Graduate school seems like a good place to start a startup. You have a lot of free time[1] to explore interesting ideas, and are surrounded by smart potential c

Graduate school seems like a good place to start a startup. You have a lot of free time[1] to explore interesting ideas, and are surrounded by smart potential co-founders and employees. There is also built in "life infrastructure" such as libraries, a gym, people to socialize with, members of the opposite sex to meet, entertainment events, etc. Once you get out into the "real world", you have to discover and manage all these details yourself, and they are expensive and time consuming. Arguably, you could get these same benefits by working at a good company like Google, but Google itself sprung out of a graduate school project. Graduate school gives people an environment to think about "crazy" ideas in depth. Google wouldn't exist if Larry and Sergey had been employees at Altavista rather than bouncing ideas off of each other at Stanford. [1] a lot of free time compared to a startup, or even a 9-5 grind. (most jobs are 8-6 and require at least some commute)