3 ms·

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 th

by 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
- frisco 16y ago
  Yeah, like that -- in some extreme cases, it's impossible without the credential. I bet in most of those cases you could slightly redefine your problem to get around it, though. Surgical devices, for example: you could probably develop the technology without a credential and once it demonstrably works, collaborate with surgeons to continue as a business. It's probably much easier if you've spent time as a doctor yourself, and you're much more likely to get the time of day if you borrow on the credibility of an institution you're affiliated with, but not impossible. Just not the path of least resistance.
joelburget 16y ago
"It's not about the degree: it's about what you can get out of the university while disguised as a student." Could you elaborate?
- frisco 16y ago
  Your university has more resources than you need to do whatever you want to. Identify these and talk your way in. Want to develop something that must be microfabricated? Figure out who runs the cleanroom and contact them. Want to do synthetic biology? Work for a relevant professor and earn your way up to proposing your own projects. Use a teaching lab while there's no class. Figure out who runs the university surplus and grab old oscilloscopes and high-CO2 incubators when they're thrown away. Get the department behind you in order to open doors -- figure out where you want to spend your summers and get there, beating out the unknowns not coming from a research institution. You can do all this while spending the time on your classes required to get by as an average student. When you graduate you might not be able to get a job at McKinsey or Google (well, that's not even true: they like to hear what you spent your four years doing other than partying), but then again, your diploma alone doesn't automagically make you successful in having changed the world regardless of how good your GPA is. Dropping out makes sense when you read the above and go, "wait, I don't need anything like that": largely internet and software.

by frisco 16y ago

ljlolel 16y ago

Great point, it's also a lot easier to do a medical startup if you have an MD

frisco 16y ago
Yeah, like that -- in some extreme cases, it's impossible without the credential. I bet in most of those cases you could slightly redefine your problem to get around it, though. Surgical devices, for example: you could probably develop the technology without a credential and once it demonstrably works, collaborate with surgeons to continue as a business. It's probably much easier if you've spent time as a doctor yourself, and you're much more likely to get the time of day if you borrow on the credibility of an institution you're affiliated with, but not impossible. Just not the path of least resistance.

joelburget 16y ago

"It's not about the degree: it's about what you can get out of the university while disguised as a student." Could you elaborate?

frisco 16y ago
Your university has more resources than you need to do whatever you want to. Identify these and talk your way in. Want to develop something that must be microfabricated? Figure out who runs the cleanroom and contact them. Want to do synthetic biology? Work for a relevant professor and earn your way up to proposing your own projects. Use a teaching lab while there's no class. Figure out who runs the university surplus and grab old oscilloscopes and high-CO2 incubators when they're thrown away. Get the department behind you in order to open doors -- figure out where you want to spend your summers and get there, beating out the unknowns not coming from a research institution. You can do all this while spending the time on your classes required to get by as an average student. When you graduate you might not be able to get a job at McKinsey or Google (well, that's not even true: they like to hear what you spent your four years doing other than partying), but then again, your diploma alone doesn't automagically make you successful in having changed the world regardless of how good your GPA is. Dropping out makes sense when you read the above and go, "wait, I don't need anything like that": largely internet and software.