The Zuckerg Effect: Thiel Fellows and College Dropout Entrepreneurs(ventureminded.me)
ventureminded.me
The Zuckerg Effect: Thiel Fellows and College Dropout Entrepreneurs
http://ventureminded.me/post/7003246527/the-zuck-effect
2 comments
I definitely agree it's an exception but the more blogs like TechCrunch publicize people dropping out (Thiel Fellows, Penn students from a post yesterday), the more prominent (and viable) it appears. The best option is to run the business at school, leverage the vast array of (usually free) resources on campus, and graduate with a startup AND a degree.
Precisely my thinking, U of I actually has a lot of services and resources for student entrepreneurship, all of which are essentially free or cheap. Plus the untapped knowledge from a community of like-minded peers. Not to mention the available support from professors, many of whom have walked this path many times before.
Clearly there are numerous successful entrepreneurs without college degrees, but would they have been even better served with 4 years of college under their belt?
No. Had billg gotten 4 years under his belt, he'd have worked for apple. Had Mark Z. done that, he'd probably have been a Google employee.
In both cases the result would have been okay, but nowhere near as good as becoming a world-changing billionaire.
In both cases the result would have been okay, but nowhere near as good as becoming a world-changing billionaire.
In my opinion, this effect stems from a misunderstanding in this now popular hacker-startup culture. Students are getting the idea that forming a startup is the end goal, when in fact it's just the beginning of a long road to being successful.
The Zuck/Thiel effect is not a trend, it's an extraordinary exception. Stay in school, kids.