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The Zuckerg Effect: Thiel Fellows and College Dropout Entrepreneurs

3 points by besvinick 15y ago

besvinick 15y ago
Clearly there are numerous successful entrepreneurs without college degrees, but would they have been even better served with 4 years of college under their belt?
- Troll_Whisperer 15y ago
  No. Had billg gotten 4 years under his belt, he'd have worked for apple. Had Mark Z. done that, he'd probably have been a Google employee. In both cases the result would have been okay, but nowhere near as good as becoming a world-changing billionaire.
matmann2001 15y ago
This effect is very real. I'm an engineering student at U of I, and there are a lot of engineers (especially Computer Scientists) here who are just itching to drop out the second one of their ideas catch on. What I think they fail to realize is that you need much more than an idea. You need to have resources and solid foundation, or at least some proof of concept, before you can make such a drastic life decision. In the majority of cases, finishing your time at college is the best way to prepare yourself to make your ideas successful. In my opinion, this effect stems from a misunderstanding in this now popular hacker-startup culture. Students are getting the idea that forming a startup is the end goal, when in fact it's just the beginning of a long road to being successful. The Zuck/Thiel effect is not a trend, it's an extraordinary exception. Stay in school, kids.
- besvinick 15y ago
  I definitely agree it's an exception but the more blogs like TechCrunch publicize people dropping out (Thiel Fellows, Penn students from a post yesterday), the more prominent (and viable) it appears. The best option is to run the business at school, leverage the vast array of (usually free) resources on campus, and graduate with a startup AND a degree.
  - matmann2001 15y ago
    Precisely my thinking, U of I actually has a lot of services and resources for student entrepreneurship, all of which are essentially free or cheap. Plus the untapped knowledge from a community of like-minded peers. Not to mention the available support from professors, many of whom have walked this path many times before.

3 points by besvinick 15y ago

Clearly there are numerous successful entrepreneurs without college degrees, but would they have been even better served with 4 years of college under their belt?

Troll_Whisperer 15y ago
No. Had billg gotten 4 years under his belt, he'd have worked for apple. Had Mark Z. done that, he'd probably have been a Google employee. In both cases the result would have been okay, but nowhere near as good as becoming a world-changing billionaire.

matmann2001 15y ago

This effect is very real. I'm an engineering student at U of I, and there are a lot of engineers (especially Computer Scientists) here who are just itching to drop out the second one of their ideas catch on. What I think they fail to realize is that you need much more than an idea. You need to have resources and solid foundation, or at least some proof of concept, before you can make such a drastic life decision. In the majority of cases, finishing your time at college is the best way to prepare yourself to make your ideas successful. In my opinion, this effect stems from a misunderstanding in this now popular hacker-startup culture. Students are getting the idea that forming a startup is the end goal, when in fact it's just the beginning of a long road to being successful. The Zuck/Thiel effect is not a trend, it's an extraordinary exception. Stay in school, kids.

besvinick 15y ago
I definitely agree it's an exception but the more blogs like TechCrunch publicize people dropping out (Thiel Fellows, Penn students from a post yesterday), the more prominent (and viable) it appears. The best option is to run the business at school, leverage the vast array of (usually free) resources on campus, and graduate with a startup AND a degree.
- matmann2001 15y ago
  Precisely my thinking, U of I actually has a lot of services and resources for student entrepreneurship, all of which are essentially free or cheap. Plus the untapped knowledge from a community of like-minded peers. Not to mention the available support from professors, many of whom have walked this path many times before.