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There really is only one myth that needs to be busted for the universe to retain order. "they rush out of university to start companies regardless of having no
by unabst 10y ago
There really is only one myth that needs to be busted for the universe to retain order.
"they rush out of university to start companies regardless of having no experience of working in the private sector, thus increasing the chances of failure."
These successful entrepreneurs never rushed out of university to become entrepreneurs. They were successful entrepreneurs already. When you're so successful, staying in school stops making sense. And if you're at that point, you aren't taking a risk by quitting school. The risk is with staying there.
Bill Microsoft, Steve Apple, Mark Facebook, Larry and Sergey Google, Elon Tesla. They all tried to stay in school. They were good students with no intentions of leaving.
So just like any other college student trying to balance school and work and play, replace the work and play with entrepreneurship, and when you are successful, do what makes the most sense. If you graduate, then get a job and do the same. Now replace school and play with entrepreneurship.
These kids who quit school just want to quit and are using entrepreneurship as an excuse. Good for them. No one can say if it's better or worse for them. But if anyone thinks they're mimicking successful entrepreneurship behavior, they're misinformed, be it the students dropping out or the media portraying it as such.
Good entrepreneurs quit their day job when they have to. Not when they want to. And they have to because they're successful already.
- w1ntermute 10y ago> Bill Microsoft, Steve Apple, Mark Facebook, Larry and Sergey Google, Elon Tesla. They all tried to stay in school. They were good students with no intentions of leaving. This is false for Jobs and Musk. It wasn't until 4 years after Jobs dropped out from Reed that Woz showed him the Apple I, and Musk started Zip2 with $28K of his dad's money after dropping out of a Stanford physics PhD with no specific plans. It's only semi-true for Gates (Gates and Allen had obtained a deal with MITS over the summer when he chose not to return to Harvard in the fall), but Harvard allows students to take indefinite leaves of absence, so he took a risk-free path. It was only after the rise of the internet made exponential growth in the space of a few months a real possibility that you saw Page, Brin, and Zuckerberg leave college with very clear evidence of growth to point to.
- unabst 10y agoGood points. For Steve Jobs: "If I had never dropped in on that single calligraphy course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts." Also I looked up Larry Oracle, and for him he quit school because of a family tragedy. Elon also quit his phd at a new school after 2 days, which seems more like he changed his mind than "dropped out". Of course, life is complex. But the point is, none of these people were anti-academic or anti-school. They were anti-wasting time and pro-opportunity, but they were never for dropping out.