

Is it worth starting a company in college? - rajat1996
http://www.forbes.com/sites/schoolboard/2015/08/17/why-college-is-the-best-time-to-be-an-entrepreneur/

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JoeAltmaier
Like Bill Gates did? Like Steve Jobs did? Like Michael Dell did? No, I suppose
it isn't worth it.

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onion2k
Those founders are interesting, but they're not typical. They're outliers. If
you want to assess whether or not the distraction of a business is worthwhile
you need to look at a lot more data - I have no idea whether or not it'd be a
good idea, but I woulnd't be very surprised if the majority of businesses
founded during college fail (because the founder tries to do their degree as
well) or the founder drops out of college and the business subsequently fails
in the first few years (because 50% of businesses do).

But that isn't to say it's not worth it. It depends on the founder, the idea,
the market, the funding, the timing, and more.

This is not a simple 'sure, because look at these billionaires!' question.

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JoeAltmaier
Hm. Outliers. Lets calculate the 'expected value', the average return we can
expect statistically. Thousands of college startups. Three sucessess valued in
tens of billions.

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onion2k
Taking the market cap of three hugely successful companies and dividing it
across all the moderately successful and failed businesses doesn't mean
everyone in that set is a success. It just means you're abusing statistics to
pretend they're saying something they aren't.

To draw an analogy, averaging the value of those companies between all the
companies started is like saying "Onion2k and Usain Bolt ran 100m, and on
average Onion2k ran it in 15s!" That doesn't mean I did, and it wouldn't mean
I qualify for the World Athletics Championship.

