5 ms·

How to drop out of college and start a venture-backed Social Network

34 points by jasonlbaptiste 16y ago

ch 16y ago
This was an enjoyable read. As someone not yet even out of the gate, I think the biggest take-away from this is that networking is by far the most important skill an entrepreneur must cultivate. I am technically skilled, but spend much of that skill on private projects, and so have not learned the art of building networks with even technical fellows, let alone business fellows (my business skillset is nonexistent). The author appears not only to have natural network skills, but also a knack for social organization, which clearly shows through in this article. I have been slowly circling towards evolving a more social persona, and communicating online seems like a safe first step. I feel inspired today. Thanks for posting this.
- ljlolel 16y ago
  That's funny you say that. I definitely have been working a lot on that specifically over the last few years. I'm actually a hard-core hacker. I'm running technology at Stickybits. I wrote my own Python web framework, and released (what I think is) the best templating framework in any language. (weby templates: http://www.jperla.com/blog/post/weby-templates-are-easier-faster-and-more-flexible http://www.jperla.com/blog/post/weby-templates-are-easier-fa...)
  - ch 16y ago
    It was another article posted here (I think) detailing the history of some pretty famous products (I remember the Super-Soaker being among those mentioned) and how these wildly successful products all had rather humble beginnings, and sometimes quite rocky starts. It was a good read, since it reminds one that when you use someone (something) else's success as a measuring stick you quite often are behaving much like the blind men and the elephant. I bring that up because while I was reading your post I completely forgot those lessons learned and found myself both envious of your success and disappointed in my relative lack. Of course reading your reply here only helps to re-ground me yet again. A funny coincidence, I too have worked on similar Python projects, only never released them. In fact I have a HTML similar template system which made use of ‘__getattr__’ and ‘__call__’ to allow you to produce things like this: def pageSidebar(): html = T.div(id="page-sidebar")( T.div( T.a("Add Page",href="?cont=addPage") ), T.ul( *map(T.li,(nodeUrl for nodeType,nodeUrl in graphData.nodes_iter() if nodeType == 'page')) )) return html Of course this was before I could take advantage of ‘with’, so my product looks a bit too lispy!
    - ljlolel 16y ago
      Yea, everyone always said that Python is no good for embedding in template languages because of its significant whitespace. Weby Templates proves that whitespace is actually an asset. A number of Python templaters (like yours), lisp templates, and other language templates have a system like yours, nested lists. But they quickly become unworkable, lack the ability to do if statements (simple branching), and not having to put end tags ("))") is half the reason you use Python! Python's whitespace proves to make a much better language for templates than any other. My "success" may look enviable, but it's luck. Except not quite luck. When I visited California, I wrote a script to email over 200 companies. Only a few replied. Is that luck, or did I make that?
tgriesser 16y ago
Step 3: Test your assumptions and Step 6: Do your research Probably the most important steps in the process, and I'm glad they were addressed here...identifying a potential market, testing the viability of the potential market and coming up with a plan... a plan that doesn't involve set up social network involving "X", tell people about it/advertise, ?? , profit! I'll admit when I read the title I though it was going to be an article discussing why not to drop out of college and start a venture-backed Social Network, but I'm glad that it was much more realistic and insightful than that.
jasonlbaptiste 16y ago
It's funny Joe and I BOTH stopped out of college independently at the same time. I saw him in Palo Alto and asked him what he was doing here. He said: Oh, I dropped out of college, joined a startup early on. I said: Oh, me too. We originally met in Miami. Joe is probably a textbook play on how to go through this. When I saw him again, it was on spring break where he had gone back to college after failing. It was in Miami. He asked me: What are you doing here? I said: I failed, came back to college. He had done the same.
frisco 16y ago
Dropping out of college is often seen as a marker of huge success and drive. In reality, it's just one path you can pick when answering the question, "given this dream, how can I maximize my chances of realizing it?" This is a little more subtle than it sounds. I left school after my sophomore year and went on to raise a $1 million Series A from a blue-chip VC. A year and a half later, I ended up back at University not in defeat, but in realization that for my specific ambition there was more I could get out of the university. I wouldn't call myself a student -- I'll always be a student in that I'll be learning my whole life -- but I have as specific a reason for being at the institution as I did for dropping out. Traditional "students" are those who are in school without a better reason for why they're there. There are a lot of potential businesses where it makes sense to be affiliated with a university right now. There are also a lot where the right move is to stop out and move immediately to SV. You could drop out and still start a biotech company -- but you'll most likely end up net-negative, spending 6 years quietly hacking away on very limited resources on the fringes before breaking through. You could start a spaceflight company without a degree, but you're taking the hardest possible route to get there. If you're smart enough to do that, you're smart enough to figure out how to do the minimum possible work to get by in your classes, and spend the rest of your time talking the university into giving you access to resources (and credibility) you'd never have otherwise. It's not about the degree: it's about what you can get out of the university while disguised as a student. It's definitely easier now than ever before for great hackers to do well without a degree. And you can certainly get rich down a lot of those paths. But the really cool companies -- space travel, clean energy, biotech, and so on -- can use the university for a lot for a few years in order to advance the same goals before breaking off on your own. The two more years I have access to subjects with chips implanted in their brains and tens of millions of dollars of cutting-edge equipment is a springboard for any subsequent activities, however inane classes might be. The opportunities are there if you go and take them.
- ljlolel 16y ago
  Great point, it's also a lot easier to do a medical startup if you have an MD
  - 16y ago

ch 16y ago

This was an enjoyable read. As someone not yet even out of the gate, I think the biggest take-away from this is that networking is by far the most important skill an entrepreneur must cultivate. I am technically skilled, but spend much of that skill on private projects, and so have not learned the art of building networks with even technical fellows, let alone business fellows (my business skillset is nonexistent). The author appears not only to have natural network skills, but also a knack for social organization, which clearly shows through in this article. I have been slowly circling towards evolving a more social persona, and communicating online seems like a safe first step. I feel inspired today. Thanks for posting this.

ljlolel 16y ago
That's funny you say that. I definitely have been working a lot on that specifically over the last few years. I'm actually a hard-core hacker. I'm running technology at Stickybits. I wrote my own Python web framework, and released (what I think is) the best templating framework in any language. (weby templates: http://www.jperla.com/blog/post/weby-templates-are-easier-faster-and-more-flexible http://www.jperla.com/blog/post/weby-templates-are-easier-fa...)
- ch 16y ago
  It was another article posted here (I think) detailing the history of some pretty famous products (I remember the Super-Soaker being among those mentioned) and how these wildly successful products all had rather humble beginnings, and sometimes quite rocky starts. It was a good read, since it reminds one that when you use someone (something) else's success as a measuring stick you quite often are behaving much like the blind men and the elephant. I bring that up because while I was reading your post I completely forgot those lessons learned and found myself both envious of your success and disappointed in my relative lack. Of course reading your reply here only helps to re-ground me yet again. A funny coincidence, I too have worked on similar Python projects, only never released them. In fact I have a HTML similar template system which made use of ‘__getattr__’ and ‘__call__’ to allow you to produce things like this: def pageSidebar(): html = T.div(id="page-sidebar")( T.div( T.a("Add Page",href="?cont=addPage") ), T.ul( *map(T.li,(nodeUrl for nodeType,nodeUrl in graphData.nodes_iter() if nodeType == 'page')) )) return html Of course this was before I could take advantage of ‘with’, so my product looks a bit too lispy!
  - ljlolel 16y ago
    Yea, everyone always said that Python is no good for embedding in template languages because of its significant whitespace. Weby Templates proves that whitespace is actually an asset. A number of Python templaters (like yours), lisp templates, and other language templates have a system like yours, nested lists. But they quickly become unworkable, lack the ability to do if statements (simple branching), and not having to put end tags ("))") is half the reason you use Python! Python's whitespace proves to make a much better language for templates than any other. My "success" may look enviable, but it's luck. Except not quite luck. When I visited California, I wrote a script to email over 200 companies. Only a few replied. Is that luck, or did I make that?

tgriesser 16y ago

Step 3: Test your assumptions and Step 6: Do your research Probably the most important steps in the process, and I'm glad they were addressed here...identifying a potential market, testing the viability of the potential market and coming up with a plan... a plan that doesn't involve set up social network involving "X", tell people about it/advertise, ?? , profit! I'll admit when I read the title I though it was going to be an article discussing why not to drop out of college and start a venture-backed Social Network, but I'm glad that it was much more realistic and insightful than that.

jasonlbaptiste 16y ago

It's funny Joe and I BOTH stopped out of college independently at the same time. I saw him in Palo Alto and asked him what he was doing here. He said: Oh, I dropped out of college, joined a startup early on. I said: Oh, me too. We originally met in Miami. Joe is probably a textbook play on how to go through this. When I saw him again, it was on spring break where he had gone back to college after failing. It was in Miami. He asked me: What are you doing here? I said: I failed, came back to college. He had done the same.

frisco 16y ago

Dropping out of college is often seen as a marker of huge success and drive. In reality, it's just one path you can pick when answering the question, "given this dream, how can I maximize my chances of realizing it?" This is a little more subtle than it sounds. I left school after my sophomore year and went on to raise a $1 million Series A from a blue-chip VC. A year and a half later, I ended up back at University not in defeat, but in realization that for my specific ambition there was more I could get out of the university. I wouldn't call myself a student -- I'll always be a student in that I'll be learning my whole life -- but I have as specific a reason for being at the institution as I did for dropping out. Traditional "students" are those who are in school without a better reason for why they're there. There are a lot of potential businesses where it makes sense to be affiliated with a university right now. There are also a lot where the right move is to stop out and move immediately to SV. You could drop out and still start a biotech company -- but you'll most likely end up net-negative, spending 6 years quietly hacking away on very limited resources on the fringes before breaking through. You could start a spaceflight company without a degree, but you're taking the hardest possible route to get there. If you're smart enough to do that, you're smart enough to figure out how to do the minimum possible work to get by in your classes, and spend the rest of your time talking the university into giving you access to resources (and credibility) you'd never have otherwise. It's not about the degree: it's about what you can get out of the university while disguised as a student. It's definitely easier now than ever before for great hackers to do well without a degree. And you can certainly get rich down a lot of those paths. But the really cool companies -- space travel, clean energy, biotech, and so on -- can use the university for a lot for a few years in order to advance the same goals before breaking off on your own. The two more years I have access to subjects with chips implanted in their brains and tens of millions of dollars of cutting-edge equipment is a springboard for any subsequent activities, however inane classes might be. The opportunities are there if you go and take them.

ljlolel 16y ago
Great point, it's also a lot easier to do a medical startup if you have an MD
- 16y ago