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Drop Out and Innovate, Urges VC Peter Thiel
An anonymous reader writes "The San Francisco-based founder of PayPal and co-founder of Facebook is offering two-year fellowships of up to $100,000 (£63,800) to 20 entrepreneurs or teams of entrepreneurs aged under 20 in a worldwide competition that closes this week. With the money, the recipients are expected to drop out of university — Thiel calls it 'stopping out' — and work full time on their ideas. 'Some of the world's most transformational technologies were created by people who stopped out of school because they had ideas that couldn't wait until graduation,' Thiel says. 'This fellowship will encourage the most brilliant and promising young people not to wait on their ideas either.' Thiel says the huge cost of higher education, and the resulting burden of debt, makes students less willing to take risks. 'And we think you're going to have to take a lot of risks to build the next generation of companies.'"
Everything is more valuable than facebook.
And paypal? ha. hahahahahaha. "We know you hate our guts but we'll force you to use us anyway because a big auction company made us the 'standard'."
Neither is any example of the contribution i'd like to make in the world..
I'd really rather NOT be a scumbag.
If one of these drop-outs could figure out how to nuke Facebook and Twitter, they will be on to something. And I never want to hear about "apps" again. Back to Osmos...
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
But...but... Facebook is worth 33 BILLION DOLLARS!
They could sell the company right now and get ~$5 for every human on earth! And you *know* it's true -- it's been reported on the internet .
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
I mean seriously WTF is up with that? Just because I'm over 20 years of age means I don't have the ability to innovate?
The cultural belief is you're supposed to go to university right out of high school for 4 years, and then graduate into a great job with no debt. On a percentage basis, no one actually does this, which is why its called a belief not logic or evidence.
So, lets say you're 25 and you want to drop out and innovate... wait a sec, you graduated at 22 and have had the job of your dreams and 2.5 kids over the past 3 years, right?
I think it would be a wee bit short sighted to drop out one semester before you graduate, etc, so it seems pointless to run above 20.
The other problem is at this moment, culturally there is no such thing as an education that is too expensive, just like before the bubble there was no such thing as a house that was too expensive, or the shares of a .com always go up, or medical services . Since you will literally pay any sum of money, no matter how much, for those products, suspiciously that is exactly what they will charge. So, if the relatively no-name private engineering college two blocks from my workplace charges over $50K per year when counting all costs (I checked) there is little to no point of "funding" people whom are 21 and owe about $150K if you're only giving them $100K.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Doesn't really happen that often, from what I've seen. More often, mature students returning to school are returning because they realize the value of an education on account of having a hard time without it. Additionally, university gives students something that is hard to come by in the working world: an appreciation of how many diverse perspectives there are in the world. Don't get me wrong - success stories happen. But for every Steve Jobs and Peter Thiel, I bet you there are a hundred or more drop-outs (stop-outs?) with nothing to show for their sacrifice. I think it's irresponsible of him to take the highest achieving students and encourage them to leave university.
I'm a student. I write iPhone apps.
Doesn't really happen that often, from what I've seen. More often, mature students returning to school are returning because they realize the value of an education on account of having a hard time without it.
Not a big surprise. The ones doing well don't really have a reason to go back. I dropped out to go into IT over 20 years ago. I did well. I am at a company where the CEO dropped out to start thew company. We have a hard time hiring people, as the degreed people have no skills. so we bring in interns. Generally, we hire from that pool. Often before they graduate. There is more than one path to success. I have found that drive and hard work matter most, degree or not.
I've returned to school to study graduate computer science because I'm disheartened by what I see as over-reliance on quick and dirty frameworks and a departure from the fundamentals on teams that produce commercial software. I'm a lead at my job, but decided I can't really effect change on my team unless I am a master of those fundamentals.
I've only completed two classes so far, but both of them have really opened my eyes up to possibilities I've never considered. In addition to my original purpose I am discovering that learning these things is making me a *much* better developer. When you understand the history of a particular language feature or algorithm, and you can completely convince yourself that a particular approach is the optimal one it takes a ton of guesswork out of development and leads to better software.
I don't doubt that a person can learn these things without enrolling in a university, but have a professor and a TA as a resource, and being tested on your knowledge of the concepts I think really enhances the experience. It is infinitely easier to discipline yourself to study a topic when you have a test coming up and a grade on the line. As a bonus, my company has a pretty good education compensation program, so the debt question is moot. I plan on continuing until I get a master's degree.
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