revolved around helping each other out, either emotionally or technically. This post represents its slide into a vapid gossip rag. Another reddit. Why does it matter if a founder comes from an Ivy League school? Does that prevent you from founding a company? People who end up going to Ivy League schools represents a self-selecting bunch of go-getters, that's it. Successful founders don't ask these sorts of questions, they just build.
- payne92 11y agoYes, there are many, many examples. Marc Andreessen grew up in Wisconsin and went to the University of Illinois. I co-founded Open Market (a unicorn in tech Bubble 1.0). I grew up in West Virginia in a trailer with no indoor plumbing & wood heat. Our high school graduated 99 and about 10 of us went on to college. (I did go to an ivy league school, but I strongly suspect it was on quota because WV was so underrepresented.)
- samfisher83 11y agoUIUC is one of preeminent comp sci schools in the country. It is where mosiac was founded. It kind of shows that it helps to go to a good school even if not an IVY.
- Buge 11y agoBoth Larry Page and Sergey Brin went to public high school and then to public universities for undergrad (University of Michigan and University of Maryland). They went to Stanford for grad, but they still fit your query of not going to private prep schools.