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by bmitc 1mo ago
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- jmalicki 1mo agoWhat is the point of a university if it not to provide education that could benefit wide areas of the human experience?
- bmitc 1mo agoThat's not what he is arguing, though, is it?
- jmalicki 1mo agoIs founding a company not a thing some humans experience?
- watwut 1mo agoHe argues for lowering experience of everyone except founders, so that founders dont have more free time and dont have to learn what university teaches. It is favoring 1 group, not wide areas of the human experience.
- jmalicki 1mo agoIt doesn't sound like he's arguing for something different than a lot of movements in education like Waldorf schools, the Nueva School, progressive liberal arts colleges, or how a lot of graduate schools work. That school should be a support structure for self directed exploration rather than rigidity. How is encouraging that unique to startup founders?
- bmitc 1mo agoYou mentioned, emphasis mine: > benefit wide areas of the human experience So no, I don't think founding companies has much to do with the wide human experience. It's actually a pretty rare thing. And I argue that most startup founders are not concerned with the human experience and are just focused on what the exit looks like.
- jmalicki 1mo agoSo a university should never teach a class unless at least 95% of its students would benefit from it? Yes, the one thing doesn't necessarily benefit everyone, but a university offers wide choices of interests.
- madrox 1mo agoEver heard of an MBA?
- metaphor 1mo agoSimilar in smell to political science degree --> career politician, I think pg nails it: > The hard part of startups is product: knowing what to build, and being able to build it. And that kind of knowledge comes from studying computer science or mechanical engineering or molecular biology, not management or finance. > Another thing that will tend to draw universities away from the optimal path is business schools, if they have them. Business schools were not designed to train founders. They were designed to train the managerial class of the large industrial companies that arose in the early 20th century; they're the West Points of industrial capitalism. That's why their official name is usually the School of Management. But while the skills they teach might be useful in running companies beyond a certain size, they're not the critical ingredient in founding them. And the skills that are are already taught by other departments. So to the extent business schools affect their parent university's strategy for preparing founders, it can only be by adding error.
- bmitc 1mo agoHe states: > And that kind of knowledge comes from studying computer science or mechanical engineering or molecular biology, not management or finance. But then he also states: > Indeed, preparing students to start startups is closer to the ideal of liberal education than preparing them for almost any other kind of career. This is pretty myopic and is obviously biased from someone embedded in the startup space, perhaps not surprising given how little value most startups provide. Not everything in life is a whiz-bang, fail fast, build-some-new-product-from-scratch startup. In fact, most things are not. Pay attention to actual liberal arts universities. Their goal is on the long-term and not to satisfy some near-term need of startup founders making the next killer app or product. It can be argued that most startups build towards generating value only in the sense of monetary value, in that most startups' goal are purely about the exit. It really has little to do with building products. Most venture capitalists got their wealth from the dotcom bubble. Almost none of them know how to build actual products.
- dang 1mo ago> What do universities have to do with startup founders? Gross. Please don't post unsubstantive comments or shallow dismissals to Hacker News. We're hoping for curious conversation here, not bilious. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- jrflowers 1mo ago[dead]
- bmitc 1mo agoWhile I agree the comment will rub the startup groupies the wrong way, I don't really think the question itself is unsubstantial, especially in comparison to the post, as the post does not address the question. And I elaborated in response to a comment to it.
- dang 1mo agoI'm not concerned with "groupies", but with the quality standard on HN, which the GP post was obviously below.
- bmitc 1mo agoI edited the comment to contain only the question and not commentary.
- dang 1mo agoI appreciate the edit, but now that I read the edited comment, I think I was responding mostly to the "Gross." bit.
- clipsy 1mo agoThe "Gross." remark (Edit: now removed) at the end was unnecessary, but the bulk of the comment seems like a pretty legitimate question to me. It's telling that I see far worse HN comments on a daily basis that don't warrant a finger-wagging condemnation from you.