Colleges for Founders
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Colleges for Founders
1–10 of 15 posts
Re: Colleges for Founders
#2Become a douche in 5 years
Re: Colleges for Founders
#3I'm guessing this has little to do with the content of the courses and more to do with the wealth and connections of the individuals surrounding said institutions.
What's someone to do who just went to a university or none at all?
Re: Colleges for Founders
#4I'm guessing this has little to do with the content of the courses and more to do with the wealth and connections of the individuals surrounding said institutions. What's someone to do who just went to a university or none at all?
Lesson one at MBA programmes around the world, education is signalling. Education from the "right" places doubly so.
Re: Colleges for Founders
#5The methodology is flawed but the kernel of the idea is good - which universities provide the best platform for would-be founders?
Things like proximity to VCs, labs with a history of spin-offs, successful alumni angel networks, etc would all play a role.
Re: Colleges for Founders
#6I'd be curious how viable a strategy of "get in, network like crazy for a semester, get out" is if the plan is to do a startup from the get go. My guess is "just do the startup" is better but doing one semester might be a decent alternative (assuming you do get accepted). At least "got into Stanford, dropped out to work full time on this once I realized how great it is" seems like a decent signaling pitch to VCs. Shows commitment (dropped out of uni for this) and sends the boring old signals (got into Stanford).
Re: Colleges for Founders
#7For high school students looking at this list because they want to increase their chances at building a successful company, do not look at this list at face value.
Statistically, if you are already driven to build something, you are likely get more value out of being in a place that is going to maximize your learning potential, exposure to people who can help you mature character, and be recognized by alumni/upper classman/professors who can make a outsized impact in your learning journey.
I would take inspiration from this list and find the smallest, most well capitalized liberal arts school that has quality programs for you to take advantage of. The goal is to find places that have the qualities of the top schools, but where you will be the top 1% where you go, and will be able to maximize the opportunities for learning.
I recommend this even if you are interested in a hard science or computer science field. The benefit for a large majority to establish an educational foundation early on will provide the necessary methods of inquiry to apply breadth or depth based knowledge acquisition in the future.
Instead of seeking out a brand name environment, finding a place where you can mature quickly and confidently learn about yourself will be invaluable for far longer than the brand association to a name brand school.
Re: Colleges for Founders
#8For high school students looking at this list because they want to increase their chances at building a successful company, do not look at this list at face value. Statistically, if you are already driven to build something, you are likely get more value out of being in a place that is going to maximize your learning potential, exposure to people who can help you mature character, and be recognized by alumni/upper cl…
What it’s worth, this is good advice for many fields. For example, in law school, I think one is better off being a rockstar at a lower rank school than a “good“ student at an excellent school.
Re: Colleges for Founders
#9I'd be curious how viable a strategy of "get in, network like crazy for a semester, get out" is if the plan is to do a startup from the get go. My guess is "just do the startup" is better but doing one semester might be a decent alternative (assuming you do get accepted). At least "got into Stanford, dropped out to work full time on this once I realized how great it is" seems like a decent signaling pitch to VCs. Sho…
I think that strategy dominates starting in or just after high school by a wide margin. Not the least of which is you might decide to stay, you can probably jump out with the right to return for some period of time, and the signaling effect is massive.
Re: Colleges for Founders
#10Would be really interesting to get the student-count-to-founder ratio and grouping the counts by the amount of capital raised, headcount or any other metric that measures "success" in some way. Would help students deciding on where to study as well as VCs on which students not to filter out in their initial screening!