
Student Entrepreneurs: If Peter Thiel Calls, Hang Up - npalli
http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130926030101-29380071-adult-supervision
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tptacek
There's a valid point in here about the way the structure of the Thiel
program, with its strain of radical individualism, might blind new
entrepreneurs to the idea that most of them shouldn't be CEOs. I think more
entrepreneurs should try to grok this idea. Even people who are "born leaders"
don't necessarily belong in the CEO role, because CEOs need to be more than
leaders. They often also need to be moderating influences, level-headed,
execution-focused, and accountable. I've been in startups since I was 18 years
old, and have started multiple companies, and would not hire me as a CEO.

Unfortunately, the article makes that point by inflating the importance of
management theory and by suggesting that college is somewhere you go to pick
up a trade. So, someone else should try to write the good article that makes
the CEO point.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Yes, this would be a really good article if it made a completely different
point.

~~~
tptacek
If I'm mistaken, and it's not trying to make the "CEO argument" I was playing
with upthread, you could correct my mistake using evidence. I read the article
and I don't think I'm mistaken, but would love to be surprised.

Otherwise, I'm not sure of the point of your comment.

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ebiester
...Says the man who went to school when the opportunity cost wasn't a decade
in debt (at the very least).

If you succeed, then you didn't need school. If you fail, then you can always
go back to school afterwards. I don't see the downside of the Thiel
fellowship, at least on its surface.

~~~
jeffasinger
There are plenty of school options that involve much lower debt than that. You
don't need to go to a school that costs $50k a year, there are plenty of
alternatives.

~~~
enraged_camel
There are plenty of alternatives, but do they provide the same quality of
education for your degree of choice?

~~~
zalzane
Why wouldn't they? It's not like MIT/whatever uses special books that no other
uni can use. It's not like prestigious universities follow some special
program that makes it so their students gain a much better insight into the
subject than people who go to other universities.

The perks of attending a prestigious university typically has nothing to do
with your education. It has to do with rubbing shoulders with blue bloods,
creating a powerful social network, and being able to woo people with the
pedigree associated with the words "MIT graduate" on your resume.

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tobyjsullivan
I appreciate the article and the point of view but I have to disagree
completely with his recommendation that you spend your years working for
someone else before you launch your own business.

He talks about working for a company after finishing college to learn about
how they operate and do business. You know what I learned in the five years
after college I worked for a company as a dev? A whole lot about software
development. Nothing about hiring (beyond what I gleaned while interviewing),
basics of management and nothing about marketing or sales. You know what I
learned in the first few months of trying and failing to launch a business? A
heck of a lot about everything, including a lot more about software
development.

Working in my trade for a few years out of school made me very good at what I
do but it certainly did not make me a very good entrepreneur.

~~~
RougeFemme
I agree that working for another company doesn't always make you a good
entrepreneur. But I do think that, depending on the size of the company, the
dynamics and your role within the company you can learn, for free, a lot about
what _not_ to do, particularly regarding the basics of management. And
regarding hiring, you can learn, what you _actually_ want/value during the
interview and in an employee vs. what you _think_ you want.

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boon
If Peter Thiel calls you, it might make sense to at least hear him out.
Slamming doors is rarely a good approach to life.

And school will always be there to go back to.

~~~
vinceguidry
I don't think it's really worth going back to school. I dropped out to join
the military. (Later left that too) 10 years later, every time I think about
going back I think, "why?". I've already got a job, and I make decent money.
I'd learn much more, faster, by taking on more responsibilities here than I
would in some sandbox environment. Unless I went to, like, Harvard or
something.

~~~
maaku
... which is actually an argument for staying in school in the first place.
Once you're out, the realities of life make it very difficult to go back.

~~~
nostrademons
Is it? That argument assumes that school is worthwhile in the first place. If
you assume your conclusion, it seems an awful lot like begging the question.

If you don't go to school, live your life, and find out everything is just
hunky-dory without it - what exactly have you missed out on? Maybe you were
right in the first place, and can congratulate yourself on making wise
decisions that turned out to be vindicated in the end?

~~~
maaku
The OP said he has thought about going back multiple times. Obviously it has
_some_ value to him.

~~~
nostrademons
...and then decided against it every time, so obviously it has less value to
him than other things he could be doing with his life.

~~~
maaku
...a life which is much, much more complicated after leaving school, serving
in the military, having a career, starting a family, etc. If school has any
value to you at all, the utility of finishing school vs dropping out is higher
earlier in life than later. Maybe for some people it makes sense to drop out
(Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg being canonical examples). But for most people
the decision isn't so clear-cut, and going back becomes tremendously more
difficult as time goes by.

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kippn_it_real
There seems to be a consensus here that all big corporations are inept and the
all that you can learn from them is what not to do. Only ~5% of startups are
successful while 100% of big corporations were at one point. If you can't
learn anything from Big Corp you aren't trying.

~~~
hobs
Yeah, I encourage people to go work for one for a year or two to learn all the
stupid things they do and the ways they are vulnerable. Also to understand why
you should love what you are doing now.

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auggierose
Also, yes, hiring is difficult. Do you really think you are learning how to do
it properly by working at Big Corp first?

~~~
zhemao
Well, you will at least learn how not to do it.

~~~
thejulielogan
Not true. Rarely do you (a cog) see the hiring process (a different cog) used
by your massive company (the machine). Especially when you're just out of
college.

~~~
nostrademons
Hmm? I've done interviews for both of my past two employers. The first one was
a startup, but the second one is Google.

Do the big companies you work for not have people interview with employees in
their particular role? It seems relatively common among my friends for them to
be interviewing people just 1-2 years younger than them, either for
internships or to fill the position they're about to be promoted out of.

~~~
thejulielogan
A startup isn't a massive company and Google is notoriously atypical with
transparency and inclusiveness with hiring. Even so, just conducting an
interview is far from learning about the thought process behind the actual act
of hiring.

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npalli
“I'm a crotchety old guy. I worry about all these new companies. I'm glad that
they're easier to start, but the problem is, they're just as hard to finish as
they have always been”

This is a great observation from Mike Olson. I think a lot of people who are
dropping off to start on the entrepreneurial path vastly underestimate the
difficulty of building a company to a point where they can sell or IPO or get
just get a good return. Lot of the startup-lore is built around expectation of
success that has vastly diminished in the last few years and we will soon find
a lot of people who are thirty-five, have worked through three-four failed
startups and nothing to offer to the broader world.

If you look at number of seed accelerators in the US[1], we have about 175.
Every year about 3000 companies are formed and a vast number of them fail.
Take the top accelerator in the country (perhaps the world). YCombinator. It
has funded about 550 companies, pg is rightfully proud of the value created.
However, if you took out the top 10 of them I suspect 99% of the value goes
away. I remember just AirBnB and Dropbox making 75% of the value. Think about
it, even if you came out of YC, you have a 2% chance of success. That means if
you even if you join a startup accelerator in Middletown, USA your chance is
probably 0.5% and if you don’t even get to join a accelerator it is probably
even less (0.1%?)

I suspect a lot of people still think there is a 5% chance you will succeed in
a startup. That was the case 15 years back. With a 5% success rate, you could
possible iterate to a better than even odd of success if you went through 3-4
startups. If you were told you have a 0.1% chance of success, it is more of a
random crapshoot. What is it that you will learn and show after 3-4 attempts?

The other option of going to college, working for a big company and the
associated payoff hasn’t changed much. If the startup option is now 50 times
riskier, you need to think hard about your choices. Maybe you are an optimist,
that’s OK but don’t default to choices.

[1] [http://www.seed-db.com/accelerators](http://www.seed-db.com/accelerators)

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jasonwatkinspdx
This is an important point, but it also shouldn't be overstated. There are
many examples of where professional managers lacking passion and personal
interest in a business's market have hindered more than helped.

As Thiel often says a variety of ways, copycat behavior is unlikely to produce
success in a high risk/reward context like a startup. You need an information
advantage, and often that advantage is someone who knows their own itch very
well.

I also hate that the meme for this has become "adult supervision." It's such a
patronizing and self-aggrandizing description.

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polarix
In some sense, though, most of these situations _do_ see the founders learning
management on someone else's dime.

It's just a segmented capital super-structure, rather than a traditional
corporate system.

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colinbartlett
"Management is a tremendously undervalued skill on the tech startup scene, and
that single fact contributes, I believe, to the failure of more companies than
any other factor."

Truth.

~~~
seiji
If a company let's children be managers without any prior experience or
training, the company should force all their child prodigies to _at a minimum_
read [http://www.amazon.com/Great-Danes-Barrons-Dog-
Bibles/dp/0764...](http://www.amazon.com/Great-Danes-Barrons-Dog-
Bibles/dp/0764197541)

~~~
rpedela
Why?

~~~
seiji
If you can't learn how to manage a dog, what hope do you have in managing
multiple divergent human personalities?

~~~
kyzyl
Sorry but that's a pretty outlandish statement. dogs may occasionally act like
people, and they may require management, but they are not people. It doesn't
follow that if you can't/haven't managed dogs you have no hope with people.
I've done both and it's a different ball game.

~~~
seiji
I've worked under multiple managers who: gave no positive feedback, set no
expectations, and provided no treats.

That's really the minimum you should do with dogs or people.

~~~
UK-AL
"gave no positive feedback" "provided no treats"

Seriously? If you try to control people pain and reward system, most people
see through it and hate you for it.

You want them to have a innate feeling of accomplishment. You completed
something difficult? And that felt good. You don't need cookies from a master
for that.

The number one thing you need to do, is set something up which they can
measure themselves against. 90% of the time people will enjoy improving it,
without any input.

~~~
seiji
The world isn't full of self-involved creatives who just want to create to
create. Most people like being rewarded (money), promoted (power), and growing
in their positions (knowledge).

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rpedela
Seeing how successful companies work is extremely valuable. No company is
perfect so you get to see what works and what does not. If your idea is
something highly technical, then the degree (or equivalent experience) is very
important. Name one highly successful company whose product is highly
technical where the founder was not also technical? I cannot think of one
myself.

~~~
gotrecruit
apple?

~~~
rpedela
Woz was/is extremely technical. Steve also knew how to build computers
although not great at it.

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szany
This is good advice, because the right sort of person to be a Thiel fellow
would read this and scoff anyway.

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thejulielogan
He reduces the entire situation to two options. What I've learned from being
in a startup? There are never just two options. His article does students a
massive disservice by creating just an A or B scenario.

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wellboy
You can gain more "experience" before you try to do your own thing, however
the more experience you gain, the worse you become at creating the next
billion dollar startup. For every year that you don´t start your own business,
your capability to think large and taking risks and your resourcefulness
dramatically declines.

That´s the reason why none of the four horsemen in tech, Google, Apple, Amazon
or Facebook were founded by founders over 30.

Looking at all the other billion dollar startups Microsoft, Dropbox, Airbnb,
Twitter, Instagram, Waze, Paypal, Tumblr none of their founders were over 30.
See a pattern? There are probably billion startups who were founded by
founders older than 30, but there are very few.

The less experience you have, the more likely you are to create the next
billion dollar company. If you start your startup after 30, it's very unlikely
that you will be able to make it into a $1B startup.

~~~
tensor
This is abhorrent ageism, and completely wrong.

Peter Thiel, 31, Paypal, 37, Palintar. Larry Elison, 33, Oracle. Reid Hoffman,
35, Linked In. Evan Williams, 35, Twitter. Mark Pincus, 41, Zynga. Arianna
Huffington, 54, Huffington Post.

Can we stop making things up? Maybe five minutes of research would be good?
You know, there is a place they teach these things.

~~~
wellboy
Founders that had had successful startups before don't count.

That's why I was referring to "experience BEFORE you try to do your own
thing."

And yes there are a few startup founders that were older than 30, I give you
Larry Ellison.

However none of the 4 horsemen had founders >30, plus the other founders
except for Peter Thiel had already sold their previous startups.

Regarding Palantir, they had Peter Thiel as a cofounder, I don't give you that
one.

~~~
wellboy
I don't want to be ageist or anything, I just like discovering facts.

Except for Peter Thiel who was 31, 1 year above, only Larry Ellison is a first
time founder, all the other ones where very successful before.

Huffington Post is not a billion dollar company, since it was acquired for
US$315 million by AOL 2 years ago.

~~~
tensor
I'm not sure if you are intentionally lying, or just didn't bother, again, to
do any research.

Reid Hoffman started his first company at 30. Mark Pincus at 29 (just one year
shy!). Excluding Huffington simply because it didn't meet your arbitrarily set
profitability threshold is unfair.

Hell, even Google had Eric Schmidt help run the company at the start. Eric was
46 at the time, though surely you claim "but he's not a founder!"

Data is somewhat hard to collect for this topic, but see:

[http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/28/peak-age-
entrepreneurship/](http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/28/peak-age-
entrepreneurship/)

> The research shows that an older age is actually a better predictor of
> entrepreneurial success, and that three other traits also correlate strongly
> to success: strong fluid intelligence, high openness, and moderate
> agreeableness.

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argumentum
The best way to learn, anything, is by trying, failing and iterating. This is
true (for me at least) in programming and otherwise. I generally believe you
should stay in school, and more importantly stay learning technical stuff
(whether undergrad, grad school or in a technically challenging job). It's the
best way to get ideas, and more importantly find people to work with (if you
want to start a company). So I do harbor doubts about the Thiel Fellowship
(though I happen to know quite a few talented kids in the program, and think
it's working well for most of them).

However, you will _not_ learn how to be a Founder/CEO without being a
Founder/CEO. Some have a natural ability at this, but 99% of even the best
CEOs probably just have the ability to learn quickly on their feet. By the
time their mistakes might be noticed, they've already learned and corrected
them.

The only thing you'll learn by working your way up the corporate ladder is how
to work your way up the corporate ladder. The stuff about learning _how to
work hard_ is BS. If you want to do a startup and hope things will happen for
you, you probably believe in an all-powerful being that has a plan for you.

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avty
Wow, what a de-empowering article. Good luck guys.

