Dear Professor(sw1tch.com)
sw1tch.com
Dear Professor
http://sw1tch.com/post/68881874611/dear-professor
4 comments
I hate this kind of shit. The plural of anecdote is not "data".
The vast majority of people who drop out of college (or let their grades slip) to launch startups end up in failure, financial hardship, and misery. You should not plan your life based on 5-sigma outliers.
The Internet is full of pro-startup propaganda and terrible advice. Move fast and ruin your life. It's bullshit.
No one is saying, "build your career, work hard and learn a lot, become really good at things, and get rich slowly." (In part, that's because venture capitalists hate the idea of a 15-50% per year growth company.) Instead, it's the "you could be a winner!" Tappy Tibbons nonsense.
Normally, this would just be a new generation of the same damn fraud that has always existed. However, given the perverted culture of age discrimination (chickenhawking) in the contemporary Valley it has become apparent that a whole culture has fallen for this "get rich quick, or you're a loser" nonsense and the massive wad of impractical, life-wrecking advice that comes with it.
The vast majority of people who drop out of college (or let their grades slip) to launch startups end up in failure, financial hardship, and misery. You should not plan your life based on 5-sigma outliers.
The Internet is full of pro-startup propaganda and terrible advice. Move fast and ruin your life. It's bullshit.
No one is saying, "build your career, work hard and learn a lot, become really good at things, and get rich slowly." (In part, that's because venture capitalists hate the idea of a 15-50% per year growth company.) Instead, it's the "you could be a winner!" Tappy Tibbons nonsense.
Normally, this would just be a new generation of the same damn fraud that has always existed. However, given the perverted culture of age discrimination (chickenhawking) in the contemporary Valley it has become apparent that a whole culture has fallen for this "get rich quick, or you're a loser" nonsense and the massive wad of impractical, life-wrecking advice that comes with it.
I think your missing the point of this nice little story. A student is asking for (an presumedly got) some slack because of conflicts with the student's outside business activity. The student then writes a note 2 years later validating the professor's decision.
Its not data or a trend, its just a thank you.
Its not data or a trend, its just a thank you.
I'm the author of this post.
I agree that there is thin line dividing the positive or negative sentiment towards schooling here.
In some ways school was incredibly valuable, I met my co-founders at Rutgers and this class specifically helped develop the company.
At the same time the classwork was getting in the way and I needed to push it aside to help get the company off the ground.
I agree that there is thin line dividing the positive or negative sentiment towards schooling here.
In some ways school was incredibly valuable, I met my co-founders at Rutgers and this class specifically helped develop the company.
At the same time the classwork was getting in the way and I needed to push it aside to help get the company off the ground.
You seem really unnecessarily angry. Not every single post that has to do with a VC or a startup doing well needs a grandstanding "this is horseshit; vc's are bloodsucking vampires; stupid kids get off my lawn" type of response.
Who is saying that this is data? It's just an inspiring little anecdote. Even if he hadn't sold his company the time spent hustling to get it started might still have been more valuable than getting A's on those article summaries.
Meh. This guy did well, and I thought the post was cute. You should try yoga, I think.
The discovery of the Higgs Boson was based on a 5-sigma outlier if my memory serves correctly.
What 5-sigma means in that context is it would take a 5-sigma outlier to explain the observations by chance alone.
Okay. That actually makes much more sense. Thank you.
No one is trying to determine statistical significance here! Why the negativity?
Prof - "C-, would not work in the real work"
Wikipedia:
"his professor told him that, in order for him to get a C, the idea had to be feasible"
"his professor told him that, in order for him to get a C, the idea had to be feasible"
I had to do some searching to get the context here, so for anyone else similarly confused: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_W._Smith
This (apocryphal) quote is attributed to Frederick Smith, who described an overnight shipping company as part of a paper for an economics class at Yale. He later ended up founding FedEx.
This (apocryphal) quote is attributed to Frederick Smith, who described an overnight shipping company as part of a paper for an economics class at Yale. He later ended up founding FedEx.
Some people were questioning if these emails were real ("who tells their professor they're slacking?"). I have always chosen to communicate in an open and honest way.
I'm particularly happy that I was able to dig up this email because it paints a great picture of our early hustle. We would find hackathon events any way we could and RSVP right away. Much to our surprise, not every hackathon has a place to stay overnight, so we often ended up crashing on our friend's couches. In one specific case I remember pushing 8 chairs together to form a bed.
At the first hackathon we released Hacker League at, our friend challenged us to sign up 10 events.
When I presented the company to this class I remember ending the presentation with "This is a real company, and we've run 13 events to date." The professor shouted that that was "a success" and that I should be very proud. Since then we've powered hundreds of events.
At the time it wasn't clear if we were developing an app for hackers, people who were interested in hackathons, organizers, or just anybody in tech. We weren't really sure what we were building, just that we wanted it for ourselves.
I think a key part of our success was determining a market and sticking with it (thanks professor). At some point we declared Hacker League as "a platform for hackathons" and although the site was used by everybody in attendance, the focus was on organizers. If the organizers used it, so would the attendees.
A huge benefit of the hackathon format that for every hackathon we attended, there were a few people in the audience who were either organizers or thinking about organizing an event. This helped the site go viral within the hackathon community.
You also might remember me from Mote.io, an app I launched a few months ago on HN. http://mote.io