5 ms·

"It’s like getting a degree at Berkeley. Okay. It’s not Stanford. You can a complicated story about how you had to do it because your parents had a big mortgage

by vidar 14y ago

"It’s like getting a degree at Berkeley. Okay. It’s not Stanford. You can a complicated story about how you had to do it because your parents had a big mortgage or something. But it’s a hard negative signal to get past." I agree that YCombinator is head and shoulders above its competitors but is Stanford really considered that much better than Berkeley? Honest question.

seiji 14y ago
I read it as a joke just playing to the audience (ongoing good-natured rivalry, etc). It's like when someone really likes reddit. Okay, it's not HN. They can tell a complicated story about how they like cats and populist rage politics, but it's a hard negative signal to get past.
- yaz 14y ago
  > It's like when someone really likes reddit. Okay, it's not HN. They can tell a complicated story about how they like cats and populist rage politics, but it's a hard negative signal to get past. I see the parallel but your signalling system is rather poor if it penalizes someone for liking reddit.
- jblow 14y ago
  I agree that it is sort of good-natured rivalry, but it sort of isn't. I went to Berkeley and know that it is true.
- throwaway1979 14y ago
  You're probably right ... it was likely a good-natured joke. However, I see the elite school bias happen a lot in tech. When you're a young person trying to get that first job, etc., it really stabs you in the heart. The idea of signaling is reasonable but taking it to the extreme is just plain stupid. Peter jokes about the poor family with a big mortgage ... that isn't a sob story ... a lot of people have that or worse. My folks immigrated to the west with very little. I went to the best school (not Stanford) I could afford and tried to make the best of it. And I know for sure that I'm not the only one like that. All I ask is that we don't take these things as innocent jokes. It is just another form of discrimination ... we should point that out every time we see it.
karpathy 14y ago
That quote was the highlight of the class :) He's not only playing the audience-- In an earlier class (class 3 or so), Peter Thiel justified his views on Stanford vs. Berkeley based on their track record with creating successful companies. Maybe someone can find the exact quote, but he said that between the two, vast majority of successful companies start at Stanford and that he's only aware of 1 or 2 that started out at Berkeley.
- rhizome 14y ago
  Yet Craigslist is filled with "idea guy" ads touting Stanford pedigrees much (much!) more often than Cal.
  - egillie 14y ago
    I think those are the B-school people...but point taken
- jmduke 14y ago
  With the (rather large) caveat, of course, that the academic caliber of a school isn't dictated by the number of entrepreneurs it produces.
- dm8 14y ago
  Successful startups is not the best signal to judge overall quality of academic institution. Stanford became synonymous with dot com era due to successes like Google and Yahoo. However, Berkeley (along with MIT) was epicenter of open source movement in sixties and seventies. Things like BSD, Sendmail etc. started on Cal's campus. I've heard one joke on Cal's campus - "Stanford creates companies, Cal creates industries".
  - anamax 14y ago
    > I've heard one joke on Cal's campus - "Stanford creates companies, Cal creates industries". The Stanford equivalent is "Stanford produces CEOs, Berkeley produces VP-Engr". Which one would trade places with the other?
dm8 14y ago
I believe in terms of entrepreneurial culture on campus, Stanford is slightly ahead of Cal. However, I don't think there is a difference in academic quality. Lot of Stanford CS professors are Berkeley alums and vice versa for Cal. Stanford definitely has leg up in terms of Startups. Especially the dot com era. At Cal we don't have equivalent of Google or Yahoo. However, Startups are just one dimension of innovation in technology. Berkeley can easily boast some of the groundbreaking research (not just engineering but overall sciences) during last 100 years. Disclosure: UC Berkeley Alum here.
MaxGabriel 14y ago
Joke aside, Paul Graham found no correlation between college attended and startup success. http://www.paulgraham.com/colleges.html http://www.paulgraham.com/colleges.html

by vidar 14y ago

seiji 14y ago

I read it as a joke just playing to the audience (ongoing good-natured rivalry, etc). It's like when someone really likes reddit. Okay, it's not HN. They can tell a complicated story about how they like cats and populist rage politics, but it's a hard negative signal to get past.

yaz 14y ago
> It's like when someone really likes reddit. Okay, it's not HN. They can tell a complicated story about how they like cats and populist rage politics, but it's a hard negative signal to get past. I see the parallel but your signalling system is rather poor if it penalizes someone for liking reddit.
jblow 14y ago
I agree that it is sort of good-natured rivalry, but it sort of isn't. I went to Berkeley and know that it is true.
throwaway1979 14y ago
You're probably right ... it was likely a good-natured joke. However, I see the elite school bias happen a lot in tech. When you're a young person trying to get that first job, etc., it really stabs you in the heart. The idea of signaling is reasonable but taking it to the extreme is just plain stupid. Peter jokes about the poor family with a big mortgage ... that isn't a sob story ... a lot of people have that or worse. My folks immigrated to the west with very little. I went to the best school (not Stanford) I could afford and tried to make the best of it. And I know for sure that I'm not the only one like that. All I ask is that we don't take these things as innocent jokes. It is just another form of discrimination ... we should point that out every time we see it.

karpathy 14y ago

That quote was the highlight of the class :) He's not only playing the audience-- In an earlier class (class 3 or so), Peter Thiel justified his views on Stanford vs. Berkeley based on their track record with creating successful companies. Maybe someone can find the exact quote, but he said that between the two, vast majority of successful companies start at Stanford and that he's only aware of 1 or 2 that started out at Berkeley.

rhizome 14y ago
Yet Craigslist is filled with "idea guy" ads touting Stanford pedigrees much (much!) more often than Cal.
- egillie 14y ago
  I think those are the B-school people...but point taken
jmduke 14y ago
With the (rather large) caveat, of course, that the academic caliber of a school isn't dictated by the number of entrepreneurs it produces.
dm8 14y ago
Successful startups is not the best signal to judge overall quality of academic institution. Stanford became synonymous with dot com era due to successes like Google and Yahoo. However, Berkeley (along with MIT) was epicenter of open source movement in sixties and seventies. Things like BSD, Sendmail etc. started on Cal's campus. I've heard one joke on Cal's campus - "Stanford creates companies, Cal creates industries".
- anamax 14y ago
  > I've heard one joke on Cal's campus - "Stanford creates companies, Cal creates industries". The Stanford equivalent is "Stanford produces CEOs, Berkeley produces VP-Engr". Which one would trade places with the other?

dm8 14y ago

I believe in terms of entrepreneurial culture on campus, Stanford is slightly ahead of Cal. However, I don't think there is a difference in academic quality. Lot of Stanford CS professors are Berkeley alums and vice versa for Cal. Stanford definitely has leg up in terms of Startups. Especially the dot com era. At Cal we don't have equivalent of Google or Yahoo. However, Startups are just one dimension of innovation in technology. Berkeley can easily boast some of the groundbreaking research (not just engineering but overall sciences) during last 100 years. Disclosure: UC Berkeley Alum here.

MaxGabriel 14y ago

Joke aside, Paul Graham found no correlation between college attended and startup success. http://www.paulgraham.com/colleges.html http://www.paulgraham.com/colleges.html