

Ask HN: I am a CTO of a startup, should I drop out or defer school? - clockwork_189

Hey HN,&lt;p&gt;So backstory, I am a university Student in my third year of Systems Design Engineering and also the CTO of a tech startup that is starting to gain a lot of traction. So much so, that we pretty much got our first customers before we even finish building the product. Now as we are nearing product launch we have gotten so many calls from various companies and clients wanting to use our product that it almost seems possible we are going to be the next big thing to revolutionize the industry we are targeting. &lt;p&gt;Now here is my dilemma: I want to drop out or rather just defer my education and work on this full time because I am certain that we will succeed. However, I am afraid that in the off-chance it doesn&#x27;t succeed, that I will have trouble finding employment there after due to an unfinished degree. Of course I could still go back to school...but then again I dont know how that would look to potential employers on my resume. In terms of skill, I consider myself quite a qualified full stack developer(I have been handling front end, backend and some mobile development for my startup).&lt;p&gt;SO here is my big question, should I drop out&#x2F;defer my education or should I try doing school while doing my startup? Also, does any one have experience dropping out of school running a successful company then leaving it and finding a job&#x2F;starting another company? I would really like to hear your thoughts.&lt;p&gt;Thanks
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jacalata
Deferral will look much better than a semester where you failed everything
because you were working, and deferring to spend time seriously working on a
product will be a net benefit anyway. Think of deferring to work on a product
as being like a semester off to take an internship - remember how popular
waterloo grads are these days? That is in large part because they spend so
much time in internships/co-ops.

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prostoalex
Yeah, sabbaticals are not unheard of. I think Larry Page and Sergey Brin are
still on academic leave from Stanford, and only recently Harvard kicked Mark
Zuckerberg out after his sabbatical took longer than expected.

