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Many of the most valuable tech properties today were built by college kids, or better yet college dropouts. It turns out that having your whole life ahead of y

Many of the most valuable tech properties today were built by college kids, or better yet college dropouts. It turns out that having your whole life ahead of you matters, because you're more willing to take risks.

fishnchips 11y ago
Or maybe it's more about having less to lose. Once you have kids and mortgage you're less likely to take risks.
overgard 11y ago
My point isn't that young people are incapable (some of them are great), rather, that the people that think they can build something by taking advantage of naivete are going to quickly discover that for every young brilliant programmer, there's 10 people that will some day be good, but at the moment they're inexperienced and they'll create junk if they're not mentored. But it's true, many of these companies are designed to be flipped, technical excellence might be a secondary concern. Ninjas beware.
- rwjwjuwjudf 11y ago
  Oh yeah, agreed, but capitalism doesn't care, just throw shit at the wall and see what sticks... Probably building something in grad school helps.
pixelp3 11y ago
I think you severely underestimate the amount of serious work put into all these "tech properties" (I'm guessing you mean Facebook/Dropbox) by very experienced, in-demand engineers.
bunderbunder 11y ago
There's a survival bias at play here. We remember the (very) few companies that survive to become tech giants. We don't remember - haven't even heard of, really - the vastly greater number of ventures that crash shortly after liftoff.
bdcravens 11y ago
Started, as in MVP. Additionally, some of those properties were built while in college by brilliant developers who dropped out to run their then growing companies. There have been many many many more companies started by kids who have failed miserably.
x5n1 11y ago
It was not built by college kids. A prototype was built by college kids which was then commercialized by billionaires. The college kids got the credit, and some dough, and the billionaires got 70%+ of the profit. The stuff was built by a team of engineers, some young and some old.
Retric 11y ago
Yet, if a young company built by collage kids is bought out the parent company generally dumps the source code as worthless. That might tell you something. The same thing happens at successful company's you just don't see it. Twitters Fail Whale did not end because they brought on more collage kids.

fishnchips 11y ago

Or maybe it's more about having less to lose. Once you have kids and mortgage you're less likely to take risks.

overgard 11y ago

My point isn't that young people are incapable (some of them are great), rather, that the people that think they can build something by taking advantage of naivete are going to quickly discover that for every young brilliant programmer, there's 10 people that will some day be good, but at the moment they're inexperienced and they'll create junk if they're not mentored. But it's true, many of these companies are designed to be flipped, technical excellence might be a secondary concern. Ninjas beware.

rwjwjuwjudf 11y ago
Oh yeah, agreed, but capitalism doesn't care, just throw shit at the wall and see what sticks... Probably building something in grad school helps.

pixelp3 11y ago

I think you severely underestimate the amount of serious work put into all these "tech properties" (I'm guessing you mean Facebook/Dropbox) by very experienced, in-demand engineers.

bunderbunder 11y ago

There's a survival bias at play here. We remember the (very) few companies that survive to become tech giants. We don't remember - haven't even heard of, really - the vastly greater number of ventures that crash shortly after liftoff.

bdcravens 11y ago

Started, as in MVP. Additionally, some of those properties were built while in college by brilliant developers who dropped out to run their then growing companies. There have been many many many more companies started by kids who have failed miserably.

x5n1 11y ago

It was not built by college kids. A prototype was built by college kids which was then commercialized by billionaires. The college kids got the credit, and some dough, and the billionaires got 70%+ of the profit. The stuff was built by a team of engineers, some young and some old.

Retric 11y ago

Yet, if a young company built by collage kids is bought out the parent company generally dumps the source code as worthless. That might tell you something. The same thing happens at successful company's you just don't see it. Twitters Fail Whale did not end because they brought on more collage kids.