High school is evil. It is satanic. I hated it too. Still, I'd at least get a GED. Also, I myself did not finish college, but to "offset" that resume-wise, I got a couple of those COMPTIA certifications. If one doesn't do much on the education side, balancing it with a couple of certifications is always a good thing. At least that is what I have heard from other people, and is what I did myself. (I got the A+ and Network+ certificatons). As for programming I started with a "teach yourself java" book myself, but if I had to do it all over again I would have started with c/c++. Currently I have a job writing test scripts in silktest which has similarities to both java and c, so it all works out, lol. Good luck.
Nontechnical 17 year old startup founder with chutzpah is asking for advice
41–50 of 64 posts
Re: Nontechnical 17 year old startup founder with chutzpah is asking for advice
#42Along with majority of comments, I agree, stay in high school. I would go even further to say, go to college because it is like elven paradise and will help in your startup adventure. Here's why:
A) Smart people. It's not a perfect filter (not everyone is smart), but you'll find some folks in there who might be willing to join your fellowship. Oh, and everyone lives really close to each other- and perhaps you could even live together.
B) Resources. You'll be blessed with many gifts- economies of scale to help you out here. You can work with professors on cutting edge nerdy stuff, get free bandwidth from the school, be able to snag a few servers, get the school's PR department to work for you, and get some money to start a "startup club" to pay for your pizza when you're working.
C) Education. You can't program. Neither can I, but for god's sake I wish I had just taken a few classes to get me started because self-starting is tough and you hit some road blocks. If you do that, then you will be learning from people better than you and perhaps can make more friends for your quest.
D) Time. Instead of partying like Bilbo Baggins, work on your startup. School does get in the way, but you have more vacation time and free 3-day weekends to get you going. If you do just school and your startup, you'll find your startup will take up more of your time. You can time public release to the school year- 3 months (about the same as YC). You should be able to make something each semester and get progressively better.
F) Failure. You might find out that you don't like this startup trip to Mordor. In fact, you may find you don't like the software task at all. Well, you have a lot of other things to learn and to enjoy.
G) Success. If you're successful, then you can easily leave college. In fact, many colleges let you defer indefinitely. I think Sam Altman is on leave from Stanford still... :)
Re: Nontechnical 17 year old startup founder with chutzpah is asking for advice
#43At 17, you probably don't have a very realistic idea of your capabilities. Most 17 year olds are a lot better at dreaming than they are at accomplishing difficult things. (Some 37 year olds too, ahem.)
If you have a track record of completing long term projects that you wanted to do (not your teachers, not your parents) that's evidence that you're an exception. If you don't have that kind of track record, take a little warning.
Either way, you should still go for it.
School truly sucks, but I'd get the HS diploma at least, and encourage your friend to do the same. If your venture doesn't work out, you'll be a lot less stuck if you've graduated. Treat school as a system to be gamed and worked around.
Learn to program. See "realistic assessment" above. If you can't program at all, you're not likely to do well running a code based start up. You don't have to be a brilliant coder, just reasonably capable.
(On the other hand, I've heard Ryan Carson doesn't code. Don't know much about the guy. Exceptions, rules.)
Good luck.
Re: Nontechnical 17 year old startup founder with chutzpah is asking for advice
#44College is a LOT of fun, and getting rich is no replacement for enjoying life moment-by-moment.
I'd finish school, AND go to college. Try your hand at being a CS major. You really do have enough free time at college to start a business if you want. If your buddy is really so determined, go to the same school together. Drop out only if you get traction.
Walking a tightrope is safer if you have a safety net (education) to fall back on. Not only that, but reading these startup stories, you get the mistaken impression that quitting/dropping out is some mystical talisman that leads to success, but there's a selection bias. The people who burned their bridges and failed aren't in any founders at work stories, they're often stuck in relatively menial/low paying jobs or back in school.
Re: Nontechnical 17 year old startup founder with chutzpah is asking for advice
#45Looking over your responses, sounds like your plan is a thinly veiled excuse to drop out, and you were posting in the hopes that you'd see enough "ra ras" to drown out the voice in your head that knows better. Dropping out of high school at this point is phenomenally foolish and a lot like quitting a marathon in the last quarter mile. Being a good entrepreneur is about making good decisions, and most importantly, about not quitting.
Re: Nontechnical 17 year old startup founder with chutzpah is asking for advice
#46Learn to program. Deciding at 17 that you're "nontechnical" is premature optimization, without the optimization. At that age you're not non-anything you don't want to be. And if you're going to be in a world where people make software, there's nothing more valuable you could learn than how that's done, even if it's not what you ultimately spend most of your time on.
I don't know. At 17 I had been programming for 5-6 years, which is pretty normal for most decent coders I know. In my experience, if someone does not have the mindset for coding (anal retentive, OCD, borderline autistic, you know the type ;)), then trying to make them is an excercise in frustration. Maybe better to focus on the things you are good at, such as business development, marketing, sales and whatever else i…
>> (anal retentive, OCD, borderline autistic, you know the type ;))
Being a jackass does not make you a better coder, it just makes you a jackass.
Re: Nontechnical 17 year old startup founder with chutzpah is asking for advice
#47Learn to program. Deciding at 17 that you're "nontechnical" is premature optimization, without the optimization. At that age you're not non-anything you don't want to be. And if you're going to be in a world where people make software, there's nothing more valuable you could learn than how that's done, even if it's not what you ultimately spend most of your time on.
I didn't start programming till I was 17. Heavy math focus before that though.
Re: Nontechnical 17 year old startup founder with chutzpah is asking for advice
#48Learn to program. Deciding at 17 that you're "nontechnical" is premature optimization, without the optimization. At that age you're not non-anything you don't want to be. And if you're going to be in a world where people make software, there's nothing more valuable you could learn than how that's done, even if it's not what you ultimately spend most of your time on.
I didn't start programming till I was 17. Heavy math focus before that though.
i didn't start until i was 22... i'm 24 now. am i doomed?
Re: Nontechnical 17 year old startup founder with chutzpah is asking for advice
#49"I feel like Sabeer Bhatia of Hotmail (excepts I can't program)" Is it just me that finds this quite funny. I feel like David Beckham (except I can't play football).
I think his sentence was reasonable - like Sabeer, he feels he has a great idea and is willing to quit school (Apple for Sabeer) and work on it night and day.
ps to the OP: don't quit school. You might have the best idea in the world, but if it doesn't work (and there are many reasons that are not under your control for this to happen), it may be hard for you to return to school... School is generally lame, but it is the 'gateway drug' to better experiences in University.
Re: Nontechnical 17 year old startup founder with chutzpah is asking for advice
#50>I came to realize that the hackers are the core of any good startup team. Only software startups need them, but there are many kinds of startups. First think of your idea, then see if you need programmers. By reading those sites you are causing yourself to ignore all the other kinds of businesses in the world, and especially since you are not a programmer, that's a mistake. Those sites are written by hackers, so the…
I'm kind of surprised to see this down-modded. There's nothing wrong with casting a wider net, especially if you're not a technologist.