

Ask HN: Should I quit college to pursue my dream? - naf

-- Current situation --<p>* 23 years old<p>* no degree<p>* studying CS (first year in college)<p>* knowledge of C/C++, Python &#38; Objective-C<p>* been repairing computers, cell phones (f.e. iPhone), ... since I was 18 (check my website)<p>* resentment against the way college teaches<p>-- My dream --<p>* building my own startup (eBay competitor)<p>-- Why can I succeed? --<p>* autodidact<p>* not afraid of working hard<p>* sense for UI/UX design<p>-- Why can i fail? --<p>* not being smart enough<p>* lacking experience<p>* being good, but nog good enough<p>* having no co-founder<p>* living in Belgium (the society in this country focuses on getting a good degree, not building a startup)<p>* finding no investor(s)<p>-- What keeps me from pursuing my dream? --<p>* fear of failure<p>* becoming poor if the startup fails<p>* not finding a job due to the lack of a college degree
======
wisty
Gut reaction, no.

Your competitors are huge and massively respected companies, like Craigslist,
eBay and Amazon, which have network effects on their side. Unless you can grow
in a niche (ala AirBnB ... but a different niche), and get very lucky, you
won't beat them before running out of money. I doubt you will get funding, if
degrees are so respected in Belgium.

Unless there's something you're not telling about your plan, it's too likely
to fail, leaving you 24 or 25 without a degree.

It seems your main issue is "resentment against the way college teaches".
College is like school - it's badly run, and sucks, but the people who say it
sucks are just being losers. Just accept the BS, do whatever it takes to pass
(including cheating, if it's the norm) and enjoy learning new stuff.

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lrvick
I will disagree with others here, and say (with disclaimers) to go for it.

A little background on me: I finished high school at 14, dropped out of
college at 16, and am now on my fourth company. Now, at 24, I have about 8
years real-life business experience and hands on technical field experience.
All time spent learning to be creative with technologies that are actually
used in the real world, instead of decade old tech. Dropping out was one of
the best life choices I ever made.

At my current company I literally can't even consider hiring most college
grads until after they have spent several years out of college spent catching
up to the the industry. At that point they are much older than me which can
make it awkward working for someone much younger. Not a single person fresh
out of college has had the experience required to pass the skill evaluation
tests I give to interested applicants. The majority of the people who HAVE
passed are ones who spent their time learning to manipulate and do new things
with cutting edge tech on their own, rather than memorizing the tech of 10
years ago in a classroom.

The reality is in today's tech world, the list of companies that care about
degrees is getting short, and most are not worth working for. Even big players
like Google, Facebook, and Twitter, typically hire engineers based on either a
degree OR "equivalent experience." If you prove you have the skills needed to
do the job, they could really care less where you learned them. If you did
unique and innovative things with the time you would of otherwise been in
school, it will probably INCREASE your odds with many companies. It shows you
are self motivated, can teach yourself new things, and get stuff done.

Go get the experience. It will put you years ahead in many respects, and save
you a lot of debt for a piece of paper that fewer and fewer actually care
about. Even if your idea fails, then open source it, show off the skill and
engineering that went into producing it, and move on to the next thing. A lack
of reaching a project's goal is only failure if you fail to learn something.
Take what you learned, regroup, and use that knowledge to do the next thing
even better.

I do want to make it clear however, that skipping college is actually the
_harder_ path. Don't have any delusions otherwise. It is also most certainly
not for everyone. To make it without college you need to be self motivated, a
hard worker, willing to fail and retry as many times as it takes, and good at
teaching yourself. If those are true for you, then if your time is well
applied, the benefits can be huge.

My TL;DR; advice: Don't spend your life wondering "what if?". If you are self
motivated then go do it. Keep the "education fund" in your pocket to pursue
your own ideas.

------
jorgecastillo
Should I quit college to pursue my dream?

No don't do it, unless you've been diagnosed with a fatal disease that will
shorten your life span to a few months, I don't see the reason to hurry.

>* building my own startup (eBay competitor)

If you think your startup will be able to compete with eBay today it's likely
that it will be able to compete withy eBay in a few years. They are an
established company after all they are very likely to purse a stable business
model. You could start actively working in your prototype in your free time,
so that when you start your startup you have a stable code base and you don't
have to code like mad. Have you calculated how much it will cost you to fund
this startup, do you have enough savings to last until you are profitable. The
legal aspect is something you should also think about although I don't really
know what legal problems there could be but. Just don't make any dumb decision
now like having kids or getting married, postpone this for later and you can
rack up some savings for your future projects. If you think your location
could affect your plans if you have a degree and try hard enough, I am sure
you could get a job in the US and eventually be on your way to open a startup
there (?).

>It seems your main issue is "resentment against the way college teaches".
College is like school - it's badly run, and sucks, but the people who say it
sucks are just being losers. Just accept the BS, do whatever it takes to pass
(including cheating, if it's the norm) and enjoy learning new stuff.

From my personal experience I can tell you that this is true. To make a long
story short, I dropped out of high school on my fourth semester. I stopped
putting in the effort to pass the subjects, especially Visual Basic 6 (I hate
Microsoft products) and because of this I only approved two subjects. My
classmate (another slacker) and I, had to do a project with all the stuff we
where supposed to know about VB6, but we didn't even had a fscking clue.
That's how much we slacked during classes, I even skipped some. We started
doing the project four days before the due date, we where reading and
downloading documentation like mad but yet we couldn't manage to finish on
time, a day before the due date me and my classmate where discussing the
possibility of cheating by buying the project from some older guys that knew
VB6. I felt that it was to much fscking trouble and bailed out. Even if we got
the project in, we would've had to approve a lot of global exams since could
only advance to the next grade with three failed subjects. No joke, I became a
NEET for two years in which I spent most of my time reading about Linux and
related topics. Just until recently I started going to night school (still not
working) to make up for the lost time. If I had worked hard in the beginning
or cheated and studied like mad at the end of that semester, I wouldn't be
telling this story. I don't regret those two years in which I spent most of my
time reading, I regret those two years in which I postponed the BS.

------
rcamera
I went through the same decision 6 months ago. We had a company going and were
ready to raise capital and drop college, but we decided otherwise. I am also
23, self-taught and I never liked college. Ever since I was allowed to surf
the internet by myself (at 9, in a dial-up connection), my curiosity and
patience permitted me to absorb a lot of knowledge "ahead of time". Because of
that, college was boring for the most part of it, even more boring when I got
into entrepreneurship and decided to start my first company with a friend. The
feeling of actually creating stuff and seeing people test what we built and
give feedback was amazing, even though most of the feedback was negative.
Before deciding to either drop college or close the company, we talked to many
entrepreneurs, angels and people we trusted.

Our decision to close it, instead of dropping, basically came down to a few
points. We didn’t have a working MVP that tested our idea, what we had was a
solid beta team and a half finished MVP, so dropping out of college would mean
that I would not have a solid foundation that would allow me to get back on my
feet, in case things went wrong (I live in Brazil, entrepreneurship and
failing aren’t seen as good things here; on average, degrees are valued much
more than the life experience of failing a company). I also ended up having my
doubts if we actually needed to drop out of college to build this, or if I was
just trying to escape the frustration of going to classes that mostly wasted
my time.

So, I ask you two things: Are you sure you are not thinking of dropping
college as a way of dealing with the frustration you (might) feel when going
to it? Don’t you think you can use the college as a sandbox for testing ideas
and working on interesting projects without having to deal with a) social
pressure, b) financial health and c) failing consequences? If you aren’t sure,
don’t drop it. If you think the frustration of going to some classes, is a
lower cost than a), b) and c), don’t drop it. I would also suggest you use the
social experience of going to a college in order to meet other people like-
minded, possibly even a cofounder for future projects, because the friends I
made through college are the ones I am taking with me for the rest of my life
and certainly the most valuable thing I am taking out of college with me.

------
keiferski
As someone who's in a similar position (I did drop out of college, partly to
build a company, but partly because it didn't make sense at the time):

1\. Your idea sucks, so don't drop out of school to start it. You need to find
a better idea.

2\. See if you can take a leave of absence, and also see how long your credits
are good for. For example, my uni's credits are good for 11 years; if I
twiddled my thumbs for 10 years, then came back, I would (presumably) have
lost nothing.

In the final analysis, you should drop out of college _for reasons that have
nothing to do with the college itself._ In other words, drop out because it
won't help you get to where you want to go, or because you have other things
to do. But don't drop out simply because it's boring or because you want to
stick it to the man. Once/if you drop out, you'll realize that.. no one really
cares either way.

Likewise, don't stay in school because it seems like the safe thing to do.
Life isn't a checklist, and you need to have a good reason for whatever you're
doing with your time. The idea of "using a degree as a backup plan" is no
different than "finishing a degree in the future as a backup plan", as far as
I'm concerned.

Being an anti-college revolutionary is all great when you're in school, but
once you leave your school's ecosystem, you'll realize that it's exactly that
- a small part of the world. (this is all from personal experience.)

~~~
naf
Really appreciate your input, but your statement about my idea is rather
brusque. You don't have a clue what my idea is about. It is possible to take a
leave of absence at my university, which I'm considering. I might even go to
night school getting a bachelor's degree while working on my startup during
the day.

~~~
keiferski
Sorry, that was a poor choice of words, and I apologize. But I still think
it's a bad idea, if only because you're going up against multiple billion
dollar companies. You're essentially a novice climber who wants his first
climb to be Everest.

Business isn't easy; you'll need every advantage you can get. My advice (and
what I'm personally doing, after being in almost the same situation as you) is
to build a smaller business first, specifically something that does not
require a network effect to be useful. In other words, a product that is
useful to a single customer without any other users. See stuff by 37signals
and most SaaSs in general for examples.

The end point is really that business is hard, and it's infinitely harder when
you go after something huge like eBay on your first try. That's not being
bold, it's being foolish.

Why not build something smaller to learn more about business, make a good bit
of money from that, and _then_ take on eBay? It is quite a bit easier to build
a 100k/year company than a 100million/year company. Plus, you'll have money to
bootstrap your company.

------
pace
Normally, I'd say it's hard to decide and I would tend to recommend to finish
your studies. But in your case it's different: You are studying CS and getting
an Software Engineer. You are on a market where the demand is so much higher
than the offer, thus there's no need to signal your skills through a degree.
Anyway, you'd learn much more and faster when doing a startup. Or in other
words: many reference projects and/or a great Github record is more worth than
a degree (and most good devs I know havn't a degree).

One thing I'd change: you location, Belgium seems to be nice, but you need
lots of peers in physical distance. So change to a city with a vibrant tech
community (Berlin).

------
valuegram
No, finish your degree while working on your dream. You will gain valuable
information along the way, and more importantly form relationships that will
help you in your future endeavors.

To be clear, I am of the standpoint that degrees are largely symbolic, but at
many times you will be judged on this (Potential Customers, Partners, VCs). It
is also reassuring to know you have a fall back plan.

Take the time to get as much out of your education as possible, and along the
way meet and build relationships with as many other driven individuals as you
can, and I promise you will find your time well spent.

------
jasonua
Probably not. Is your product near "complete"? If you have not started, work
on it in your free time. You should stay in school not because it's a safe
decision but because you will learn much more important CS concepts(unless
you're a genius genius) and get to network with others. You may get to connect
with others like you or any talent coders.

Ask this question once your service is gaining huge audience or attention.

------
blangblang
No. Get the degree now while it's relatively easy. The longer you're out of
the education system the harder it is to fall back into the student mindset.
If you're 'not afraid of working hard', work on your startup while pursuing
your degree. As an added benefit, I've got to think that your classes would be
a great place to find that co-founder you're missing.

------
nemik
If you're so autodidactic, why are you studying CS in school? Maybe stay in
and pick some other major that interests you and you can fall back on.
Otherwise if you're doing CS just to learn to program, you can save a lot of
money by just googling and doing your own things. Few people who hire you for
that type of work will care anyway.

~~~
naf
I'm only studying to get a degree. Without a degree, it's hard to find a
proper job in Belgium. CS has interested me since I was a teenager, that's why
I choose it.

------
impendia
I'm not familiar with Belgium, only the US, but why do you resent the way
college teaches?

There is some busywork and some BS up front, but if you suck it up, pay your
dues and prove to your professors that you're good (I'm assuming you're good),
then it quickly turns into not-BS, provided you're at a decent college.

~~~
naf
I can learn things quicker without going to college. College also teaches a
lot of things I don't need right now. I'm a strong believer that one should
only learn things when they're needed and useful. You're much more focused
then, which results in a better learning experience.

------
glimcat
If your business is growing too fast for you to have time for anything else,
that might be a good reason to take a break from college.

If you're doing badly in your classes, that might be a good reason to revisit
your study habits.

------
steventruong
Per a friend who overheard Steve Blank say this once:

"If you have to ask or second guess, then you already have your answer. You're
not ready." (paraphrasing)

~~~
naf
There's nothing wrong with having doubts. I feel it's actually immature
starting a company without considering all the options. You're just being
delusional then.

~~~
steventruong
There's a clear difference between carefully considering all the options vs
having doubts. No one said anything about not thinking through various options
and making intelligent decisions.

That said, I personally don't think there should be any doubts. It's like
working with a cofounder. There are a lot of things to consider, potential
issues that may arise, but regardless of what happens, doubts should not arise
between you two. In the same sense, you carefully weigh your options and only
YOU know yourself best. If you have doubts, you aren't ready because jumping
on an idea to pursue it full force can take a lot out of you.

You're free to disagree but calling the advice of a long time and successful
entrepreneur that many people respect and admire immature is an insult. To
which I say believe what you want.

------
Mz
If you have to ask a bunch of strangers on the Internet, the answer is
probably "no". If you ever get to "fuck you, I don't give a damn about your
lame, irrelevant opinion. I know what I'm doing and win, lose, or draw, this
makes the most sense right here, right now", that's the time to do something
"crazy" like that.

~~~
naf
You're absolutely right. Sometimes I let myself be carried away by the fears
of others.

