

Graduating from an elite university may not ensure entrepreneurial success - MichaelTroy
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/aug2007/tc20070830_254262.htm

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vessenes
I completely agree with this article. I'm a successful entrepreneur with an
Ivy degree, and I've spent a lot of time with Entrepreneurs from around the
world. A surprising number didn't go to a 'top-tier' school; by surprising, I
mean to say that where I live if you throw a brick at a law firm, marketing
agency, publisher, or accounting firm, you will hit a bunch of Ivy grads. If
you throw a brick at a successful startup-CEO meet-and-greet, you will hit a
bunch of immigrant kids, local 'townies', and 1 time in 15, someone with an
MBA, (usually from a top school.) This is so prevalent that at a recent dinner
I had with a highly successful real-estate developer, I was shocked to learn
that he went to Harvard. I expected him to be a local non-Ivy grad, given his
huge self-made business success.

I've come to a similar conclusion that the author of the article does: risk-
aversion is real, and prevalent for Ivy grads. This is probably for a mix of
reasons -- I could imagine wealthy students not 'needing' the success as much,
and poor ones saddled with loans which make risking much harder. I started out
in a risk-averse career, management consulting, but I just couldn't hack the
lifestyle and people, and left to do something that was crazy and eventually
much more lucrative.

~~~
thomaspaine
From my own personal experience of having a degree from a prestigious
university, my main source of risk aversion when it comes to startups is
opportunity cost. Job offers of +100k a year for a 25 year old are really
tempting when you've just spent the last 25 years wondering if you have enough
money in your checking account to afford a double cheeseburger.

There's also a lot of pressure from society, family, etc, to go out and "get a
real job" once you've graduated, because that's how most people define
success. School is a major investment of time and money, and graduating from a
prestigious school sets high expectations for that investment.

EDIT: Just to be clear, I'm not arguing that it's a good idea to give in to
these pressures/temptations. I'm just saying that they exist, and perhaps more
so for people who graduate from prestigious schools.

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mbadoiu
I think his view is distorted a bit. Take HBS statistics for example: 40% of
graduates found a company at some point. 40%! Top business schools know how to
create entrepreneurs and teach people how to take risks.

The problem is that the engineering education and the MBA education are
totally different to the point of being orthogonal. There are 2 distinct
cultures formed by science geeks and MBAs. The entrepreneurial view of the
world is taught in business school while the engineering school produces
engineers and scientists. The problem with tech entrepreneurship is in
education. An engineering student is unlikely to take an entrepreneurship
class because that belongs to the MBA crowd. Such a pity.

PS I also have an issue with MIT. The students there, especially the ones at
PhD, are strongly pushed towards academia rather than creating a business. I
went there to school and when I took the "new enterprises" class and I was the
only student in the class that was not in business school.

~~~
DTrejo
_Top business schools know how to create entrepreneurs and teach people how to
take risks._

Or they just know how to attract entrepreneurs.

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ramanujan
Statistically illiterate article full of wishful thinking. Let me count the
ways.

1\. Most important: it is highly likely that elite university graduates are
_enriched over background frequency_ among tech startups, and furthermore that
the degree of enrichment increases with financial success. Google, Yahoo,
Facebook, Microsoft, VMWare, etc. were all founded by people
admitted/affiliated with Stanford or Harvard.

At least one person quoted gets the statistical fallacy here of this, but
Wadhwa quotes it without understanding how it demolishes his argument:

> He notes that IITs only graduate 5,000 of India's 176,000 engineers every
> year, and that based on the number of companies started by its graduates,
> they were five times more likely than others to start tech companies.

2\. Elite university grads are elite because they are the best in the world at
hard science. Obviously they are more likely to understand stuff like
restriction enzymes, operating systems, and machine learning than your average
Directional University grad.

3\. I _HIGHLY_ doubt that UW is producing more "blue chip CEOs and university
professors" than Stanford and MIT. UW-Madison _does_ have a very good biology
PhD program but this claim just does not pass the smell test.

4\. Note also that "blue chip" is considered a compliment in certain parts of
the article ("blue chip university professor"). This is a common self-
contradictory refrain I've heard among critics of elitism. "Oh yeah? Well it
doesn't matter if I didn't get into your fancy school, because I work at
Google now." In other words, they're not attacking the idea of elitism or the
validity of a name as a signaling mechanism. They're contesting the much more
limited point of whether undergrad pedigree alone is the signal. Of course it
is not and this is a straw man.

5\. Lastly, I guarantee that someone has recently asked Wadhwa to name "his
school". It is Harvard, as he is a fellow at Harvard. Was he an undergrad,
grad, or faculty there? Then he's a Harvard man. Obviously he recognizes that
"elite colleges" are marks of quality or he wouldn't include it as the first
thing in his bio.

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grellas
For the past decade, the majority of entrepreneurs (at it is a growing
majority, year-by-year) I have represented in my early-stage startups have
been immigrants who did not attend elite schools.

This group is smart, innovative and, above all, _hungry_ for entrepreneurial
success, and eager to sacrifice in order to achieve it.

The elite school grads can, of course, also exhibit a similar entrepreneurial
vigor but most often don't - I don't know if it is an entitlement mindset or
aversion to risk, but they are the exception and not the rule among those I
have represented in connection with startups (several thousand entrepreneurs
in all since I started doing this in 1984).

I can't speak for the broader world, but this is the clear pattern I have seen
among early-stage (largely bootstrap) startups in Silicon Valley in recent
years.

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codexon
The author likes to talk about Ivy grads having risk aversion, but how do you
explain cases like Bill Gates where they were so rich to begin with, there
wasn't much being gambled on?

Wouldn't it make more sense that these type of schools have richer students
with safety nets that allow them to take riskier ventures?

~~~
Mz
Bill Gates didn't graduate. He dropped out. Different mentality entirely.

~~~
codexon
Well I suppose you are technically correct. But Bill did go to a rich and
fancy private school which is somewhat like an Ivy.

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ideamonk
Today I met a great Debian Hacker who works with an MNC. He was into gold
business and is from commerce background. After knowing this from him, I
understood one thing - its the interest should be driving us, and its worth
spending more time developing interest in something rather than trying tested
paths.

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motters
As far as I can tell from direct personal observations there is very little
correlation between academic success and success in business/industry.

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kingkawn
Add it to the list.

~~~
stse
Is this list called "Compare a very small group of people to the rest of
society and claim they are doing badly?".

People who attend "elite" universities are far more likely to be successful.
This of course might not have anything to do with the actual education.

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rick_2047
Well in my opinion the graduates from the so-called elite Universities with a
science or tech. degree are not at all supposed to found a startup at all. I
mean they are trained in the finest art of making things possible by using
science and engineering not giving a sales speech or making a marketing
strategy. These are the things to be done by people from management schools.

Also if a engineering graduate is willing to start a start up he would first
like to go to a management grad school. Like the example the author gave for
the IIT students, they are not at all trained in even the nominal management
skills. The sole purpose of an IIT is to make a promising engineer. The indian
government set up these IITs to give india some quality engineers. Not start
up people.If he had to look at the start up scene in India he should have
taken a look at IIM grads. I dont exactly know about others but the best IIM,
the IIM - Ahmedabad is in my city and I know definitely that there graduates
are more inclined towards making a start up than getting a job. Also IIM also
provides funding to make it much easier for them.

