9 ms·

Peter Thiel: $100k grant to 20 founders who drop out of school

41 points by iamelgringo 16y ago

jscore 16y ago
So basically $100k for some teens to build a bunch of RoR CRUD sites. And ""Our world needs more breakthrough technologies,” said Thiel. "From Facebook to SpaceX to Halcyon Molecular, some of the world's most transformational technologies were created by people who stopped out of school because they had ideas that couldn't wait until graduation. " Don't know about the other companies beside Facebook, but it seems that Facebook doesn't belong on that list of "breakthrough technologies"
- ramanujan 16y ago
  Facebook doesn't have the same optics as Google (a friend list/profile seems much easier than search), but things like Haystack are pretty impressive.
- pcwalton 16y ago
  Facebook has some very interesting open source projects: http://github.com/facebook http://github.com/facebook Particularly interesting to me is their static analysis tool for PHP written in OCaml.
zbanks 16y ago
That just seems like a bad idea. Aren't successful dropouts an edge-case?
- gdl 16y ago
  Successful founders are already edge cases, and these grants won't be handed out to the stereotypical "dropped out to play World of Warcraft" population. If someone is capable and driven enough to attract these sort of awards, I wouldn't expect their (dis)taste for formal education to have much effect on their odds of success. I think the real point here is that they are making bets on the young and idealistic kids that haven't been tarnished by years of drudgery, beauracracy, and being told that they can't do things. So they do whatever wild ideas interest them, and if any one of those kids happened to be right about something that more 'educated' people would consider idiotic, it's a massive win. Kind of like the old DARPA approach or Google's 20% time. In that respect going after dropouts would make a lot of sense, since those are going to be the types that care less about following the establishment and will be more likely to execute genuinely novel ideas.
  - purpledove 16y ago
    I'm 30, and I've worked at various corporations, both small and large, for 5 years. I've never once been told "I can't do things". Not once. Rather the opposite - I've worked with people who went on to found start-ups, and I've learned a great deal from my colleagues. The larger question is: should a person in a position of power be encouraging young people to drop out of school? It strikes me as irresponsible.
sscheper 16y ago
Really like this part: "Because education seeks to impart past knowledge, when you are trying to create a technological breakthrough, you have to create new knowledge, and there is no way to teach that. There was no course at University of Arizona on ‘‘how to cure aging.' Hopefully, this program will allow others to work on ambitious projects themselves, before they've taken on a crippling amount of student debt,”
- _delirium 16y ago
  I'm curious how he expects people to study "how to cure aging" without first becoming "knowledgeable in biology". Scientific breakthroughs are rarely made by people who aren't familiar with the existing state of the science they work in ("past knowledge"). There's definitely ways besides university courses that you can pick up that past knowledge (Einstein spent about 10 years studying physics in a sort of unofficial study group before he set off in his own radically new direction). But surely you have to pick up at least the equivalent of an undergrad science degree worth of past knowledge somehow. Thiel sounds sort of like a messianic-futurist religious figure if he really thinks otherwise. It's possible it'll work anyway, because presumably his grants don't actually require people who receive them to refrain from studying past knowledge. ;-) edit: It looks like that quote is actually from William Andregg, not Peter Thiel. Andregg doesn't seem to take it too literally, though, because his own company's job openings have pretty detailed past-knowledge requirements ("The chemist should have a deep theoretical as well as practical familiarity with essential analytical techniques such as NMR, LCMS, elemental analysis, UV-Vis, and others. An understanding of surface chemistry/analysis, and experience working with nucleic acids in monomer, oligo, long, single stranded, and double stranded forms would also be valuable.").
  - sliverstorm 16y ago
    It's romantic to imagine you can make breakthroughs without a solid grounding, so the image is promoted, and occasionally you get people like this with a handle on a lot of money who subscribe to the image.
  - Eliezer 16y ago
    > There's definitely ways besides university courses that you can pick up that past knowledge And the amount of damage done by universities is now so severe that I've switched from telling people "Don't try following in my footsteps" to telling them "Okay, maybe you should get the hell out of school."
bhiggins 16y ago
cargo culting
- todayiamme 16y ago
  Why? I'm toying with idea of applying, but why is it cargo culting? I would love it if someone allowed me the time and the intellectual freedom to make things instead of filling in tiny, dark circles on a piece of paper as proof that I'm worthy enough of a future as judged by some vague overlord. I want to learn and understand things thoroughly, but I will not learn anything to pass some exam. So, for someone like me, but smarter and more driven, this might actually be a net win. I fail to understand how this might be a cargo cult.
  - blaines 16y ago
    You should apply. Out of curiosity, what's your age? Have you dropped out?
    - todayiamme 16y ago
      18. I'm yet to enter college as I took this year off to figure stuff out and work on something... On the other hand, I doubt that I will apply. I just don't think that I'm good enough for such programs, and why add more noise?
      - coffeemug 16y ago
        It's your job to apply if you feel you could put the grant to good use. It's their job to pick the candidates that qualify based on their internal criteria. Don't try to do their job for them - they're much better at it than you. At best, you're depriving them, yourself, and the world from a potential breakthrough. At worst, you'll get a polite rejection letter.
        todayiamme 16y ago
        I guess, you're right. I will do it. Thank you.
fauigerzigerk 16y ago
I think it's a really stupid idea to link a grant to dropping out of school. If an idea is worth a $100000 grant, why does it stop being worth that money as soon as someone turns 21 or has a degree? I did drop out of school and I don't regret it. Many dropouts are very successful, many more are not. And to be honest, I would sue that guy if my kids dropped out of a computational biology program to go write some social picture upload site in PHP. The odds of some web startup working are non zero. But the odds of doing something more interesting later with that degree are also non zero. Computational biologists can create social picture upload sites as well, even when they're over 20 believe it or not.
- robryan 16y ago
  What if your kids didn't really enjoy computational biology but were passionate about building web products?
  - fauigerzigerk 16y ago
    Then they drop out of school, as I did, and don't need to be bribed to do so.
- todayiamme 16y ago
  >>>And to be honest, I would sue that guy if my kids dropped out of a computational biology program to go write some social picture upload site in PHP.<<< That's precisely the problem. Writing a social picture upload site in :gasp: PHP has become a well trodden path of sorts. A supposedly sure shot guarantee for something vague and undefined. I think that the problem with trends is that the minute something becomes a trend. It stops being something worthwhile 15 minutes before that. What's so shocking and wrong to walk off the well worn path? If they actually choose to use the $100,000 to work on something meaningful then the world might actually be a better place. Of course, you say they don't know the basics yet! That's the interesting thing. When you learn something in the heat of passion then you burn through the same material at a rate faster than you could have ever dream of. You learn through trial and error. Understand things at a deeper level to make stuff work. Why is that so wrong? Instead of some dumb exam your trial now lies in your creation. It either works. Or, it doesn't. Period. Wasn't this the entire point of having an education in the first place?
blaines 16y ago
20 is arbitrary, I don't understand why they would choose 20, especially since some of the people mentioned in the article have degrees or started after 20. Also, I'd like to know when they got funded, it seems many of the [other] companies that Thiel has invested in had founders over 20. Elon Musk dropped out at age 24 - started Zip2. Scott Banister started ListBot at age 20. Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook at age 20 dropped out at 20. William Andregg no info. Peter Thiel himself graduated (J.D. from Stanford in 1992) Add info or submit corrections.
hop 16y ago
This could have a great return on investment and probably quiet many of the naysayers when successful companies roll out of it. He will likely have a lot of candidates responding to this (I sure as hell would have in college) and be able to pick and choose the top of the crop. No one else is proactively going after this huge talent pool. And it could also be a lifesaver for would-be entrepreneurs that come out of college with $80k of debt and forced to work for someone else.
tdmackey 16y ago
It will be interesting to see what comes of these grants. I feel that the companies that were successful when their founders dropped out of school were driven by a founder who believed so intently and was committed to his idea that he was willing to drop out and pursue it despite the lack of incentive to do so. Instead of the alternative where a halfway decent guy who just isn't that happy at school goes off to pursue some startup because someone gave him a decent amount of money which i suspect will end in failure almost all the time.
Aegean 16y ago
It sounds populist. Less than 20 year old is not a sweet spot for investing in a founder. It's only good for media coverage.
rdl 16y ago
I'd rather see a new university which figures out a way to support founders starting startups AND grant them some kind of credential (in case it fails). Unfortunately much of the world is credential-based (especially Asian parents...), so being able to award a degree would make a difference in who could participate. Plus, if someone's startup fails, or he just realizes he'd rather do something other than startups, the credential makes getting a regular job much easier, preserving options. And of course immigration often depends on a degree, and using educational visas to get people into the USA in the first place would be a great hack. I think a 5-6 year program to get a SB in tech entrepreneurship, where 1-2 years are spent doing smaller projects and some regular classes (as applied to those projects), and then 4 years in a co-op program with your startup and students from the first 1-2 years, would be ideal. Maybe even grant a SB/SM in 6-8 years.
- psyklic 16y ago
  Olin College is one pioneering example. However, the main problem with the startup education + credential approach is that the barriers to such a school offering an accredited credential are overwhelming. However, imo traditional universities also support founders and grant them a credential. Students typically have a lot more free time than if they were employed (depending on their major). It's just that the student would also have to be incredibly resistant to peer pressure.
  - rdl 16y ago
    Olin College was amazing; I wish I'd been a year or two younger so I could have been part of the founding class. They did backpedal a bit on the "free for everyone", unfortunately.
vaksel 16y ago
I think this is stupid...most founders who dropped out of school..did so only after they got traction, an saw that the business was going somewhere. I'm not sure...but I don't think any of the big name founders(you know those that are always brought up as examples) ever dropped out of school before actually finishing their product...and seeing early traction
pragetruif 16y ago
The funny thing is, I was willing to drop out of school to work at one of those Thiel-network companies (I was interning for the summer, and my team wanted me to stay), but they told me they wouldn't hire me full-time without a degree. I ended up dropping out anyways, but to do something else.

41 points by iamelgringo 16y ago

So basically $100k for some teens to build a bunch of RoR CRUD sites. And ""Our world needs more breakthrough technologies,” said Thiel. "From Facebook to SpaceX to Halcyon Molecular, some of the world's most transformational technologies were created by people who stopped out of school because they had ideas that couldn't wait until graduation. " Don't know about the other companies beside Facebook, but it seems that Facebook doesn't belong on that list of "breakthrough technologies"

ramanujan 16y ago
Facebook doesn't have the same optics as Google (a friend list/profile seems much easier than search), but things like Haystack are pretty impressive.
pcwalton 16y ago
Facebook has some very interesting open source projects: http://github.com/facebook http://github.com/facebook Particularly interesting to me is their static analysis tool for PHP written in OCaml.

zbanks 16y ago

That just seems like a bad idea. Aren't successful dropouts an edge-case?

gdl 16y ago
Successful founders are already edge cases, and these grants won't be handed out to the stereotypical "dropped out to play World of Warcraft" population. If someone is capable and driven enough to attract these sort of awards, I wouldn't expect their (dis)taste for formal education to have much effect on their odds of success. I think the real point here is that they are making bets on the young and idealistic kids that haven't been tarnished by years of drudgery, beauracracy, and being told that they can't do things. So they do whatever wild ideas interest them, and if any one of those kids happened to be right about something that more 'educated' people would consider idiotic, it's a massive win. Kind of like the old DARPA approach or Google's 20% time. In that respect going after dropouts would make a lot of sense, since those are going to be the types that care less about following the establishment and will be more likely to execute genuinely novel ideas.
- purpledove 16y ago
  I'm 30, and I've worked at various corporations, both small and large, for 5 years. I've never once been told "I can't do things". Not once. Rather the opposite - I've worked with people who went on to found start-ups, and I've learned a great deal from my colleagues. The larger question is: should a person in a position of power be encouraging young people to drop out of school? It strikes me as irresponsible.

sscheper 16y ago

Really like this part: "Because education seeks to impart past knowledge, when you are trying to create a technological breakthrough, you have to create new knowledge, and there is no way to teach that. There was no course at University of Arizona on ‘‘how to cure aging.' Hopefully, this program will allow others to work on ambitious projects themselves, before they've taken on a crippling amount of student debt,”

_delirium 16y ago
I'm curious how he expects people to study "how to cure aging" without first becoming "knowledgeable in biology". Scientific breakthroughs are rarely made by people who aren't familiar with the existing state of the science they work in ("past knowledge"). There's definitely ways besides university courses that you can pick up that past knowledge (Einstein spent about 10 years studying physics in a sort of unofficial study group before he set off in his own radically new direction). But surely you have to pick up at least the equivalent of an undergrad science degree worth of past knowledge somehow. Thiel sounds sort of like a messianic-futurist religious figure if he really thinks otherwise. It's possible it'll work anyway, because presumably his grants don't actually require people who receive them to refrain from studying past knowledge. ;-) edit: It looks like that quote is actually from William Andregg, not Peter Thiel. Andregg doesn't seem to take it too literally, though, because his own company's job openings have pretty detailed past-knowledge requirements ("The chemist should have a deep theoretical as well as practical familiarity with essential analytical techniques such as NMR, LCMS, elemental analysis, UV-Vis, and others. An understanding of surface chemistry/analysis, and experience working with nucleic acids in monomer, oligo, long, single stranded, and double stranded forms would also be valuable.").
- sliverstorm 16y ago
  It's romantic to imagine you can make breakthroughs without a solid grounding, so the image is promoted, and occasionally you get people like this with a handle on a lot of money who subscribe to the image.
- Eliezer 16y ago
  > There's definitely ways besides university courses that you can pick up that past knowledge And the amount of damage done by universities is now so severe that I've switched from telling people "Don't try following in my footsteps" to telling them "Okay, maybe you should get the hell out of school."

bhiggins 16y ago

cargo culting

todayiamme 16y ago
Why? I'm toying with idea of applying, but why is it cargo culting? I would love it if someone allowed me the time and the intellectual freedom to make things instead of filling in tiny, dark circles on a piece of paper as proof that I'm worthy enough of a future as judged by some vague overlord. I want to learn and understand things thoroughly, but I will not learn anything to pass some exam. So, for someone like me, but smarter and more driven, this might actually be a net win. I fail to understand how this might be a cargo cult.
- blaines 16y ago
  You should apply. Out of curiosity, what's your age? Have you dropped out?
  - todayiamme 16y ago
    18. I'm yet to enter college as I took this year off to figure stuff out and work on something... On the other hand, I doubt that I will apply. I just don't think that I'm good enough for such programs, and why add more noise?
    - coffeemug 16y ago
      It's your job to apply if you feel you could put the grant to good use. It's their job to pick the candidates that qualify based on their internal criteria. Don't try to do their job for them - they're much better at it than you. At best, you're depriving them, yourself, and the world from a potential breakthrough. At worst, you'll get a polite rejection letter.
      - todayiamme 16y ago
        I guess, you're right. I will do it. Thank you.

fauigerzigerk 16y ago

I think it's a really stupid idea to link a grant to dropping out of school. If an idea is worth a $100000 grant, why does it stop being worth that money as soon as someone turns 21 or has a degree? I did drop out of school and I don't regret it. Many dropouts are very successful, many more are not. And to be honest, I would sue that guy if my kids dropped out of a computational biology program to go write some social picture upload site in PHP. The odds of some web startup working are non zero. But the odds of doing something more interesting later with that degree are also non zero. Computational biologists can create social picture upload sites as well, even when they're over 20 believe it or not.

robryan 16y ago
What if your kids didn't really enjoy computational biology but were passionate about building web products?
- fauigerzigerk 16y ago
  Then they drop out of school, as I did, and don't need to be bribed to do so.
todayiamme 16y ago
>>>And to be honest, I would sue that guy if my kids dropped out of a computational biology program to go write some social picture upload site in PHP.<<< That's precisely the problem. Writing a social picture upload site in :gasp: PHP has become a well trodden path of sorts. A supposedly sure shot guarantee for something vague and undefined. I think that the problem with trends is that the minute something becomes a trend. It stops being something worthwhile 15 minutes before that. What's so shocking and wrong to walk off the well worn path? If they actually choose to use the $100,000 to work on something meaningful then the world might actually be a better place. Of course, you say they don't know the basics yet! That's the interesting thing. When you learn something in the heat of passion then you burn through the same material at a rate faster than you could have ever dream of. You learn through trial and error. Understand things at a deeper level to make stuff work. Why is that so wrong? Instead of some dumb exam your trial now lies in your creation. It either works. Or, it doesn't. Period. Wasn't this the entire point of having an education in the first place?

blaines 16y ago

20 is arbitrary, I don't understand why they would choose 20, especially since some of the people mentioned in the article have degrees or started after 20. Also, I'd like to know when they got funded, it seems many of the [other] companies that Thiel has invested in had founders over 20. Elon Musk dropped out at age 24 - started Zip2. Scott Banister started ListBot at age 20. Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook at age 20 dropped out at 20. William Andregg no info. Peter Thiel himself graduated (J.D. from Stanford in 1992) Add info or submit corrections.

hop 16y ago

This could have a great return on investment and probably quiet many of the naysayers when successful companies roll out of it. He will likely have a lot of candidates responding to this (I sure as hell would have in college) and be able to pick and choose the top of the crop. No one else is proactively going after this huge talent pool. And it could also be a lifesaver for would-be entrepreneurs that come out of college with $80k of debt and forced to work for someone else.

tdmackey 16y ago

It will be interesting to see what comes of these grants. I feel that the companies that were successful when their founders dropped out of school were driven by a founder who believed so intently and was committed to his idea that he was willing to drop out and pursue it despite the lack of incentive to do so. Instead of the alternative where a halfway decent guy who just isn't that happy at school goes off to pursue some startup because someone gave him a decent amount of money which i suspect will end in failure almost all the time.

Aegean 16y ago

It sounds populist. Less than 20 year old is not a sweet spot for investing in a founder. It's only good for media coverage.

rdl 16y ago

I'd rather see a new university which figures out a way to support founders starting startups AND grant them some kind of credential (in case it fails). Unfortunately much of the world is credential-based (especially Asian parents...), so being able to award a degree would make a difference in who could participate. Plus, if someone's startup fails, or he just realizes he'd rather do something other than startups, the credential makes getting a regular job much easier, preserving options. And of course immigration often depends on a degree, and using educational visas to get people into the USA in the first place would be a great hack. I think a 5-6 year program to get a SB in tech entrepreneurship, where 1-2 years are spent doing smaller projects and some regular classes (as applied to those projects), and then 4 years in a co-op program with your startup and students from the first 1-2 years, would be ideal. Maybe even grant a SB/SM in 6-8 years.

psyklic 16y ago
Olin College is one pioneering example. However, the main problem with the startup education + credential approach is that the barriers to such a school offering an accredited credential are overwhelming. However, imo traditional universities also support founders and grant them a credential. Students typically have a lot more free time than if they were employed (depending on their major). It's just that the student would also have to be incredibly resistant to peer pressure.
- rdl 16y ago
  Olin College was amazing; I wish I'd been a year or two younger so I could have been part of the founding class. They did backpedal a bit on the "free for everyone", unfortunately.

vaksel 16y ago

I think this is stupid...most founders who dropped out of school..did so only after they got traction, an saw that the business was going somewhere. I'm not sure...but I don't think any of the big name founders(you know those that are always brought up as examples) ever dropped out of school before actually finishing their product...and seeing early traction

pragetruif 16y ago

The funny thing is, I was willing to drop out of school to work at one of those Thiel-network companies (I was interning for the summer, and my team wanted me to stay), but they told me they wouldn't hire me full-time without a degree. I ended up dropping out anyways, but to do something else.