

Ask HN: Startups - Education background - benregn

I've been wondering about education as I continue to read more and more articles and blogs about startups. Have people finished university/collage and then go on to found or work at a startup or do they drop out to pursue the startup dream? I've also noticed that when people actually discuss their educational background, often they are doing something different, sometimes completely different, than what they are educated in.<p>So I want to ask those who work at or have worked at a startup the following questions:
What is your educational background? If you dropped out, maybe summarize the experience which landed you in Startupland. 
What do you actually do? (Maybe include a job title, if relevant)
======
jiggity
I've found the most fun I've had was when I was working on side projects while
taking relevant courses. I ended up staying at MIT for all four years + an
extra year for their 1 year EECS Masters program. All during that time, I was
working on a variety of different projects. I purposely picked relevant
subjects like Machine Learning / User Interface Studies / Behavioral
Psychology.

Not only did it help me understand the subjects better, it let me master a
number of direct cross-applications into web products. It does wonders for
your creativity when you are actively thinking about new products while being
exposed to so many new techniques.

.

On the topic of dropping out, an aspect that gets underemphasized in this
community is how strong of an ideation muscle you have. Know that the more you
do it, the better ideas you come up with. School for me was an excuse to hang
around while taking a few classes while building new things. As each year
passed, I realized I got better and better ideas.

It would have been rough for me to drop out of school with the first few
"promising" ideas that I came up with. At that point in time, they seemed like
game-changers that would transform the world. Now I realize if you are the
person to come up with good ideas, you'll come up with great ideas later on.

Use those years in college to train up your ideation muscle along with your
implementation skills (web dev languages / backend management / mobile dev,
etc.) During your final year, apply to incubators using your uber skillset and
amaze everyone. Not only will you no longer have the temptation to return to
school, you will be putting yourself up for review when you are strongest.

It makes a much stronger statement to apply once and be awesome than to apply
twice and try to wow people based on how much you "improved".

~~~
benregn
Thanks for a great reply. What are you doing today?

~~~
jiggity
Hi Benregn,

Sorry I didn't see your response earlier. I ended up doing YC with the Summer
2010 class.

Continuing to work on the startup day-to-day. :)

------
sathishmanohar
I always wanted to become a scientist or a film director.

My Graduate degree is "Electronic Media" (kinda film studies). I quit pursing
my film career for now, as the signal to noise ratio is not favorable for me
here (India). Then, I bought my first computer to kill some time, to pirate
some movies etc. Then I thought, I should learn web design, So, I made a
decision to learn Photoshop, HTML/CSS and build cool orkut like websites in 6
months (yea I know, what a dumbass). I got upto speed in Photoshop, HTML/CSS
in 6 months, (I realized, I can't make dynamic websites with HTML/CSS), then
learned PHP, PHP was a mess. By, this time, I had a few clients through
referrals from friends, after successfully completing the job, I thought, "hey
may be we can start a web design business". So, Me and a friend agreed, we
should start a business, so we rented the cheapest place you could find for an
office space ($50 a month), and started our gig.

Since then, we are only 2 people, I was kind of demoralized, when I saw PHP
frameworks and ugly OOPs syntax. It seemed like a lot of work. Then, I
stumbled upon Ruby on Rails, I learned enough Ruby and Rails, Last year. RoR
reinstated my confidence, now we are building two consumer apps, while doing
client work. I'm hopeful, I'm on the right path,

Even more awesome thing is movie and entertainment industry is going to go
through disruption, so I have an instinct that, I may make a few movies. (Like
everybody is a photographer today, because of digital cameras).

Funny thing is internet has helped me more in the past 4 years, than my 17
years of schooling.

------
angdis
There are no educational "prerequisites" for working at a start-up. However, I
would say that self-taught folks without formal education are extremely rare
in technical domains start-ups or not. I have encountered no more than a
handful in 20 years.

That said, educational backgrounds are all over the map for many positions in
start-ups. What this means is that it is probably a bad idea to make
assumptions about what people can or cannot do based on their educational
background.

My degree is in Physics (MS-- bailed out of PHD to go to work). Don't use much
of what I explicitly learned, but the problem-solving practice of experimental
physics has served me well.

------
xxqs
After about 12 years in the industry, I started my own consulting company.
Does it count as a startup? I'm working mostly alone, and sometimes teaming up
with other freelancers.

Got a University degree, and happy about that. It taught me to work on the
problems in a structured way, no matter what subject.

~~~
benregn
Which field are you consulting in and subject did you get a degree in?

~~~
xxqs
Consulting: network technologies and software development

Degree: applied maths. That's not exactly Computer Science, as CS was not
taught well in Russia back then.

~~~
benregn
I see, thanks for your answer!

------
DyumanBhatt
It's a question of how bright and smart you are along with how much hard work
and stress can you handle.

Most successful startup founders in my area finish college, but it is not
required to be successful.

I am a Founder and CEO with an undergraduate in history and finishing up my
MBA.

------
alexkearns
Biochemistry degree, followed by 15 years as a magazine journalist/editor,
then a couple of years as a web developer. Now running a little software
development company. First product: www.tiki-toki.com - shortly to launch our
second product.

~~~
benregn
Were you an journalist/editor for a magazine related to biochemistry?

BTW, nice looking product. How is the traction? The text in #818181 was a bit
hard for me to read, have you done any A/B testing on the main page?

~~~
alexkearns
No, I was a business/architecture journalist. I have not once put my
biochemistry degree to any use. A bit of a waste of time to be honest, but I
had a lot of fun and got drunk a lot.

Traction for www.tiki-toki.com is pretty good, though not spectacular.
Launched in April 2011. We have tens of thousands of users and are profitable.

Haven't done any A/B testing on the main age. Been more focused on improving
the software following feedback from users. But will maybe look more at A/B
testing this year, once we have launched product no 2. Thanks for your
interest.

