

Is startup success more difficult than tenure in a top research university? - amichail

Anyone know how the statistics compare?
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_delirium
I think it'd be hard to directly compare statistics, because the timeframes
and mechanics are a lot different.

Startup success, for some definition of success, tends to happen or not happen
within five years or so; while the hurdles to become a tenured professor at a
top research university are much more spaced out. Typically, it's 5-8 years of
grad school, possibly 1-3 years of a postdoc, and 6-7 years being untenured
faculty. At any one stage, the odds in academia are not that bad; for example,
if you're an untenured Stanford prof, your chances of becoming a tenured prof
are actually quite good. But you have to make it through the whole 15-20-year
process to get there.

As a result, startups also have more iterability: if a startup fails, you can
plausibly try a second, or a third, perhaps taking totally different
approaches each time. You can't really do that with an academic career path,
since the time needed to get through the process and build a reputation makes
it nearly impossible to decide, "well, going for a CS faculty position at CMU
didn't work, maybe I'll go back to grad school and try for a philosophy
professorship at Oxford this time".

On the other hand, since it's a whole career rather than a single venture,
it's less clear what "success" or "failure" is for an academic career, unless
you _really_ have your heart set on a very specific goal. For example, if you
end up not being able to get the tenured position you want, but do end up
working at a research lab in industry doing interesting stuff, is that a
success or failure? With startups it's usually clearer that either it's in
business or it isn't after five years.

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gregpilling
You probably won't find any statistics, but I can give you some personal
anecdotes. I met my wife two weeks after she got a tenure track job at a tier
1 university. She spent 5 years working very hard - weekend, nights, no
vacations - and got tenure (after writing a book and publishing a dozen
papers). Part way through that process I started a company that grew within 4
years to 20 employees. From my perspective it seems like it takes similar
effort and dedication. Or a my wife puts it "nobody gets a PhD and tenure
because they think it would be nice to have. It is just too much work if you
are not committed".

So if you are considering one or the other, think of them as the same amount
of work. I would choose the startup. As _delirium says it is much easier to
fail and start over with a startup than it is with tenured professor jobs.
Some people don't get tenure, I personally know two people that didn't make
it. Also consider that when you are a professor there are very very few jobs
to choose from. There is only one university within a 100 miles of my house
that my wife could work at, so how can she change jobs without us having to
move? The number of academic couples that live in different cities for work is
staggering. My wife was offered a job last year that was 2000 miles away which
would make it a tough commute. For a final thought, I have tried to convince
my wife to move to private industry for the past 5 years. She won't even
consider it, but if she did move she would get paid much more and have many
more job choices.

