It's worth noting that YC's characteristics are slowly creeping into university territory. Facets and characteristics that make YC and universities successful:

It's worth noting that YC's characteristics are slowly creeping into university territory. Facets and characteristics that make YC and universities successful: - Strong alumni endowment (both capital and mentoring) - Reliant heavily on personal networks and connections to vet at scale - Critical of personal merit on application process - Application process are almost identical (mostly criticized on paper, followed by a very short interview) Couple all of this with the reality that: - Many famous tech entrepreneurs are known for dropping out of school (Zuck, Gates, etc) - Peter Thiel (and the PayPal mafia) are on a mission to fund children and have them skip uni - pg's view of university life as a model for allowing smart people the time and freedom to create innovative new products. I don't disagree that they are different entities, but in perhaps viewing through a particular lens, one could argue that there is little that separates how they behave at scale. Food for thought -- let's negate the application process for a second -- if you're a parent, would you send your child to a university that will cost $150k with no guarantee (but high likelihood) of a job afterward or would you rather drop $150k into your son/daughter's startup to then be advised by some of the most successful modern day business people. I mean, life isn't all about working, but, well, it is.