4 ms·

This is super wrong. The Thiel Fellowship stopped betting on underdogs long, long ago. I invite anyone reading this comment section to select a random recipient

This is super wrong. The Thiel Fellowship stopped betting on underdogs long, long ago. I invite anyone reading this comment section to select a random recipient from the last few years go and look at two things: 1. What stage was their company at when they received the fellowship? 2. What is their parents' career? Every person who receives the Fellowship has already raised millions of dollars, sometimes even tens of millions of dollars. Raising millions of dollars as a teenager isn't something you generally do without exceptional fortune or parents in the finance industry. Usually it's the latter. I once met a TF recipient who ran a successful property lending company. What was his father's job? Multimillionaire owner of a large and successful property investment firm. Not hating on the guy, he was pretty cool and nice and his business went on to be successful (and he was for sure a hard worker, intelligent and ambitious), but the Fellowship slapping their name on his back didn't really change how the cards were stacked. At the very least, it wasn't the thing that moved the needle to him dropping out. I would be greatly surprised if, in the last 5 years, the Fellowship was the tipping point for even a single person dropping out of college. Full disclosure on the conflict of interest though, I am a mediocre college dropout who was rejected post interview. I wouldn't have and still wouldn't turn down the $100k if it was offered. Money is great.

throwawaymaths 3y ago
I think your observation tracks correctly. The TF used to also be about all sorts of weird stuff. There were hardware companies, biotech companies, kids just randomly studying math. Now it's only software. To be fair those other pursuits are hard, but I don't think the TF really gave support besides $ in ways that are meaningful for those sorts of endeavors. And when they were funded the terms were structured like terms that make sense for software companies.
jpadkins 3y ago
you are correct, but this is also what top tier universities are doing. They are betting on (selecting) the winners. The actual education adds almost nothing, except for some networking benefits.
- aantix 3y ago
  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/10/10/getting-in-ivy-league-college-admissions https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/10/10/getting-in-ivy... “As a hypothetical example, take the University of Pennsylvania and Penn State, which are two schools a lot of students choose between,” Krueger said. “One is Ivy, one is a state school. Penn is much more highly selective. If you compare the students who go to those two schools, the ones who go to Penn have higher incomes. But let’s look at those who got into both types of schools, some of whom chose Penn and some of whom chose Penn State. Within that set it doesn’t seem to matter whether you go to the more selective school. Now, you would think that the more ambitious student is the one who would choose to go to Penn, and the ones choosing to go to Penn State might be a little less confident in their abilities or have a little lower family income, and both of those factors would point to people doing worse later on. But they don’t.” Krueger says that there is one exception to this. Students from the very lowest economic strata do seem to benefit from going to an Ivy. For most students, though, the general rule seems to be that if you are a hardworking and intelligent person you’ll end up doing well regardless of where you went to school."
  - jaybrendansmith 3y ago
    That's interesting. Maybe this is the point, but observe that they are already leveraging the 'University of Pennsylvania' selection magic. Just because those students chose Penn State, for financial reasons or because they like the Nittany Lions, doesn't matter, the fact that they got into U of Penn means they are going to be more successful. If I were running admissions at a selective but middle tier College, I think I would immediately start training an ML model on the publicly available dataset but also historical datasets. Pretty soon I would be able to predict student future success with all kinds of interesting outliers that go beyond grades and SAT scores. I might find, for example, that inner city kids that create websites when they are 12 are extremely successful, or that kids who win the spelling bee when they are 9 go on to win at life. Who knows?
User23 3y ago
This is one reason why go-getting working class boys used to caddy. I wonder how much the rise of golf carts has reduced social mobility.
lr4444lr 3y ago
Not disputing anything you're saying, which is that the TF isn't quite a "Horatio Alger" fund, but I still think there's a lot of value in diverting people away from college who don't really want or need to be there, and growing their companies 1-4 years faster. It's no secret that Thiel hates how colleges have largely become a culturally self-appointed gateway to the middle class (in his perception), and that he's trying very hard to dispel the idea that college is necessary.
spamizbad 3y ago
Thiel's strategy seems to rely on external "pre-selection" to pick his fellows. Even when the program launched, he selected several candidates that already had been accepted to elite schools prior to applying. Nothing inherently wrong with this. But it does explain why colleges might be nervous: He's piggy-backing off their selection process to poach young candidates.
- lawlessone 3y ago
  I think if i was a billionaire id start the "Sure let's see what happens fund" The more obviously bad a business idea the more likely they would get funded (as long as it wasn't blatantly harmful). They get money, they support from relevantly qualified people that will try make it work etc. I'd be a billionaire so its not like i would care if it's a loss.
  - hotnfresh 3y ago
    I’ve thought about this (because of course it might happen and I need to be ready, haha) and if I had billions I’d do two education things: 1) Fund a small pure research institution. Get a dozen or two academics who are promising but are hindered by publish-or-perish and related culture out of that mess, let them do their thing. Even if only one or two at a time do anything worthwhile and the rest just kick back and take the money, that’s potentially a pretty great outcome. No strings, long horizon, maybe even a lifetime-stipend kind of situation. 2) Buy the rights to some excellent textbooks in areas that don’t change fast enough to need major updates all the time (math, for example). Possibly whole curriculums, especially for lower grades. Put them in the public domain. Set up a small endowment to fund keeping them up-to-date (mostly just fixing errors). (This is 1,000% something the government ought to do, the ROI is crazy high, but they aren’t doing it, so whatever)
- aleph_minus_one 3y ago
  > But it does explain why colleges might be nervous: He's piggy-backing off their selection process to poach young candidates. If you embrace the current "college is useless/too expense" fashion, you could (maliciously) argue that this shows that the selection process of the colleges is much more valuable than their study programs. :-)
ksec 3y ago
Thank You for even standing and speaking up. On a subject and topic that is relatively heated and tends to draw flamewars.

throwawaymaths 3y ago

I think your observation tracks correctly. The TF used to also be about all sorts of weird stuff. There were hardware companies, biotech companies, kids just randomly studying math. Now it's only software. To be fair those other pursuits are hard, but I don't think the TF really gave support besides $ in ways that are meaningful for those sorts of endeavors. And when they were funded the terms were structured like terms that make sense for software companies.

jpadkins 3y ago

you are correct, but this is also what top tier universities are doing. They are betting on (selecting) the winners. The actual education adds almost nothing, except for some networking benefits.

aantix 3y ago
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/10/10/getting-in-ivy-league-college-admissions https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/10/10/getting-in-ivy... “As a hypothetical example, take the University of Pennsylvania and Penn State, which are two schools a lot of students choose between,” Krueger said. “One is Ivy, one is a state school. Penn is much more highly selective. If you compare the students who go to those two schools, the ones who go to Penn have higher incomes. But let’s look at those who got into both types of schools, some of whom chose Penn and some of whom chose Penn State. Within that set it doesn’t seem to matter whether you go to the more selective school. Now, you would think that the more ambitious student is the one who would choose to go to Penn, and the ones choosing to go to Penn State might be a little less confident in their abilities or have a little lower family income, and both of those factors would point to people doing worse later on. But they don’t.” Krueger says that there is one exception to this. Students from the very lowest economic strata do seem to benefit from going to an Ivy. For most students, though, the general rule seems to be that if you are a hardworking and intelligent person you’ll end up doing well regardless of where you went to school."
- jaybrendansmith 3y ago
  That's interesting. Maybe this is the point, but observe that they are already leveraging the 'University of Pennsylvania' selection magic. Just because those students chose Penn State, for financial reasons or because they like the Nittany Lions, doesn't matter, the fact that they got into U of Penn means they are going to be more successful. If I were running admissions at a selective but middle tier College, I think I would immediately start training an ML model on the publicly available dataset but also historical datasets. Pretty soon I would be able to predict student future success with all kinds of interesting outliers that go beyond grades and SAT scores. I might find, for example, that inner city kids that create websites when they are 12 are extremely successful, or that kids who win the spelling bee when they are 9 go on to win at life. Who knows?

User23 3y ago

This is one reason why go-getting working class boys used to caddy. I wonder how much the rise of golf carts has reduced social mobility.

lr4444lr 3y ago

Not disputing anything you're saying, which is that the TF isn't quite a "Horatio Alger" fund, but I still think there's a lot of value in diverting people away from college who don't really want or need to be there, and growing their companies 1-4 years faster. It's no secret that Thiel hates how colleges have largely become a culturally self-appointed gateway to the middle class (in his perception), and that he's trying very hard to dispel the idea that college is necessary.

spamizbad 3y ago

Thiel's strategy seems to rely on external "pre-selection" to pick his fellows. Even when the program launched, he selected several candidates that already had been accepted to elite schools prior to applying. Nothing inherently wrong with this. But it does explain why colleges might be nervous: He's piggy-backing off their selection process to poach young candidates.

lawlessone 3y ago
I think if i was a billionaire id start the "Sure let's see what happens fund" The more obviously bad a business idea the more likely they would get funded (as long as it wasn't blatantly harmful). They get money, they support from relevantly qualified people that will try make it work etc. I'd be a billionaire so its not like i would care if it's a loss.
- hotnfresh 3y ago
  I’ve thought about this (because of course it might happen and I need to be ready, haha) and if I had billions I’d do two education things: 1) Fund a small pure research institution. Get a dozen or two academics who are promising but are hindered by publish-or-perish and related culture out of that mess, let them do their thing. Even if only one or two at a time do anything worthwhile and the rest just kick back and take the money, that’s potentially a pretty great outcome. No strings, long horizon, maybe even a lifetime-stipend kind of situation. 2) Buy the rights to some excellent textbooks in areas that don’t change fast enough to need major updates all the time (math, for example). Possibly whole curriculums, especially for lower grades. Put them in the public domain. Set up a small endowment to fund keeping them up-to-date (mostly just fixing errors). (This is 1,000% something the government ought to do, the ROI is crazy high, but they aren’t doing it, so whatever)
aleph_minus_one 3y ago
> But it does explain why colleges might be nervous: He's piggy-backing off their selection process to poach young candidates. If you embrace the current "college is useless/too expense" fashion, you could (maliciously) argue that this shows that the selection process of the colleges is much more valuable than their study programs. :-)

ksec 3y ago

Thank You for even standing and speaking up. On a subject and topic that is relatively heated and tends to draw flamewars.