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I don’t necessarily disagree with this but is it the universities job to prepare founders at the expense of everyone else? Under his proposal the motivated foun

by bix6 2mo ago

I don’t necessarily disagree with this but is it the universities job to prepare founders at the expense of everyone else? Under his proposal the motivated founders succeed and everyone else is a loser. This is a very VC focused lens that ignores all the other possible outcomes a human could pursue that are valuable. Established corps need workers, unis need new teachers, hospitals need doctors, etc. So we should let all those people suffer to promote a small group of founders by reducing course load?

watwut 2mo ago
> So we should let all those people suffer to promote a small group of founders by reducing course load? Yes, that is pretty much VC enterprenour philosophy in nutshell. It is value system that value only one small group only. And if that small group has to put in effort into learning in school or doing something other then building unicorns, that is a great unfairness.
- palmotea 2mo ago
  > Yes, that is pretty much VC enterprenour philosophy in nutshell. It's time we all admit the VCs are the best people, and we're just worthless in comparison. Anyone with any value at all is an investor or a founder. No one else matters. That's why neo-reactionary ideology is so profound: it would put those best people in charge, and clear all the useless garbage out of their way.
  - tescreal 2mo ago
    It's frustrating that this could be read as entirely sincere in this 2026, year of our plague.
  - Twey 2mo ago
    The libertarian take is surely exactly this, with the elitism either stripped out or pushed into the background (depending on your political bent): rather than employees and employers everyone should be a founder of their one-person company that raises money to do things that align with the interests of other individual founder-investors. Mind you, I'm not totally sure how this differs from employer/employee relationships in practice except I suppose that each side has less contractual protection from the other.
youngtaff 2mo ago
Article also ignore’s that very few founders succeed Has anyone ever plotted the lifespan of YC companies from each cohort? Most of them end up dead…
- pj_mukh 2mo ago
  N=1 but my dead VC funded YC company taught me more about the ins and outs of what it takes to run a complex successful engineering and sales operation than any number of years in business school or grinding in consultancies. YMMV you do have to have a different less nihilistic mindset but it really is a bit of a Neo in the Matrix moment because it lets you see through a bit of the corporate veneer to see the complex mess of personal and group foibles that run our major corporations. In the end it also ends up making you a 10x more effective worker if that’s where you end up even if just to protect your mental health by being able to explain what’s going on.
  - gogo61 2mo ago
    Have you studied in a business school or grinded in consultancies?
    - pj_mukh 2mo ago
      Yes obviously. But just to caveat, its not YC or VC funding that is critical. It’s the act of building something and trying to sell it that is.
  - ignoramous 2mo ago
    > VC funded YC company taught me more ... really is a bit of a Neo in the Matrix moment ... ends up making you a 10x more effective corporate worker if that’s where you end up No doubt there are learnings worth a lifetime, and changes that alter careers. You hope, the sense of superiority the experience seems to breed is not merely a coping mechanism, but an exercise in positive self-image [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34053801 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34053801
beklein 2mo ago
"In fact there are only two things universities need to change to be perfect at preparing founders: they need to make students feel that starting a startup is something they can do, and they need to encourage them to work on their own projects." I'd argue that both of these would be highly beneficial for all kinds of students, founders and non-founders alike. Starting a startup could be generalized for all students to having a dream or goal, taking ownership of it, and making it happen. A startup is just one possible path, pg is probably too specific here, I would agree. Having more free time to work on my own projects is probably the freedom I missed most at university. I think learning to choose what to work on and making something happen would benefit future workers, teachers, doctors, and engineers just as much as entrepreneurs. It's a trade-off in terms of time and other resources, since parts of the existing curriculum would have to fade away. But I think it's a good starting point for change and a good direction to move in.
- TheOtherHobbes 2mo ago
  Most engineering classes include projects, but they're presented as homework and/or "something you can show an employer." And "building things" isn't enough. Many projects have zero commercial potential. I don't think PG is wrong, but I also don't think he's right. I think if universities wanted to do something with startup culture they could filter the more motivated and talented students into incubators of their own - not through some kind of overly academic post-grad degree, but literally a startup school where the university provides resources, subsistence, and access to funding, in return for a share of project equity. The "teaching" would be more about finding customers and handling finances and less about managerial MBA nonsense. The big win for students would be "You don't have to worry about food, rent, or basic running costs." Post-grad research overlaps with this, but is more fundamental. The emphasis here would be more on projects with immediate income potential, not on technology that could be commercialised in the future, possibly. The problem is academic culture is very different to startup culture, so the startup school would need a much looser relationship to its parent than a typical academic department.
oytis 2mo ago
My first reflex would be to ctiticise PG, but after reading the article, I don't think I agree here. First he doesn't say universities should prepare founders - his advice is to those universities that do want to do that. Second, his advice is basically to skip BS business education and make students good professionals, well-rounded intellectuals, not afraid of starting a business. Anyone would benefit from such education, not only prospective founders
- impendia 2mo ago
  > those universities that do want to do that As a university professor, I've seen that all universities want to do everything. By which I mean, they employ all sorts of people who are pushing a huge range of agendas. You can't meaningfully speak about "what universities want", because various factions tend to expect free rein to pursue their goals, and there is no mechanism to get everyone pushing in the same direction.
- PaulHoule 2mo ago
  There are founders and there also are the rest of the startup workers. I felt my most valuable formative experience for being a startup worker was the summer I was back from college and the supermarket I worked at in high school felt they owed me a job even though they weren't really hiring. I was assigned 50% as a bagger in the front end and 50% a pinch hitter attached to the store manager who did whatever random things we needed whether it was deep clean the floor, paint a metal strip around the building, learn to work the meat slicer to sub for somebody in the deli, sub for people in the bakery, etc. That made me into somebody who did whatever need to be done, but people who haven't had that kind of experience get really hung up on job titles and think "I'm a data scientist, I don't need to do that."
netdevphoenix 2mo ago
> This is a very VC focused lens Just like mostly everything he writes about.
deleted 2mo ago
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deleted 2mo ago
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by bix6 2mo ago

watwut 2mo ago

> So we should let all those people suffer to promote a small group of founders by reducing course load? Yes, that is pretty much VC enterprenour philosophy in nutshell. It is value system that value only one small group only. And if that small group has to put in effort into learning in school or doing something other then building unicorns, that is a great unfairness.

palmotea 2mo ago
> Yes, that is pretty much VC enterprenour philosophy in nutshell. It's time we all admit the VCs are the best people, and we're just worthless in comparison. Anyone with any value at all is an investor or a founder. No one else matters. That's why neo-reactionary ideology is so profound: it would put those best people in charge, and clear all the useless garbage out of their way.
- tescreal 2mo ago
  It's frustrating that this could be read as entirely sincere in this 2026, year of our plague.
- Twey 2mo ago
  The libertarian take is surely exactly this, with the elitism either stripped out or pushed into the background (depending on your political bent): rather than employees and employers everyone should be a founder of their one-person company that raises money to do things that align with the interests of other individual founder-investors. Mind you, I'm not totally sure how this differs from employer/employee relationships in practice except I suppose that each side has less contractual protection from the other.

youngtaff 2mo ago

Article also ignore’s that very few founders succeed Has anyone ever plotted the lifespan of YC companies from each cohort? Most of them end up dead…

pj_mukh 2mo ago
N=1 but my dead VC funded YC company taught me more about the ins and outs of what it takes to run a complex successful engineering and sales operation than any number of years in business school or grinding in consultancies. YMMV you do have to have a different less nihilistic mindset but it really is a bit of a Neo in the Matrix moment because it lets you see through a bit of the corporate veneer to see the complex mess of personal and group foibles that run our major corporations. In the end it also ends up making you a 10x more effective worker if that’s where you end up even if just to protect your mental health by being able to explain what’s going on.
- gogo61 2mo ago
  Have you studied in a business school or grinded in consultancies?
  - pj_mukh 2mo ago
    Yes obviously. But just to caveat, its not YC or VC funding that is critical. It’s the act of building something and trying to sell it that is.
- ignoramous 2mo ago
  > VC funded YC company taught me more ... really is a bit of a Neo in the Matrix moment ... ends up making you a 10x more effective corporate worker if that’s where you end up No doubt there are learnings worth a lifetime, and changes that alter careers. You hope, the sense of superiority the experience seems to breed is not merely a coping mechanism, but an exercise in positive self-image [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34053801 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34053801

beklein 2mo ago

"In fact there are only two things universities need to change to be perfect at preparing founders: they need to make students feel that starting a startup is something they can do, and they need to encourage them to work on their own projects." I'd argue that both of these would be highly beneficial for all kinds of students, founders and non-founders alike. Starting a startup could be generalized for all students to having a dream or goal, taking ownership of it, and making it happen. A startup is just one possible path, pg is probably too specific here, I would agree. Having more free time to work on my own projects is probably the freedom I missed most at university. I think learning to choose what to work on and making something happen would benefit future workers, teachers, doctors, and engineers just as much as entrepreneurs. It's a trade-off in terms of time and other resources, since parts of the existing curriculum would have to fade away. But I think it's a good starting point for change and a good direction to move in.

TheOtherHobbes 2mo ago
Most engineering classes include projects, but they're presented as homework and/or "something you can show an employer." And "building things" isn't enough. Many projects have zero commercial potential. I don't think PG is wrong, but I also don't think he's right. I think if universities wanted to do something with startup culture they could filter the more motivated and talented students into incubators of their own - not through some kind of overly academic post-grad degree, but literally a startup school where the university provides resources, subsistence, and access to funding, in return for a share of project equity. The "teaching" would be more about finding customers and handling finances and less about managerial MBA nonsense. The big win for students would be "You don't have to worry about food, rent, or basic running costs." Post-grad research overlaps with this, but is more fundamental. The emphasis here would be more on projects with immediate income potential, not on technology that could be commercialised in the future, possibly. The problem is academic culture is very different to startup culture, so the startup school would need a much looser relationship to its parent than a typical academic department.

oytis 2mo ago

My first reflex would be to ctiticise PG, but after reading the article, I don't think I agree here. First he doesn't say universities should prepare founders - his advice is to those universities that do want to do that. Second, his advice is basically to skip BS business education and make students good professionals, well-rounded intellectuals, not afraid of starting a business. Anyone would benefit from such education, not only prospective founders

impendia 2mo ago
> those universities that do want to do that As a university professor, I've seen that all universities want to do everything. By which I mean, they employ all sorts of people who are pushing a huge range of agendas. You can't meaningfully speak about "what universities want", because various factions tend to expect free rein to pursue their goals, and there is no mechanism to get everyone pushing in the same direction.
PaulHoule 2mo ago
There are founders and there also are the rest of the startup workers. I felt my most valuable formative experience for being a startup worker was the summer I was back from college and the supermarket I worked at in high school felt they owed me a job even though they weren't really hiring. I was assigned 50% as a bagger in the front end and 50% a pinch hitter attached to the store manager who did whatever random things we needed whether it was deep clean the floor, paint a metal strip around the building, learn to work the meat slicer to sub for somebody in the deli, sub for people in the bakery, etc. That made me into somebody who did whatever need to be done, but people who haven't had that kind of experience get really hung up on job titles and think "I'm a data scientist, I don't need to do that."

netdevphoenix 2mo ago

> This is a very VC focused lens Just like mostly everything he writes about.

deleted 2mo ago

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deleted 2mo ago

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