Like a lot of Peter Thiel's smarter moves, this one is hard to explain without an awful lot of background exposition. Think of people as having to pass through a number of filters before they can do anything important with their lives. As the system becomes increasingly rigid, it filters out almost everyone. It's important to keep bypasses open at every point for people who are capable of dissent and not easy to force into molds. Intervening at the right filter point potentially has a lot of leverage.
The interview is far more interesting than the segment on dropping out of school. The section on economic disconnect silicon valley and rest of the US and Thiel's thoughts on the maturity of the internet industry compared to the evolution of the automobile industry and comparing that to hard-tech is worth the price of admission.
Thiel always strikes me as something between the Buffet / Soros of the startup world.
Worst case scenario: You fail utterly, you're a whole lot smarter, and if you really want/need to, you go back to school.
With the experience gained, you make a better decision about what you want to study, because you'll know how you want to use it and you'll know what you don't like doing. (I'd give anything to be able to go back in time and choose CS instead of what I did study, back when I was 18, stupid, and locking myself into college.)
More likely than not, you'll re-join college with awesome work opportunities that carry through until after you graduate, where great prospects are waiting for you.
On the other hand, you could build something amazing that alters the trajectory of your whole career.
Couldn't there be some middle road: go to a school that is less expensive, and not for too long? At least for a 3 year BSc... University can still be fun and inspiring, and it is difficult to recreate the experience in another way. Also if you are too old when you go to university, it won't be the same.
A lot of people seem to advocate not to quit one's day job, but work on projects on the side. While personally I can't do that, it might be a lot easier to arrange some spare time as a student. So why not go that route - study, but do some interesting stuff on the side?
What does it cost for Americans to study in Europe? I think you can find here (Europe) some universities that are good and don't cost the world.
A friend of mine is actually an assistant at a chair for entrepreneurship here in Berlin. If you go to that university, they will try to nurture you into doing a startup: http://www.entrepreneurship.de/ (german site, didn't find english page, sorry).
Universities might be bloated, wasteful, and expensive, but I don't think I would recommend to any kids that they skip college and take a major gamble for only $100,000. Sure, one or two of these idea kids might make it big, but the rest will do nothing. With a good college degree you can easily make $100,000 in less than two years.
Differentiating between good and bad ones may be a large part of the issue.
you can easily make $100,000 in less than two years
This where I have to disagree, especially if you're talking about $100k net, that is, in addition to paying off the extra college costs for those (less than) two years.
Moreover, I think the context of the OP is that the grant being offered is to disrupt by building something of value. Ideally, at the end of the 3-4 years (what it would take to finish college and earn the afformentioned $100k), one is left with much more value in what one built and possibly even much more money in the form of further investment. In the worst case, one is left with extremely valuable, arguably more so than a degree and a couple years of employment, experience.
Note the extra querystring arguments in the url: ?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo
I wonder if replicating this stuff messes up techcrunch's metrics significantly?
Comments
Like a lot of Peter Thiel's smarter moves, this one is hard to explain without an awful lot of background exposition. Think of people as having to pass through a number of filters before they can do anything important with their lives. As the system becomes increasingly rigid, it filters out almost everyone. It's important to keep bypasses open at every point for people who are capable of dissent and not easy to force into molds. Intervening at the right filter point potentially has a lot of leverage.
The interview is far more interesting than the segment on dropping out of school. The section on economic disconnect silicon valley and rest of the US and Thiel's thoughts on the maturity of the internet industry compared to the evolution of the automobile industry and comparing that to hard-tech is worth the price of admission.
Thiel always strikes me as something between the Buffet / Soros of the startup world.
link to the interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQFLn65pxbQ sound quality is terrible though...
This is outstanding.
Worst case scenario: You fail utterly, you're a whole lot smarter, and if you really want/need to, you go back to school.
With the experience gained, you make a better decision about what you want to study, because you'll know how you want to use it and you'll know what you don't like doing. (I'd give anything to be able to go back in time and choose CS instead of what I did study, back when I was 18, stupid, and locking myself into college.)
More likely than not, you'll re-join college with awesome work opportunities that carry through until after you graduate, where great prospects are waiting for you.
On the other hand, you could build something amazing that alters the trajectory of your whole career.
Couldn't there be some middle road: go to a school that is less expensive, and not for too long? At least for a 3 year BSc... University can still be fun and inspiring, and it is difficult to recreate the experience in another way. Also if you are too old when you go to university, it won't be the same.
A lot of people seem to advocate not to quit one's day job, but work on projects on the side. While personally I can't do that, it might be a lot easier to arrange some spare time as a student. So why not go that route - study, but do some interesting stuff on the side?
What does it cost for Americans to study in Europe? I think you can find here (Europe) some universities that are good and don't cost the world.
A friend of mine is actually an assistant at a chair for entrepreneurship here in Berlin. If you go to that university, they will try to nurture you into doing a startup: http://www.entrepreneurship.de/ (german site, didn't find english page, sorry).
Universities might be bloated, wasteful, and expensive, but I don't think I would recommend to any kids that they skip college and take a major gamble for only $100,000. Sure, one or two of these idea kids might make it big, but the rest will do nothing. With a good college degree you can easily make $100,000 in less than two years.
With a good college degree
Differentiating between good and bad ones may be a large part of the issue.
you can easily make $100,000 in less than two years
This where I have to disagree, especially if you're talking about $100k net, that is, in addition to paying off the extra college costs for those (less than) two years.
Moreover, I think the context of the OP is that the grant being offered is to disrupt by building something of value. Ideally, at the end of the 3-4 years (what it would take to finish college and earn the afformentioned $100k), one is left with much more value in what one built and possibly even much more money in the form of further investment. In the worst case, one is left with extremely valuable, arguably more so than a degree and a couple years of employment, experience.
He lost a few points in my book for saying new startups will not be able to take on the big tech companies.
Imagine if the founders of Google took his advice.
Portals do not a tech company make.
Yahoo called itself a media company, and many others emulated their all-in-one portal model with search as an after thought.
Google focused only on their index and their PageRank algorithm to provide the best intent based search possible.
They weren't in a contest with the tech companies. They were just a feature to Yahoo way back when.
Note the extra querystring arguments in the url: ?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo
I wonder if replicating this stuff messes up techcrunch's metrics significantly?
Does anyone know the application process for this initiative? I've been looking around and can't find a damn link anywhere to apply for this.
Sounds rational to me.