
Are there any unicorn co-founders who didn't attend prep school and Ivies? - DGAP
It seems like everyone from Gates to Blecharczyk went to private prep schools and then on to Harvard or Stanford. Is there anyone who DIDN&#x27;T have this advantage who made it in the world of startups and VC?
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jeremyt
Cofounder of thumbtack here. I grew up in East Tennessee, attended public
schools through high school and then got my bachelors at the University of
Tennessee.

For the record, I never went to a better school because nobody ever told me
that I could.

My high school graduation rate was somewhere around 50%, and when the guidance
counselors found out that I got a scholarship to the University of Tennessee,
they pretty much made a plaque to commemorate the success and then moved on to
the other kids.

It's a problem I'd like to work on in the next couple of years.

However, while I'm opining, I might add that I could be the exception that
proves the rule.

All three of my cofounders were Ivy educated, and a heavy proportion of our
early investors and advisors were either connections from their social network
or people who they met at the various Ivy networking functions.

I'm really not sure what to say about it. It's just how the world works.
People like to help people that they know, and when you go to an Ivy League
school it just so happens that the people you share a dorm room with are going
to be in a much better position to help you than my freshman year roommates at
UT.

The UT alumni Association, bless their hearts, can't seem to see any purpose
for contacting alumni except for donations and to organize football watching
parties.

My most successful friends from back home are lawyers, doctors, and small
business owners. My cofounders' most successful friends from back home are
venture capitalists, Stanford professors, and finance types.

~~~
aidenn0
If the guidance counselors _had_ given you advice, it would likely have been
wrong. After hearing a few friends in College complain about terrible advice
from their counselors, I thought it might just be that people only tell the
bad stories. So, I asked every single one of my college friends (mostly
Seniors) at the time specifically if they had gotten advice from a guidance
counselor, and whether they thought it was good. This turned up _more_ stories
of bad advice, but nothing positive.

This was at a state school in Indiana, so maybe just midwest guidance
counselors are bad, but it's still troubling to me.

------
zamland
There are a lot of founders: Wish Slack Credit Karma Uber (both founders)
Xiaomi Minecraft Tumblr

There's a lot. I suspect question comes from status anxiety. I don't really
think it matters.

~~~
saidajigumi
> I suspect question comes from status anxiety. I don't really think it
> matters.

Depends on your perspective. If it's mere "status", then no it doesn't matter.
Everyone has Buddha nature, etc., etc.

But from the perspective of "does privilege matter?" you'll get an entirely
different answer, which is why people in tech are paying a _lot_ more
attention to questions like this. A very, very narrow slice of the population
has any possibility of becoming a founder at all, much less of an ultra-high
valuation tech startup. That slice is far from random, it encodes a lot of
history we're not too proud of, and it is not just a star awarded for merit.

If you're reading this and this word "privilege" doesn't make sense in
context, it's time to do some homework. There's a lot being written on the
'net about this now, but I'll throw this out as random current starting point:

[http://gregorykatsoulis.com/2015/07/and-it-
worked/](http://gregorykatsoulis.com/2015/07/and-it-worked/)

~~~
zamland
The problem is that it's a false path and the logic doesn't quite make sense.
If Ivy league really matters, then you can deduce it to high school, jr high,
elementary school all the way to pre-school. Therefore if you're age 4, if you
don't get to the most elite pre-school, your life is over, just over. If you
make it an Ivy league, then your life is set. If you've been at one of these
institutions, you'll know both of these things are false.

~~~
saidajigumi
You are not really "getting it" re: the effects of privilege.

It's not that going to some particular school or even a set of them (Ivy or
no) matters _per se_. The effects of privilege exist on a continuum, and tend
to accumulate over time. In that article I linked, the filmmaker had fairly
extraordinary privilege via a long accumulation of access, education, peer
mindset, parental support, and resources. But that's perhaps an extreme
example. A lesser example: just the fact that a university student was even
able to consider college as a life path is _also a manifestation of
privilege_. For the most part, it points to an accumulation of parental and
peer support over the student's life. E.g. her parents valued school and
encouraged schoolwork, maybe tried to get her into a better school. She had
peer support for life-paths including notions of education, career, "bettering
oneself", etc. Peer support is especially interesting, as it also subsumes a
lot of class issues.

Memes matter, and speaking probabilistically, kids whose peers see no paths to
"success" in life can expect to have a hard time finding it themselves. We've
likely all seen tales of hugely successful people who rose from modest
backgrounds. That's the old story. The new one, the one we're just starting to
tell, is about the enormous waste of potential from _all those who didn 't
make it._

~~~
zamland
I understand your points. What you're talking about is middle class and upper
middle class privilege. That privilege is different than upper class, which is
implied by the original poster's comments on ivy league and boarding schools
like Andover. There's different granularities and levels of privilege.

------
pedalpete
You mention Bill Gates to Blecharczyk, what about Steve Jobs and Woz (Woz went
to Berkley, though I'm not sure that is considered in the same league as
Stanford, I could be wrong).

How about Stuart Butterfield (Slack), he went to University of Victoria in
Canada.

Here is the unicorn list according to Crunchbase
[http://techcrunch.com/unicorn-leaderboard/](http://techcrunch.com/unicorn-
leaderboard/)

go through the co-founders, I think you'll find only a small percentage went
to prep schools or Ivy Leagues.

~~~
atmosx
From
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Software_Distribution...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Software_Distribution#History)

"[...] Also in 1975, Ken Thompson took a sabbatical from Bell Labs and came to
Berkeley as a visiting professor. He helped to install Version 6 Unix and
started working on a Pascal implementation for the system. Graduate students
Chuck Haley and Bill Joy improved Thompson's Pascal and implemented an
improved text editor, ex.[2] Other universities became interested in the
software at Berkeley, and so in 1977 Joy started compiling the first Berkeley
Software Distribution (1BSD), which was released on March 9, 1978. BSD was an
add-on to Version 6 Unix rather than a complete operating system in its own
right. Some thirty copies were sent out."

I don't think that in 1975 Berkeley was all that bad for future computer
scientists. Seemed like a pretty good place to be actually.

~~~
pedalpete
I didn't mean to suggest that great things don't come out of Berkeley, but it
isn't normally talked about in the same list as Harvard, Stanford, etc.

Same with University of Illinois, where Marc Andreesen helped create Mosaic
and launch the consumer internet.

I suspect most universities can tie themselves to some modern massive success.

------
patio11
This seems like a silly thing to spend five minutes of your time researching,
as that is five minutes that isn't building a company (unicorn trajectory or
otherwise), but be that as it may the answer is "Yes, of course there are
founders of companies at all levels of success who didn't go to private prep
schools and then Harvard/Stanford/etc."

I had five pegged off the top of my head, plus the obvious answer of "Run down
the list of foreign-born founders you know." I'll elide naming them to avoid
even the appearance of suggesting there is something magic about particular
universities: all of their companies speak for themselves.

~~~
woah
It doesn't seem to silly to research aspects of the startup ecosystem that one
is part of.

~~~
caseysoftware
Only if that is a factor contributing to or reducing the likelihood of
success.

If it's completely orthogonal, it _is_ a waste of time because that's time you
could use doing/learning something that _does_ contribute.

~~~
bigmanwalter
If you know of any way to conclusively test whether or not something will
eventually be useful I'd love to hear more about it.

------
wwwong
Being someone who's against the obsession with pedigree in SV. I've noted a
few that came up outside of the Ivies:

Jan Koum, CEO/Founder of Whatsapp - San Jose State

Aaron Levie, CEO/Founder of Box - USC

Suhail Doshi, CEO/Founder of Mixpanel (almost a unicorn) - Arizona State

Logan Green, CEO of Lyft - UC Santa Barbara

------
oh_sigh
Travis Kalanick went to a public high school and dropped out of UCLA.

But really, this is the wrong question. Even if there were 0 examples of what
you asked for, it doesn't mean one can't come along.

------
obrero
You're correct, if you look at founders from Gates to Blecharczyk, this is
what you'll generally find. A few exceptions have been mentioned in the
thread.

It's something to bear in mind. I mean, of essays written and so forth - if
you're say, black - they don't apply to you. This is obvious - how many black
unicorn co-founders are there? I mean you rarely see a black programmer in the
Bay area, never mind a unicorn co-founder. Most essays about joining startups,
starting startups etc. are for the class, age group etc. of people who already
joined or started startups. There's no warning labels that these things are
not possible for certain people, but those people should understand that.

I mean it goes to all kinds of things, even what languages to program in.
People ask why things like Lisp never made it big - well, most people don't
have the time to devote to it. I mean even the idea of making something
original a few people love, and putting making money off - it's a wealthy
person's prerogative. People not born to the manor have to make money now, no
matter how smart or hard working they are, and the amount of time they can
devote to long-term or even medium-term goals is limited. This is how those
who control the forces of production have set things up, and it's important
for you to know it. People born on third base like to pat themselves on the
back about how brilliant they are. They used to say they were put into their
position by God, but in the modern world they have changed that to saying they
have better DNA.

------
LargeCompanies
Unicorn = lucky white or south asian man.

YC alums (majority) & Founders with VC = Ivy Leaguers

~~~
atroyn
I have a dozen or so friends who have done YC who aren't even American, let
alone from the Ivies. Don't make things up.

------
giancarlostoro
Notch made Minecraft, I don't think he went to any fancy schools, though I'm
only speculating.

Edit:

David Karp is another great example I suppose. He made Tumblr, and doesn't
even have a high school diploma.

------
jackcn
I've been reading Hacker News for a long time, and until now I've resisted
creating an account. It used to be that this forum was a collection of scrappy
founders, talking about building out their companies or particular engineering
techniques, or the latest front-end library. A lot of posts revolved around
helping each other out, either emotionally or technically.

This post represents its slide into a vapid gossip rag. Another reddit. Why
does it matter if a founder comes from an Ivy League school? Does that prevent
you from founding a company? People who end up going to Ivy League schools
represents a self-selecting bunch of go-getters, that's it. Successful
founders don't ask these sorts of questions, they just build.

------
oldmanjay
Let me ask you a question instead; what do you hope to learn from this? What
do you want to be true?

~~~
DGAP
I get where you're going with this. My interest in entrepreneurship exists
independently of the current "startup" scene, so the fact that it's dominated
by the upper class doesn't dissuade me from my current goals and interests. My
goal isn't to blame any lack of success on the unfairness of our quasi-
meritocracy.

It is interesting though to see a group of people who convinced that they are
on the progressive side of history admit that much of their success has been
achieved through the connections they made at their elite schools and through
their parents, which seems like the way business has always been done. But
what do I know, I'm just a middle class guy who went to a state school.

------
Buge
Both Larry Page and Sergey Brin went to public high school and then to public
universities for undergrad (University of Michigan and University of
Maryland). They went to Stanford for grad, but they still fit your query of
not going to private prep schools.

------
santaclaus
Jack Dorsey of Twitter and Square dropped out of NYU and went to Catholic
school.

------
mwhuang2
Brian Chesky (Airbnb) attended Rhode Island School of Design.

------
santaclaus
Airbnb was founded by RISD grads.

------
saryant
It's from the last tech go-round, but Rackspace co-founders Pat Condon and
Dirk Elmendorff went to Trinity University in San Antonio.

------
Anish123
Look at Flipkart from India. Valued at over $15Bn USD. They attended the IITs
in India yet build a world class company :) So to answer your question, there
are people who still make it big despite not having attended the Ivies!!

~~~
hammerdr
FWIW, IIT is an extremely prestigious school system in India that has
historically been geared toward the upper echelon of Indian society like
private and ivy league schools have been in the United States.

There have been some efforts to rectify that through quotas, though from
anecdotes of colleagues it sounds like it hasn't really been solved (e.g. no
proper support system leads to disproportionate dropout rates)

[https://www.quora.com/Do-you-think-Scheduled-Castes-SC-
Sched...](https://www.quora.com/Do-you-think-Scheduled-Castes-SC-Scheduled-
Tribes-ST-and-Other-Backward-Classes-OBC-reservations-at-premier-institutes-
like-IITs-are-justified)

~~~
aravingd
Don't rely too much on quora on the caste question. It is dominated by the
privileged. Please read other material that like
[http://ambedkar.org/](http://ambedkar.org/) and
[http://roundtableindia.co.in/](http://roundtableindia.co.in/) . There a lot
more sources as well. The problem of our country is that how hounded we will
be if we talk in support of the caste system where the majority are from the
upper caste. See the recent trouble with starting a ambedkar-periyar study
circle at IITM for an example.
[http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/services/educat...](http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/services/education/after-
iit-madras-ban-ambedkar-periyar-study-circle-spreads-to-other-
campuses/articleshow/47501675.cms)

~~~
hammerdr
Oh, for sure. I picked a source that had a lot of opinions that differed from
mine as to consciously oppose my bias :) Thanks for the other links!

------
wesleyy
Kik, Ted Livingston, University of Waterloo

------
mrdrozdov
Do the founders of Intel and Alibaba count?

~~~
vecter
The founders of Intel went to prestigious graduate schools. Gordon Moore went
to Berkeley for undergrad and Caltech for his PhD. Robert Noyce got his PhD
from MIT. Andy Grove got his PhD from Berkeley.

~~~
mrdrozdov
Prestigious graduate school is far from a private high school.

Wikipedia on Andy Grove: "He escaped from Communist-controlled Hungary at the
age of 20 and moved to the United States where he finished his education."

------
payne92
Yes, there are many, many examples.

Marc Andreessen grew up in Wisconsin and went to the University of Illinois.

I co-founded Open Market (a unicorn in tech Bubble 1.0). I grew up in West
Virginia in a trailer with no indoor plumbing & wood heat. Our high school
graduated 99 and about 10 of us went on to college. (I did go to an ivy league
school, but I strongly suspect it was on quota because WV was so
underrepresented.)

~~~
samfisher83
UIUC is one of preeminent comp sci schools in the country. It is where mosiac
was founded. It kind of shows that it helps to go to a good school even if not
an IVY.

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santaclaus
Stanford isn't an Ivy...

~~~
trentmb
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_League#Other_Ivies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_League#Other_Ivies)

------
bobosha
Drew Houston - MIT (not Ivy)

~~~
steven2012
Technically Ivy League is just a sports conference, it has nothing to do with
academics. But most people conflate it with the cluster of top, elite schools
on the East Coast, including MIT. So OP probably did mean MIT.

~~~
SamReidHughes
I've seen made this sort of public/private university distinction before, for
the purpose of generalizing (humorously) what kind of person you are, and
engineering schools were declared to be honorary public schools. So, not
necessarily, in fact, I'd wager probably not.

