Don't drop out of high school, just bullshit your way through it and do enough to get by- this isn't hard stuff, and you get food, shelter, and a good internet connection. I know, in high school, that might not seem like a lot, but it's huge when you're out in the real world.
Put as much time as you can into your startup and learning to program, just don't fail out. If you're smart enough to write as lucidly as you do then you're smart enough not to fail high school. Find some loopholes to make the classes easier, figure out what the easiest way to make 70% is, and execute.
Like someone else said, hack morning, hack lunches, hack nights- put your time into moving your startup forward.
Skip college, it doesn't sound like you need it- if you do need it down the line you can do it then.
However, experience does matter- and you can pack a ton of experience into a short amount of time if you're ok with taking risks, which it sounds like you are.
Check out Inside Steve's Brain if you get the chance, this quote stuck out at me a lot:
"For Jobs, innovation is about creativity, putting things together in unique ways. "Creativity is just connecting things," Jobs told Wired magazine. "When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they've had more experiences or they thought more about their experiences than other people. Unfortunately, that's too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven't had very diverse experiences. So they don't have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one's understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have."
Also:
"I wish Bill Gates the best, I really do. I just think he and Microsoft are a bit narrow. He'd be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger." -- Steve Jobs
With all that said-- you've got a great opportunity. You've got a co-founder, you (hopefully) have a good idea, so execute and give it a shot. If it doesn't work, bone out to Argentina or Eastern Europe for awhile, regroup, come back, and give it another shot.
And, on college, there's a great article by Sean Nelson of Harvey Danger about the merits of dropping out of college:
re: Getting by in high school - my last year of high school I was able to spend all of my time in the teacher's lounge or around the school (I helped paint a mural) as long as I got A's on all my tests. Perhaps you can work out something similar.
Comments
Don't drop out of high school, just bullshit your way through it and do enough to get by- this isn't hard stuff, and you get food, shelter, and a good internet connection. I know, in high school, that might not seem like a lot, but it's huge when you're out in the real world.
Put as much time as you can into your startup and learning to program, just don't fail out. If you're smart enough to write as lucidly as you do then you're smart enough not to fail high school. Find some loopholes to make the classes easier, figure out what the easiest way to make 70% is, and execute.
Like someone else said, hack morning, hack lunches, hack nights- put your time into moving your startup forward.
Skip college, it doesn't sound like you need it- if you do need it down the line you can do it then.
However, experience does matter- and you can pack a ton of experience into a short amount of time if you're ok with taking risks, which it sounds like you are.
Check out Inside Steve's Brain if you get the chance, this quote stuck out at me a lot:
"For Jobs, innovation is about creativity, putting things together in unique ways. "Creativity is just connecting things," Jobs told Wired magazine. "When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they've had more experiences or they thought more about their experiences than other people. Unfortunately, that's too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven't had very diverse experiences. So they don't have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one's understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have."
Also:
"I wish Bill Gates the best, I really do. I just think he and Microsoft are a bit narrow. He'd be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger." -- Steve Jobs
With all that said-- you've got a great opportunity. You've got a co-founder, you (hopefully) have a good idea, so execute and give it a shot. If it doesn't work, bone out to Argentina or Eastern Europe for awhile, regroup, come back, and give it another shot.
And, on college, there's a great article by Sean Nelson of Harvey Danger about the merits of dropping out of college:
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=12087
Good luck!
re: Getting by in high school - my last year of high school I was able to spend all of my time in the teacher's lounge or around the school (I helped paint a mural) as long as I got A's on all my tests. Perhaps you can work out something similar.