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Peter Thiel Gives Whiz Kids $100K To Quit College, Start Businesses

106 points by davewiner 15y ago

daimyoyo 15y ago
This feels ageist to me. I'm 30 and I am getting the feeling that even though I am more than willing to work 100+ hours a week for my idea, my age condemns me. I'm washed up before I even had the chance to get started. It's important to remember that not everyone starts their business before they can drink legally.
- rick888 15y ago
  You don't need funding to get your idea off the ground. If you are 30, you probably have a better credit score than these guys and can more easily get a traditional loan.
  - daimyoyo 15y ago
    Although I'd love to fund my idea using my credit, the fact is that the sins I'd committed in college follow me today. I literally can't finance a toaster. Is that a black mark on my profile? Perhaps. But I don't think I should live in a permanent state of poverty simply because I blew off a few cards years ago.
    - arn 15y ago
      so then it's not your age that's condemns you, but your credit score.
    - krschultz 15y ago
      Excuse me from being confrontational, I'm certainly not judging you but I think you have far more control over your situation than you think. Have you paid back your debts and used credit responsibily since then? I'd be really surprised if you had made amends and your credit report was still hosed. Now if you are saying you don't think your credit report should reflect unpaid debts even though they were 'years ago', that is fundamentally unfair to those that use credit responsibly. Everyone else pays more interest to make up for those that default. There is really no argument to be made that you shouldn't have to be squared up on your debts to get more loans. And no matter how many hours you claim to want to work, if you think not being able to get credit destines you to poverty you don't understand credit. Credit doesn't make you any richer, it just time shifts future income to a lump sum in the present. It is the inverse of savings. In fact it makes you poorer unless you do something with the money that earns a greater return than the cost of the loan. So are you saying you are going to take out a loan with a 100% chance you need to repay it and start a business with a 50/50 or worse chance of working out? And if it fails you will default on the loan? Because if you are complaining about poverty now, wait until you have a loan for a business that failed miserably, then you will be really screwed. So funding a business on credit a fundamentally risky thing and if you already have one black mark on your credit report it is probably not a good avenue for you anyway. And don't say that not having credit means you can't start your business. The above paragraph explains why I'm not starting my business on credit. I'm funding it by saving. I work 40-70 hours a week (certainly not 100, I physically couldn't do that). I do 40-50 at my salaried job, and about 1-20 on starting by business outside of work depending on if I work all weekend or not. Does it suck not having free time? Absolutely. But at the end of the day my business is funded from my own cashflow, with no debt or interest to anyone. And no matter how bad your credit history is, you can always save and bootstrap like that. Blaming being unable to start a business on people not willing to lend you their money is just an excuse. At the end of the day your credit score, whether or not you start a business, this is all under your own control. (And if HN doesn't mind a plug, I personally learned a lot from Ric Edelman, he has a free podcast and a personal finance 101 book called the Truth about Money that I learned quite a bit from, but the fundamental thing he preaches is simple math. Make more money than you spend)
- hugh3 15y ago
  So what's stopping you? Do you need a hundred thousand before you can proceed any further? At the age of 30 you'll have a much easier time with the traditional angel funding slash venture capitalist route than a nineteen-year-old kid would.
- szany 15y ago
  It's ageist only because it's targeting college students before they accumulate tons of student loan debt.
- ebiester 15y ago
  If you're willing to work 100+ hours for your idea, work 40 for someone else and 40 on your own, and save money until you can take a few months off. Sell everything you have and move to somewhere with good internet and low expenses. The outskirts of a university town are a good place to start. It is possible to live on less than $1000 a month in much of the country. This will extend your runway. Wait, is that "not feasible?" Why not?
  - yummyfajitas 15y ago
    It's absolutely feasible. I'm 29, and I worked at a regular job for a bit over a year. I quit earlier this month and last week I moved to Pune (very low cost of living) which is where my partners and I are building our startup. You can make excuses or you can make it happen. I chose to make it happen.
- rowaway1 15y ago
  victim
neebz 15y ago
I am seriously lost in terms of innovation. You may give kids money and they'll open up their Lemonade bars but how can you expect innovation without any research? And research without any education? I can't fathom any kid dropping out and then inventing a satellite? or solve any medical problem? And if they don't innovate then how can they even think of ways of bringing it to the consumers (which is the difficult next step) ?
- Tichy 15y ago
  All I know is that I certainly did not invent any satellites or solved any medical problems while at university. Instead I tried to collect points in an artificial game system.
  - hugh3 15y ago
    Really? That's unfortunate. I spent my first three years at university learning complicated sciencey shit until knew enough to be set free on real research problems; then I spent the rest of my time doing research.
  - larsberg 15y ago
    You definitely missed an opportunity. My first year, I volunteered without pay in a research lab just to see what was going on, and then by the second through fourth years I was contributing to actual research. Of course, it's not entirely clear that I was more help than hindrance to the group until midway through my third year, but I certainly learned a lot and got a lot of mentoring you can't get via youtube and e-books :-)
    - Tichy 15y ago
      Working in a research lab would have been my dream (and it's all for free while you are a student, isn't it). I just didn't have a clue as to how to get there. I don't blame the system, as I wrote in another post. Although it wouldn't have hurt to get some directions.
  - veyron 15y ago
guynamedloren 15y ago
The statement about Thiel requiring these kids to 'stop out of college' is slightly disingenuous when many received college degrees before they could legally drive a car. Nevertheless, as a recent college graduate I think this is a fantastic idea, and I'm excited to see how everything turns out.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
kiteaton 15y ago
Tricky, tricky. Because sometimes you need the training that a degree (or even advanced degree) gives you to come up with certain high tech notions...
- skidooer 15y ago
  Oftentimes preconceived notions about tech will cloud your vision on implementation. If you are aware of a certain challenge, you will, more often than not, change your design to simplify the challenge. Someone without the experience will not be bound by those limitations and can always figure out how to do it later. When we look to high profile businessmen, more often then not they do not have the education behind them. Nothing wrong with getting some training, but I'm not sure it is beneficial when it comes to business. There is no evidence that supports it.
  - hugh3 15y ago
    There are a few successful businessmen with no or very limited higher education... but they're quite few. You'll find more CEOs with PhDs than with high school diplomas.
    - skidooer 15y ago
      CEOs are often hired into the position, so there may be some educational bias. What would be interesting by this discussion is how many of those CEOs were founders of the company?
    - rowaway1 15y ago
      CEO != entrepreneur many entrepreneurs lack degrees.
deleted 15y ago
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thesheenamedina 15y ago
I'm with Umair haque on this one when he says our educational institutions need serious reform, first. So how does paying super smart kids to create the same old paradigm change anything?
_delirium 15y ago
I'd be somewhat more interested in a program like this if it were being run by someone I believed actually wanted in good faith to improve education/business, rather than having ulterior political motives. Thiel is quite open that his main motivation is that he thinks universities promote politics he dislikes, so he'd like to destroy them for that reason. He also claims that in doing so he'd improve education, but it seems like a secondary motivation. My guess is that he would be willing to accept education even getting slightly worse as a tradeoff, if it got rid of the negative influence (in his view) of universities for libertarian politics. (See Woz and Salman Khan for examples of education reformers who seem to have education reform as their actual #1 goal.) edit: Of course, as full disclosure I'm in academia, so perhaps have my own ulterior motives. =] But honestly I think Salman Khan's approach is a bigger threat to the higher-education status quo than Thiel's is, mainly because it's much more scalable. So from a pure self-interest point of view I ought to dislike that one more!
- szany 15y ago
  Source? I hope you're not implying that the point of the Fellowship is to destroy academia.
  - krasmark 15y ago
    I'm not sure this is exactly a source, but this article by Thiel tends to imply that he thinks the system is pretty broken : http://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/the-education-of-a-libertarian/ http://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/the-educa.... And then Thiel has talked about the education bubble (links on HN previously, too) : http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2431431 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2431431. Thiel is definitely pro "different" from the current system. I think the idea of promoting more entrepreneurial activities earlier is great, but it seems very anti-university/higher ed in his vision rather than as an alternative path.
    - szany 15y ago
      See my comment here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2584159 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2584159
dinkumthinkum 15y ago
Doesn't seem like that much money to quit college over. You could just go get a job I guess and make that in a couple years or less, if these are really the "whiz kids." Also, I'm sure these kids are very smart but some of those ideas look extremely lofty. Are these kids really at that level in their education and is 100K really even close to enough money to fund a 1-man research lab? I'm just a bit skeptical.
- szany 15y ago
  The 100K is meant for living expenses. Getting outside funding is encouraged (just not a job). A lot of these kids are frighteningly smart, and yeah some of the ideas are very lofty (asteroid mining!) and probably will change in time, but pivoting is also encouraged. Also bear in mind that Thiel is offering access to an astounding network of mentors, which for the lofty projects is even more valuable than the money.
- hugh3 15y ago
  It'll be interesting to see what does happen. Some of these kids do seem rather smart but incredibly naive (hey, reminds me of me at the age of 19) -- what does happen when Asteroid Mining Kid runs up against cold hard reality? Let me just clag in his whole description: John Burnham believes that the search for new resources has driven exploration, expansion, and innovation—from the discovery of the Americas to the California Gold Rush. Likewise, he believes the key to colonizing space is to make it possible to extract valuable minerals from asteroids, comets, and other planetary bodies. John plans on using his fellowship to develop space industry technologies to solve the problem of extraterrestrial resource extraction. Really, what can you do to advance space industry technologies under these circumstances? You're a teenager. You have a hundred thousand dollars (aka what Elon Musk spends every four seconds). You know far less about space technology than 99% of the people who work in the industry. And you're very smart, but a lot of people in the rocket industry are very smart. What do you do? Go intern for Elon Musk?
  - yid 15y ago
    Actually in that position, interning for Elon Musk sounds like a great idea, followed by using that $100k to fund living expenses in college and grad school, with the bonus of having a streamlined academic plan and semi-guaranteed dream job when you graduate.
dmazin 15y ago
These kids' parents must hate Thiel. What does this guy know about what's good for their futures?
- jeffool 15y ago
  To read the article, a bunch of these kids seemed to have already decided to leave school. Though I'm sure you're absolutely right about some.
- rowaway1 15y ago
  i'm sure their parents are very disappointed that their children won an elite $100k grant before the age of 20. it's gonna be an ugly mark they'll never scrub off their resume, or google searches of their name. worse, should they ever want to go back to school, what respectable school would accept someone who received a thiel prize? should have gone to school, taken on debt, and gone on to some internships after graduation, these kids.
- clafoutis 15y ago
  view from this parent: we’re grateful for this opportunity. our son definitely lacks the “imitation gene” so k-12 public school (and any other options within our financial means and family scheduling limits) did not adequately encourage/support his talents and ability. Furthermore,the college admission process is so formulaic that it failed to spot his potential. This fellowship is elitist in number, but not in spirit. They judged him on the merit of his idea and the depth of his abilities, not on his GPA. It was a competition that was open to all. And though it is not scalable, it offers up the notion that alternative paths to over-priced academia is possible. It is a small, but meaningful attempt to break the university monopoly on the futures of our brightest, most innovative students.
dmazin 15y ago
These kids' parents must hate Thiel. What does this guy know about what's good for their futures?
edanm 15y ago
While I somewhat agree with the whole "degrees aren't always a good idea" meme, this feels like something of a "stunt" by Thiel. Taking people who are so incredibly smart and giving them money is an interesting concept, but it sure won't prove much about whether Universities are a good idea for us "ordinary" people.
- inthewoods 15y ago
  Yes, I agree - smart people like this are likely to succeed in any context. I suppose you could make the argument that their success will likely be heightened by the involvement in the program because of the connections they'll make - but the program doesn't really prove or disprove the idea that the system works or doesn't work. In my opinion, he'd be better off taking a group of kids that are perhaps borderline college material and training them.
- rowaway1 15y ago
  he's not make a point about ordinary people. he's making a point about school not working for everyone. he's taking the smart, motivated people who don't need school and giving them a head start on changing the world. these smart motivated people won't be clogging up admissions and class sizes, which will make college better and more accessible for people without the smarts, will, or desire to be entrepreneurs.
szany 15y ago
There seems to be a common misconception about the purpose of the Thiel Fellowship. Two things the Fellowship is not claiming to do: 1) Testing the hypothesis that university is bad 2) Testing the hypothesis that university is not worth the cost for the vast majority of people What the Fellowship might plausibly be doing: 1) Testing the hypothesis that university is not worth the cost for people like the Thiel fellows The actual motivation of the Fellowship, which is all over the press and has been related to me by Thiel Foundation workers, is that students with great potential accumulate tons of student loan debt in college and subsequently, instead of taking on projects that might actually help the world, are financially pressured into working at hedge funds and the like. The Fellowship is offered to these students as a two year break to attempt these projects supported by 100K for living expenses and, crucially, extensive mentorship. Again, the point is not to discredit universities, but to keep talented kids away from hedge funds (ironic coming from Thiel but there you have it). Edit: Also note that a failure of the Thiel Fellowship project does not disprove the education bubble in general, since it only applies to a very small group of people.
- hugh3 15y ago
  The actual motivation of the Fellowship, which is all over the press and has been related to me by Thiel Foundation workers, is that students with great potential accumulate tons of student loan debt in college and subsequently, instead of taking on projects that might actually help the world, are financially pressured into working at hedge funds and the like Surely kids as brilliant as these ones sound are getting full scholarships to college? If you really want to test the hypothesis: that university is not worth the cost for people like the Thiel fellows then I reckon you'd need two groups. One drops out of university and gets $100,000 and extensive mentoring. The other group stays in university and still gets $100,000 and extensive mentoring.
  - szany 15y ago
    I reckon you'd need two groups. I agree. It's not really a valid experiment, which is why I said "might plausibly be" instead of "is", just to acknowledge some connection with the education bubble debate. Though two things to keep in mind for a valid experiment are that from the 100K for the second group would have to be subtracted the costs of university over two years (for me [mostly my parents actually] that's more than 100K), and that at good universities at least extensive mentoring is readily accessible. So it's a reasonable approximation at least.
thedaveoflife 15y ago
Great minds will go on to do great things no matter if they go to college or not, but you should start a business because you are passionate about a product or service, not because a billionaire entrepreneur is bribing you to do so. This program could very well be successful, but I would argue the participants would have gone on to do great things regardless of thiel’s invovlement.
- rowaway1 15y ago
  but now they'll start doing great things earlier, and won't be hampered by debt after graduation, which also postpones doing great things.
cfinke 15y ago
> And yet another scored 5580 on the SATs (on a total of 5 tests, but still). So he averaged 1116 on the SATs? Even before the switch from a 1600-point test to a 2400-point test, there's nothing impressive about that except that he bothered to take the SATs five times. > Faheem Zaman has shot the moon on nearly every SAT test he’s ever taken: 5580 points across 5 tests. Clearly I'm missing something...
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- Birejji 15y ago
  SAT Subject Tests: 800 pts * 4 = 3200 Actual SAT Test: 2380 Total: 5580
jeffool 15y ago
For the record, I'd love someone to cook up a blog and keep tabs on these people and their endeavors. Hell, I've got half a mind to do it myself, if only I knew more about the startup world. Of course, that said, I'm curious if one of the things they'd suggest is "keep the media a good distance away until you're ready." I imagine so.
ryanisinallofus 15y ago
Would the reaction be as mixed here if it was PG doing it? Because YC in effect does the same thing right? I enjoyed my college experience and as the first ever college graduate in my family I wouldn't do anything different. Colleges provide something far more beneficial than the shot at FU money. That said, some people are better off dropping out or never going at all. I'm highly suspect of learning how to be an Entrepreneur in a college setting and guess something like YC is probably better for that. I think of YC as almost a trade school for start ups but it still doesn't replace college. I wonder how many successful start uppers go back to college later? Any of you? Like Shaq and Troy Polamalu? :) And I guess that school-like vibe is why YC is better than simply dropping out and taking 100k. Even if you fail, you still get the YC experience to help you with your next venture.
- veyron 15y ago
  PG's stance, at least nowadays, is not to take college students unless they are going to leave anyway. I dont think he would do it in the way that PT is trying to do it. My understanding, having been sucked into that trap myself, is that college debt forces people to go to hedge funds or other lucrative jobs that don't utilize the full potential of some of the brightest college students. If you can give students an opportunity to build something, unencumbered by the issue of money, the outcome would be far better for society.
  - hugh3 15y ago
    college debt forces people to go to hedge funds or other lucrative jobs that don't utilize the full potential of some of the brightest college students Well if that's the only concern, then Thiel could do what rich people have been doing for years -- donating scholarships to give smart kids a free ride to college.
    - veyron 15y ago
      The scholarship process is also broken. With many of the "merit-based" scholarships, there is a bias favoring those coming from low income families (otherwise why would they ask for parents' income information?)
known 15y ago
Unless there is a cap on market capitalization of Big Companies viz Goolge, Apple etc why should investors risk their investments in a startup?
languagehacker 15y ago
None of these really look like compelling business ideas to me. It seems as thought at best, the idea Thiel has is that if some angel out there can fund bright young people, they can develop business understanding and enrich their skills in areas they're interested in to a point where someday they can do great things. But I just don't see those great things being the ventures that they're currently incubating. Sure, it would be excellent if a billionaire swooped down from the sky and paid me a fortune to learn by doing rather than going to school. But more often than not these days, young people go to school because student loans are easy to acquire. Furthermore, the jobs they're likely to start off with straight out of high school pay about as much as the cost of living portion of student loans taken over the course of a full year. I agree the university system is pretty flawed right now. It doesn't do a good job preparing young people for careers -- particularly in the liberal arts. But I don't think that plying smart kids with money is an effective way to provide a well-rounded foundation for any career path. That pretty much says that so long as you impress someone enough for them to become your patron, you're set for life and there's no expectation that you succeed. And that's the current problem with the university system, too -- all kids pandering to professors, and no actual expectations that what you learn be used in whatever constitutes your career after college. We shouldn't be setting up young people to think that their self worth is derived from impressing people in their minuscule niche, but rather from the satisfaction of their personal accomplishments (as well as the paycheck at the end of the day).
freshfunk 15y ago
Very interesting experiment and I'm curious to see what comes out of it but I motivation for going to college isn't all about making money (which is what starting a business is all about). Aside from education, College/University changes people in immeasurable ways. Usually it's where you meet friends you have for life, find the person you want to marry, discover your political and philosophical self, explore vastly different parts of your intellect from incredibly smart/talented people (anything from quantum physics to 18th century english literature), and, most importantly, mature. These are things that you can't put a price on but will stay with you the rest of your life. Of course, one doesn't necessarily need college to mature but it's a great environment to do it in. I can't imagine trying to do that in a corporate environment.
- ignifero 15y ago
  Entrepreneurs tend to underestimate how many brilliant low-payed people work in universities, and how rewarding it is to work with such people. Plus the job of a lucky researcher is just as a appealing as an entrepreneur. As long as you don't get trapped in their respective bubbles, both worlds are exciting. Statistically though, i bet i could find more happy researchers than happy entrepreneurs.
HaloZero 15y ago
Anyone notice that a few of these kids already went and graduated from some formal education? Hell one of them is dropping out of a Ph.D program.
zyfo 15y ago
He was a 19-year-old 4th-year neuroscience Ph.D. candidate at Stanford University (Andrew Hsu) Does that mean he'd get his PhD as a 19 or 20 year old? That sounds like a record to me. That's crazy, in a good way.
- jbellis 15y ago
  Definitely not a record. I remember a professor at Princeton who got his first PhD at 17, but he was bored, so he got his second at 19. One was in physics, the other in mathematics, but I don't remember the order.
shareme 15y ago
Some facts you may not be aware of: USA public university education costs have risen to 300% to 400% over a 20 year period with most of that costs made up of these trends: -US states cutting education funding -us public colleges increasing enrollment of non state citizens both US and World to replace funding -US fed government increasing loan limits that students can borrow under -US public universities increasing the use of grad students as the major instructor both first and second year students see teaching classes. -US public universities increasing funding of non-university expenditures such as sports which the NHL, NFL, NBA, etc use a free farm team without paying for it despite not a single program breaking even. No matter what Petter Thiel believes are it is somewhat factual that US college education is somewhat broken as a public institute for the public good is somewhat broken. And Thiel is basing his system on certain past models that have worked before. If you go back to the industrial age we did in the USA have certain industrialists that would pick out young people to train in business. Thiel is just re-inventing for the modern era.
- wallflower 15y ago
  Numbers from NYMag article: "In the past 30 years, private-college tuition and fees have increased, in constant 2010 dollars, from $9,500 a year to more than $27,000. Public-college tuition has increased from $2,100 to $7,600. Fifteen years ago, the average student debt at graduation was around $12,700; in 2009, it was $24,000. Over the past quarter-century, the total cost of higher education has grown by 440 percent." "The cost of college in the past 30 years has gone up tenfold. Health care has only gone up sixfold, and inflation has only gone up threefold. Not only is it a scam, but the college presidents know it. That’s why they keep raising tuition." -James Altucher http://nymag.com/news/features/college-education-2011-5/ http://nymag.com/news/features/college-education-2011-5/
ignifero 15y ago
It's hard to believe some of the projects in biotechnology and energy will only require $100K to be built. These things cost more than a laptop and pizza. These kids are certainly enthusiastic, but why not spend some more time learning about things? Why not take the $100K for a sabbatical, and then proceed to build businesses? Science can be pretty exciting, just as entrepreneurship is, but they are different things. Success is a relative term, and i don't have the data, but it seems that the role of luck is bigger in entrepreneurship than it is in science. It will be interesting to see how many of them go on with the program, how many go back to school and how many succeed (although the sample is small).
andrewcross 15y ago
Whether Thiel is doing this for ulterior motives or not, do any of you think that the kids that were chosen really need 4 years of college education to be incredible? Look at what they have done so far! If anything Thiel is doing them a favor by letting them flourish with all the resources they need! At college they'd be wasting their time completing assignments designed for the lowest common denominator in class. While I'm far from a genius, the difficulty level of most assignments/projects is very low, in engineering at least. Kudos for Thiel to stepping out of the box and best of luck to these kids. Work like crazy and change the world!
felipe 15y ago
I wonder if he would have accomplished everything he did throughout his career without that Stanford degree (and the connections that come with it)?
andrewguenther 15y ago
So if the one kid scored a total of 5580 across 5 SATs, that means he scored an average of 1116 on each test. Which, assuming this is before the writing section (I hope), is an abysmal score. Am I missing something? Or is it just impressive that he sat through that awful test five times?

106 points by davewiner 15y ago

This feels ageist to me. I'm 30 and I am getting the feeling that even though I am more than willing to work 100+ hours a week for my idea, my age condemns me. I'm washed up before I even had the chance to get started. It's important to remember that not everyone starts their business before they can drink legally.

rick888 15y ago
You don't need funding to get your idea off the ground. If you are 30, you probably have a better credit score than these guys and can more easily get a traditional loan.
- daimyoyo 15y ago
  Although I'd love to fund my idea using my credit, the fact is that the sins I'd committed in college follow me today. I literally can't finance a toaster. Is that a black mark on my profile? Perhaps. But I don't think I should live in a permanent state of poverty simply because I blew off a few cards years ago.
  - arn 15y ago
    so then it's not your age that's condemns you, but your credit score.
  - krschultz 15y ago
    Excuse me from being confrontational, I'm certainly not judging you but I think you have far more control over your situation than you think. Have you paid back your debts and used credit responsibily since then? I'd be really surprised if you had made amends and your credit report was still hosed. Now if you are saying you don't think your credit report should reflect unpaid debts even though they were 'years ago', that is fundamentally unfair to those that use credit responsibly. Everyone else pays more interest to make up for those that default. There is really no argument to be made that you shouldn't have to be squared up on your debts to get more loans. And no matter how many hours you claim to want to work, if you think not being able to get credit destines you to poverty you don't understand credit. Credit doesn't make you any richer, it just time shifts future income to a lump sum in the present. It is the inverse of savings. In fact it makes you poorer unless you do something with the money that earns a greater return than the cost of the loan. So are you saying you are going to take out a loan with a 100% chance you need to repay it and start a business with a 50/50 or worse chance of working out? And if it fails you will default on the loan? Because if you are complaining about poverty now, wait until you have a loan for a business that failed miserably, then you will be really screwed. So funding a business on credit a fundamentally risky thing and if you already have one black mark on your credit report it is probably not a good avenue for you anyway. And don't say that not having credit means you can't start your business. The above paragraph explains why I'm not starting my business on credit. I'm funding it by saving. I work 40-70 hours a week (certainly not 100, I physically couldn't do that). I do 40-50 at my salaried job, and about 1-20 on starting by business outside of work depending on if I work all weekend or not. Does it suck not having free time? Absolutely. But at the end of the day my business is funded from my own cashflow, with no debt or interest to anyone. And no matter how bad your credit history is, you can always save and bootstrap like that. Blaming being unable to start a business on people not willing to lend you their money is just an excuse. At the end of the day your credit score, whether or not you start a business, this is all under your own control. (And if HN doesn't mind a plug, I personally learned a lot from Ric Edelman, he has a free podcast and a personal finance 101 book called the Truth about Money that I learned quite a bit from, but the fundamental thing he preaches is simple math. Make more money than you spend)
hugh3 15y ago
So what's stopping you? Do you need a hundred thousand before you can proceed any further? At the age of 30 you'll have a much easier time with the traditional angel funding slash venture capitalist route than a nineteen-year-old kid would.
szany 15y ago
It's ageist only because it's targeting college students before they accumulate tons of student loan debt.
ebiester 15y ago
If you're willing to work 100+ hours for your idea, work 40 for someone else and 40 on your own, and save money until you can take a few months off. Sell everything you have and move to somewhere with good internet and low expenses. The outskirts of a university town are a good place to start. It is possible to live on less than $1000 a month in much of the country. This will extend your runway. Wait, is that "not feasible?" Why not?
- yummyfajitas 15y ago
  It's absolutely feasible. I'm 29, and I worked at a regular job for a bit over a year. I quit earlier this month and last week I moved to Pune (very low cost of living) which is where my partners and I are building our startup. You can make excuses or you can make it happen. I chose to make it happen.
rowaway1 15y ago
victim

neebz 15y ago

I am seriously lost in terms of innovation. You may give kids money and they'll open up their Lemonade bars but how can you expect innovation without any research? And research without any education? I can't fathom any kid dropping out and then inventing a satellite? or solve any medical problem? And if they don't innovate then how can they even think of ways of bringing it to the consumers (which is the difficult next step) ?

Tichy 15y ago
All I know is that I certainly did not invent any satellites or solved any medical problems while at university. Instead I tried to collect points in an artificial game system.
- hugh3 15y ago
  Really? That's unfortunate. I spent my first three years at university learning complicated sciencey shit until knew enough to be set free on real research problems; then I spent the rest of my time doing research.
- larsberg 15y ago
  You definitely missed an opportunity. My first year, I volunteered without pay in a research lab just to see what was going on, and then by the second through fourth years I was contributing to actual research. Of course, it's not entirely clear that I was more help than hindrance to the group until midway through my third year, but I certainly learned a lot and got a lot of mentoring you can't get via youtube and e-books :-)
  - Tichy 15y ago
    Working in a research lab would have been my dream (and it's all for free while you are a student, isn't it). I just didn't have a clue as to how to get there. I don't blame the system, as I wrote in another post. Although it wouldn't have hurt to get some directions.
- veyron 15y ago

guynamedloren 15y ago

The statement about Thiel requiring these kids to 'stop out of college' is slightly disingenuous when many received college degrees before they could legally drive a car. Nevertheless, as a recent college graduate I think this is a fantastic idea, and I'm excited to see how everything turns out.

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kiteaton 15y ago

Tricky, tricky. Because sometimes you need the training that a degree (or even advanced degree) gives you to come up with certain high tech notions...

skidooer 15y ago
Oftentimes preconceived notions about tech will cloud your vision on implementation. If you are aware of a certain challenge, you will, more often than not, change your design to simplify the challenge. Someone without the experience will not be bound by those limitations and can always figure out how to do it later. When we look to high profile businessmen, more often then not they do not have the education behind them. Nothing wrong with getting some training, but I'm not sure it is beneficial when it comes to business. There is no evidence that supports it.
- hugh3 15y ago
  There are a few successful businessmen with no or very limited higher education... but they're quite few. You'll find more CEOs with PhDs than with high school diplomas.
  - skidooer 15y ago
    CEOs are often hired into the position, so there may be some educational bias. What would be interesting by this discussion is how many of those CEOs were founders of the company?
  - rowaway1 15y ago
    CEO != entrepreneur many entrepreneurs lack degrees.

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thesheenamedina 15y ago

I'm with Umair haque on this one when he says our educational institutions need serious reform, first. So how does paying super smart kids to create the same old paradigm change anything?

_delirium 15y ago

I'd be somewhat more interested in a program like this if it were being run by someone I believed actually wanted in good faith to improve education/business, rather than having ulterior political motives. Thiel is quite open that his main motivation is that he thinks universities promote politics he dislikes, so he'd like to destroy them for that reason. He also claims that in doing so he'd improve education, but it seems like a secondary motivation. My guess is that he would be willing to accept education even getting slightly worse as a tradeoff, if it got rid of the negative influence (in his view) of universities for libertarian politics. (See Woz and Salman Khan for examples of education reformers who seem to have education reform as their actual #1 goal.) edit: Of course, as full disclosure I'm in academia, so perhaps have my own ulterior motives. =] But honestly I think Salman Khan's approach is a bigger threat to the higher-education status quo than Thiel's is, mainly because it's much more scalable. So from a pure self-interest point of view I ought to dislike that one more!

szany 15y ago
Source? I hope you're not implying that the point of the Fellowship is to destroy academia.
- krasmark 15y ago
  I'm not sure this is exactly a source, but this article by Thiel tends to imply that he thinks the system is pretty broken : http://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/the-education-of-a-libertarian/ http://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/the-educa.... And then Thiel has talked about the education bubble (links on HN previously, too) : http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2431431 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2431431. Thiel is definitely pro "different" from the current system. I think the idea of promoting more entrepreneurial activities earlier is great, but it seems very anti-university/higher ed in his vision rather than as an alternative path.
  - szany 15y ago
    See my comment here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2584159 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2584159

dinkumthinkum 15y ago

Doesn't seem like that much money to quit college over. You could just go get a job I guess and make that in a couple years or less, if these are really the "whiz kids." Also, I'm sure these kids are very smart but some of those ideas look extremely lofty. Are these kids really at that level in their education and is 100K really even close to enough money to fund a 1-man research lab? I'm just a bit skeptical.

szany 15y ago
The 100K is meant for living expenses. Getting outside funding is encouraged (just not a job). A lot of these kids are frighteningly smart, and yeah some of the ideas are very lofty (asteroid mining!) and probably will change in time, but pivoting is also encouraged. Also bear in mind that Thiel is offering access to an astounding network of mentors, which for the lofty projects is even more valuable than the money.
hugh3 15y ago
It'll be interesting to see what does happen. Some of these kids do seem rather smart but incredibly naive (hey, reminds me of me at the age of 19) -- what does happen when Asteroid Mining Kid runs up against cold hard reality? Let me just clag in his whole description: John Burnham believes that the search for new resources has driven exploration, expansion, and innovation—from the discovery of the Americas to the California Gold Rush. Likewise, he believes the key to colonizing space is to make it possible to extract valuable minerals from asteroids, comets, and other planetary bodies. John plans on using his fellowship to develop space industry technologies to solve the problem of extraterrestrial resource extraction. Really, what can you do to advance space industry technologies under these circumstances? You're a teenager. You have a hundred thousand dollars (aka what Elon Musk spends every four seconds). You know far less about space technology than 99% of the people who work in the industry. And you're very smart, but a lot of people in the rocket industry are very smart. What do you do? Go intern for Elon Musk?
- yid 15y ago
  Actually in that position, interning for Elon Musk sounds like a great idea, followed by using that $100k to fund living expenses in college and grad school, with the bonus of having a streamlined academic plan and semi-guaranteed dream job when you graduate.

dmazin 15y ago

These kids' parents must hate Thiel. What does this guy know about what's good for their futures?

jeffool 15y ago
To read the article, a bunch of these kids seemed to have already decided to leave school. Though I'm sure you're absolutely right about some.
rowaway1 15y ago
i'm sure their parents are very disappointed that their children won an elite $100k grant before the age of 20. it's gonna be an ugly mark they'll never scrub off their resume, or google searches of their name. worse, should they ever want to go back to school, what respectable school would accept someone who received a thiel prize? should have gone to school, taken on debt, and gone on to some internships after graduation, these kids.
clafoutis 15y ago
view from this parent: we’re grateful for this opportunity. our son definitely lacks the “imitation gene” so k-12 public school (and any other options within our financial means and family scheduling limits) did not adequately encourage/support his talents and ability. Furthermore,the college admission process is so formulaic that it failed to spot his potential. This fellowship is elitist in number, but not in spirit. They judged him on the merit of his idea and the depth of his abilities, not on his GPA. It was a competition that was open to all. And though it is not scalable, it offers up the notion that alternative paths to over-priced academia is possible. It is a small, but meaningful attempt to break the university monopoly on the futures of our brightest, most innovative students.

dmazin 15y ago

These kids' parents must hate Thiel. What does this guy know about what's good for their futures?

edanm 15y ago

While I somewhat agree with the whole "degrees aren't always a good idea" meme, this feels like something of a "stunt" by Thiel. Taking people who are so incredibly smart and giving them money is an interesting concept, but it sure won't prove much about whether Universities are a good idea for us "ordinary" people.

inthewoods 15y ago
Yes, I agree - smart people like this are likely to succeed in any context. I suppose you could make the argument that their success will likely be heightened by the involvement in the program because of the connections they'll make - but the program doesn't really prove or disprove the idea that the system works or doesn't work. In my opinion, he'd be better off taking a group of kids that are perhaps borderline college material and training them.
rowaway1 15y ago
he's not make a point about ordinary people. he's making a point about school not working for everyone. he's taking the smart, motivated people who don't need school and giving them a head start on changing the world. these smart motivated people won't be clogging up admissions and class sizes, which will make college better and more accessible for people without the smarts, will, or desire to be entrepreneurs.

szany 15y ago

There seems to be a common misconception about the purpose of the Thiel Fellowship. Two things the Fellowship is not claiming to do: 1) Testing the hypothesis that university is bad 2) Testing the hypothesis that university is not worth the cost for the vast majority of people What the Fellowship might plausibly be doing: 1) Testing the hypothesis that university is not worth the cost for people like the Thiel fellows The actual motivation of the Fellowship, which is all over the press and has been related to me by Thiel Foundation workers, is that students with great potential accumulate tons of student loan debt in college and subsequently, instead of taking on projects that might actually help the world, are financially pressured into working at hedge funds and the like. The Fellowship is offered to these students as a two year break to attempt these projects supported by 100K for living expenses and, crucially, extensive mentorship. Again, the point is not to discredit universities, but to keep talented kids away from hedge funds (ironic coming from Thiel but there you have it). Edit: Also note that a failure of the Thiel Fellowship project does not disprove the education bubble in general, since it only applies to a very small group of people.

hugh3 15y ago
The actual motivation of the Fellowship, which is all over the press and has been related to me by Thiel Foundation workers, is that students with great potential accumulate tons of student loan debt in college and subsequently, instead of taking on projects that might actually help the world, are financially pressured into working at hedge funds and the like Surely kids as brilliant as these ones sound are getting full scholarships to college? If you really want to test the hypothesis: that university is not worth the cost for people like the Thiel fellows then I reckon you'd need two groups. One drops out of university and gets $100,000 and extensive mentoring. The other group stays in university and still gets $100,000 and extensive mentoring.
- szany 15y ago
  I reckon you'd need two groups. I agree. It's not really a valid experiment, which is why I said "might plausibly be" instead of "is", just to acknowledge some connection with the education bubble debate. Though two things to keep in mind for a valid experiment are that from the 100K for the second group would have to be subtracted the costs of university over two years (for me [mostly my parents actually] that's more than 100K), and that at good universities at least extensive mentoring is readily accessible. So it's a reasonable approximation at least.

thedaveoflife 15y ago

Great minds will go on to do great things no matter if they go to college or not, but you should start a business because you are passionate about a product or service, not because a billionaire entrepreneur is bribing you to do so. This program could very well be successful, but I would argue the participants would have gone on to do great things regardless of thiel’s invovlement.

rowaway1 15y ago
but now they'll start doing great things earlier, and won't be hampered by debt after graduation, which also postpones doing great things.

cfinke 15y ago

> And yet another scored 5580 on the SATs (on a total of 5 tests, but still). So he averaged 1116 on the SATs? Even before the switch from a 1600-point test to a 2400-point test, there's nothing impressive about that except that he bothered to take the SATs five times. > Faheem Zaman has shot the moon on nearly every SAT test he’s ever taken: 5580 points across 5 tests. Clearly I'm missing something...

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Birejji 15y ago
SAT Subject Tests: 800 pts * 4 = 3200 Actual SAT Test: 2380 Total: 5580

jeffool 15y ago

For the record, I'd love someone to cook up a blog and keep tabs on these people and their endeavors. Hell, I've got half a mind to do it myself, if only I knew more about the startup world. Of course, that said, I'm curious if one of the things they'd suggest is "keep the media a good distance away until you're ready." I imagine so.

ryanisinallofus 15y ago

Would the reaction be as mixed here if it was PG doing it? Because YC in effect does the same thing right? I enjoyed my college experience and as the first ever college graduate in my family I wouldn't do anything different. Colleges provide something far more beneficial than the shot at FU money. That said, some people are better off dropping out or never going at all. I'm highly suspect of learning how to be an Entrepreneur in a college setting and guess something like YC is probably better for that. I think of YC as almost a trade school for start ups but it still doesn't replace college. I wonder how many successful start uppers go back to college later? Any of you? Like Shaq and Troy Polamalu? :) And I guess that school-like vibe is why YC is better than simply dropping out and taking 100k. Even if you fail, you still get the YC experience to help you with your next venture.

veyron 15y ago
PG's stance, at least nowadays, is not to take college students unless they are going to leave anyway. I dont think he would do it in the way that PT is trying to do it. My understanding, having been sucked into that trap myself, is that college debt forces people to go to hedge funds or other lucrative jobs that don't utilize the full potential of some of the brightest college students. If you can give students an opportunity to build something, unencumbered by the issue of money, the outcome would be far better for society.
- hugh3 15y ago
  college debt forces people to go to hedge funds or other lucrative jobs that don't utilize the full potential of some of the brightest college students Well if that's the only concern, then Thiel could do what rich people have been doing for years -- donating scholarships to give smart kids a free ride to college.
  - veyron 15y ago
    The scholarship process is also broken. With many of the "merit-based" scholarships, there is a bias favoring those coming from low income families (otherwise why would they ask for parents' income information?)

known 15y ago

Unless there is a cap on market capitalization of Big Companies viz Goolge, Apple etc why should investors risk their investments in a startup?

languagehacker 15y ago

None of these really look like compelling business ideas to me. It seems as thought at best, the idea Thiel has is that if some angel out there can fund bright young people, they can develop business understanding and enrich their skills in areas they're interested in to a point where someday they can do great things. But I just don't see those great things being the ventures that they're currently incubating. Sure, it would be excellent if a billionaire swooped down from the sky and paid me a fortune to learn by doing rather than going to school. But more often than not these days, young people go to school because student loans are easy to acquire. Furthermore, the jobs they're likely to start off with straight out of high school pay about as much as the cost of living portion of student loans taken over the course of a full year. I agree the university system is pretty flawed right now. It doesn't do a good job preparing young people for careers -- particularly in the liberal arts. But I don't think that plying smart kids with money is an effective way to provide a well-rounded foundation for any career path. That pretty much says that so long as you impress someone enough for them to become your patron, you're set for life and there's no expectation that you succeed. And that's the current problem with the university system, too -- all kids pandering to professors, and no actual expectations that what you learn be used in whatever constitutes your career after college. We shouldn't be setting up young people to think that their self worth is derived from impressing people in their minuscule niche, but rather from the satisfaction of their personal accomplishments (as well as the paycheck at the end of the day).

freshfunk 15y ago

Very interesting experiment and I'm curious to see what comes out of it but I motivation for going to college isn't all about making money (which is what starting a business is all about). Aside from education, College/University changes people in immeasurable ways. Usually it's where you meet friends you have for life, find the person you want to marry, discover your political and philosophical self, explore vastly different parts of your intellect from incredibly smart/talented people (anything from quantum physics to 18th century english literature), and, most importantly, mature. These are things that you can't put a price on but will stay with you the rest of your life. Of course, one doesn't necessarily need college to mature but it's a great environment to do it in. I can't imagine trying to do that in a corporate environment.

ignifero 15y ago
Entrepreneurs tend to underestimate how many brilliant low-payed people work in universities, and how rewarding it is to work with such people. Plus the job of a lucky researcher is just as a appealing as an entrepreneur. As long as you don't get trapped in their respective bubbles, both worlds are exciting. Statistically though, i bet i could find more happy researchers than happy entrepreneurs.

HaloZero 15y ago

Anyone notice that a few of these kids already went and graduated from some formal education? Hell one of them is dropping out of a Ph.D program.

zyfo 15y ago

He was a 19-year-old 4th-year neuroscience Ph.D. candidate at Stanford University (Andrew Hsu) Does that mean he'd get his PhD as a 19 or 20 year old? That sounds like a record to me. That's crazy, in a good way.

jbellis 15y ago
Definitely not a record. I remember a professor at Princeton who got his first PhD at 17, but he was bored, so he got his second at 19. One was in physics, the other in mathematics, but I don't remember the order.

shareme 15y ago

Some facts you may not be aware of: USA public university education costs have risen to 300% to 400% over a 20 year period with most of that costs made up of these trends: -US states cutting education funding -us public colleges increasing enrollment of non state citizens both US and World to replace funding -US fed government increasing loan limits that students can borrow under -US public universities increasing the use of grad students as the major instructor both first and second year students see teaching classes. -US public universities increasing funding of non-university expenditures such as sports which the NHL, NFL, NBA, etc use a free farm team without paying for it despite not a single program breaking even. No matter what Petter Thiel believes are it is somewhat factual that US college education is somewhat broken as a public institute for the public good is somewhat broken. And Thiel is basing his system on certain past models that have worked before. If you go back to the industrial age we did in the USA have certain industrialists that would pick out young people to train in business. Thiel is just re-inventing for the modern era.

wallflower 15y ago
Numbers from NYMag article: "In the past 30 years, private-college tuition and fees have increased, in constant 2010 dollars, from $9,500 a year to more than $27,000. Public-college tuition has increased from $2,100 to $7,600. Fifteen years ago, the average student debt at graduation was around $12,700; in 2009, it was $24,000. Over the past quarter-century, the total cost of higher education has grown by 440 percent." "The cost of college in the past 30 years has gone up tenfold. Health care has only gone up sixfold, and inflation has only gone up threefold. Not only is it a scam, but the college presidents know it. That’s why they keep raising tuition." -James Altucher http://nymag.com/news/features/college-education-2011-5/ http://nymag.com/news/features/college-education-2011-5/

ignifero 15y ago

It's hard to believe some of the projects in biotechnology and energy will only require $100K to be built. These things cost more than a laptop and pizza. These kids are certainly enthusiastic, but why not spend some more time learning about things? Why not take the $100K for a sabbatical, and then proceed to build businesses? Science can be pretty exciting, just as entrepreneurship is, but they are different things. Success is a relative term, and i don't have the data, but it seems that the role of luck is bigger in entrepreneurship than it is in science. It will be interesting to see how many of them go on with the program, how many go back to school and how many succeed (although the sample is small).

andrewcross 15y ago

Whether Thiel is doing this for ulterior motives or not, do any of you think that the kids that were chosen really need 4 years of college education to be incredible? Look at what they have done so far! If anything Thiel is doing them a favor by letting them flourish with all the resources they need! At college they'd be wasting their time completing assignments designed for the lowest common denominator in class. While I'm far from a genius, the difficulty level of most assignments/projects is very low, in engineering at least. Kudos for Thiel to stepping out of the box and best of luck to these kids. Work like crazy and change the world!

felipe 15y ago

I wonder if he would have accomplished everything he did throughout his career without that Stanford degree (and the connections that come with it)?

andrewguenther 15y ago

So if the one kid scored a total of 5580 across 5 SATs, that means he scored an average of 1116 on each test. Which, assuming this is before the writing section (I hope), is an abysmal score. Am I missing something? Or is it just impressive that he sat through that awful test five times?