I don’t think the idea was for it to scale broadly? You could make a similar argument about higher education anyway, the current cultural mantra is that every s

I don’t think the idea was for it to scale broadly? You could make a similar argument about higher education anyway, the current cultural mantra is that every single kid would benefit from university and should be the top goal broadly, which cannibalized a ton of useful industry and left tons of kids with $100k in debt and no life skills - yet still thinking they should have a university-type job, so they sit around depressed in their parents house and wash out into some low paying job like journalism or some unsatisfying gov job demanding 2 degrees. There’s a ton of smart go-getting kids across every country in the west who would have benefited from having someone tell them that there’s great options outside of college. It’s still going to be a niche but that doesn’t mean it’s a tiny one. It’s not just tech startup’s and programming either, there’s a million entrepreneurial type skills that can be developed just by going out in the world at 18 and taking a risk. This is more than just who Thiel invested in too, he’s still a VC, it was an idea (and marketing tool) as much as a specific investment program.