
How to drop out of college and start a venture-backed Social Network - jasonlbaptiste
http://www.jperla.com/blog/post/how-to-drop-out
======
frisco
Dropping out of college is often seen as a marker of huge success and drive.
In reality, it's just one path you can pick when answering the question,
"given this dream, how can I maximize my chances of realizing it?"

This is a little more subtle than it sounds. I left school after my sophomore
year and went on to raise a $1 million Series A from a blue-chip VC. A year
and a half later, I ended up back at University not in defeat, but in
realization that for my specific ambition there was more I could get out of
the university. I wouldn't call myself a student -- I'll always be a student
in that I'll be learning my whole life -- but I have as specific a reason for
being at the institution as I did for dropping out. Traditional "students" are
those who are in school without a better reason for why they're there.

There are a lot of potential businesses where it makes sense to be affiliated
with a university right now. There are also a lot where the right move is to
stop out and move immediately to SV. You _could_ drop out and still start a
biotech company -- but you'll most likely end up net-negative, spending 6
years quietly hacking away on very limited resources on the fringes before
breaking through. You _could_ start a spaceflight company without a degree,
but you're taking the hardest possible route to get there. If you're smart
enough to do that, you're smart enough to figure out how to do the minimum
possible work to get by in your classes, and spend the rest of your time
talking the university into giving you access to resources (and credibility)
you'd never have otherwise. It's not about the degree: it's about what you can
get out of the university while disguised as a student.

It's definitely easier now than ever before for great hackers to do well
without a degree. And you can certainly get rich down a lot of those paths.
But the really cool companies -- space travel, clean energy, biotech, and so
on -- can use the university for a lot for a few years in order to advance the
same goals before breaking off on your own. The two more years I have access
to subjects with _chips implanted in their brains_ and _tens of millions of
dollars of cutting-edge equipment_ is a springboard for any subsequent
activities, however inane classes might be. The opportunities are there if you
go and take them.

~~~
ljlolel
Great point, it's also a lot easier to do a medical startup if you have an MD

~~~
frisco
Yeah, like that -- in some extreme cases, it's impossible without the
credential. I bet in most of those cases you could slightly redefine your
problem to get around it, though. Surgical devices, for example: you could
probably develop the technology without a credential and once it demonstrably
works, collaborate with surgeons to continue as a business.

It's probably much easier if you've spent time as a doctor yourself, and
you're much more likely to get the time of day if you borrow on the
credibility of an institution you're affiliated with, but not impossible. Just
not the path of least resistance.

------
ch
This was an enjoyable read. As someone not yet even out of the gate, I think
the biggest take-away from this is that networking is by far the most
important skill an entrepreneur must cultivate.

I am technically skilled, but spend much of that skill on private projects,
and so have not learned the art of building networks with even technical
fellows, let alone business fellows (my business skillset is nonexistent).

The author appears not only to have natural network skills, but also a knack
for social organization, which clearly shows through in this article.

I have been slowly circling towards evolving a more social persona, and
communicating online seems like a safe first step.

I feel inspired today. Thanks for posting this.

~~~
ljlolel
That's funny you say that. I definitely have been working a lot on that
specifically over the last few years.

I'm actually a hard-core hacker. I'm running technology at Stickybits. I wrote
my own Python web framework, and released (what I think is) the best
templating framework in any language. (weby templates:
[http://www.jperla.com/blog/post/weby-templates-are-easier-
fa...](http://www.jperla.com/blog/post/weby-templates-are-easier-faster-and-
more-flexible))

~~~
ch
It was another article posted here (I think) detailing the history of some
pretty famous products (I remember the Super-Soaker being among those
mentioned) and how these wildly successful products all had rather humble
beginnings, and sometimes quite rocky starts.

It was a good read, since it reminds one that when you use someone (something)
else's success as a measuring stick you quite often are behaving much like the
blind men and the elephant.

I bring that up because while I was reading your post I completely forgot
those lessons learned and found myself both envious of your success and
disappointed in my relative lack.

Of course reading your reply here only helps to re-ground me yet again.

A funny coincidence, I too have worked on similar Python projects, only never
released them. In fact I have a HTML similar template system which made use of
‘__getattr__’ and ‘__call__’ to allow you to produce things like this:

    
    
        def pageSidebar():
          html = T.div(id="page-sidebar")(
                  T.div(
                    T.a("Add Page",href="?cont=addPage")
                    ),
                    T.ul(
                      *map(T.li,(nodeUrl for nodeType,nodeUrl in graphData.nodes_iter() if nodeType == 'page'))
                    ))
    
          return html
    

Of course this was before I could take advantage of ‘with’, so my product
looks a bit too lispy!

~~~
ljlolel
Yea, everyone always said that Python is no good for embedding in template
languages because of its significant whitespace.

Weby Templates proves that whitespace is actually an asset. A number of Python
templaters (like yours), lisp templates, and other language templates have a
system like yours, nested lists. But they quickly become unworkable, lack the
ability to do if statements (simple branching), and not having to put end tags
("))") is half the reason you use Python!

Python's whitespace proves to make a much better language for templates than
any other.

My "success" may look enviable, but it's luck. Except not quite luck. When I
visited California, I wrote a script to email over 200 companies. Only a few
replied. Is that luck, or did I make that?

------
tgriesser
Step 3: Test your assumptions and Step 6: Do your research

Probably the most important steps in the process, and I'm glad they were
addressed here...identifying a potential market, testing the viability of the
potential market and coming up with a plan... a plan that doesn't involve set
up social network involving "X", tell people about it/advertise, ?? , profit!

I'll admit when I read the title I though it was going to be an article
discussing why _not to_ drop out of college and start a venture-backed Social
Network, but I'm glad that it was much more realistic and insightful than
that.

------
jasonlbaptiste
It's funny Joe and I BOTH stopped out of college independently at the same
time. I saw him in Palo Alto and asked him what he was doing here. He said:
Oh, I dropped out of college, joined a startup early on. I said: Oh, me too.
We originally met in Miami.

Joe is probably a textbook play on how to go through this. When I saw him
again, it was on spring break where he had gone back to college after failing.
It was in Miami. He asked me: What are you doing here? I said: I failed, came
back to college. He had done the same.

