Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Universities Should Prepare Founders

paulgraham.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 333 posts

Re: How Universities Should Prepare Founders

#81

Post by onion2k »

newbie578 wrote: post #73

PG has become pretentious and doesn’t allow people to disagree with him. Anyone following him on X can confirm that, where he chooses to reply to only certain replies with weaker arguments or just refuting the strong ones.. Don’t meet your heroes I guess…

I'm not going to argue about pg's pretentiousness or lack of, but I will suggest that trying to change someone's mind by presenting them with rational arguments is never going to work to persuade them they're wrong. What someone posts on social media is a reflection of their identity; it's literally who they present themselves as to the world. A well-formed argument will be rationalized away whether it's right or wrong. The way to persuade someone to change their mind is to nudge them to think about what they're posting so they persuade themselves they're wrong. Target their beliefs, not their knowledge.

If pg is wrong about something it isn't because he isn't informed about what's right. It's because he's chosen to frame something in a way that aligns to what he believes.

(Hint: Everyone does this.)

Re: How Universities Should Prepare Founders

#82

Post by onion2k »

fyredge wrote: post #37

I disagree with the underlying assumption that it's the universities responsibility to cultivate founders. Universities were initially built to further the knowledge of specific fields, for the sake of its own advancement, producing philosophers, artists and scientists. In other words, universities are for people to learn for the sake of learning, not to earn a wage. New institutions should be built to cultivate foun…

In other words, universities are for people to learn for the sake of learning, not to earn a wage.

Universities should teach people that they can change the world if they want to, and that they don't have to be passive about accepting what's happening. One way to do that is to be a founder.

Tech founders pretty much always need more than a desire to earn a wage to succeed. Having a genuine belief that something that doesn't exist should exist is the drive to build. If you're in it for the money gets a job with an existing tech company, or a bank, or a hedge fund, is an wildly better idea.

Re: How Universities Should Prepare Founders

#83

Post by AIorNot »

Nowhere in this essay is it mentioned why its good to start a startup..

Given the 20 years of twisted and evil greedy nature of most successful VC level startups and their founders, tech bros and VCs and the evil of MBA optimized Private Equity should we not instead teach young people to run away from startups and greed?

Paul Graham is selling a drug to society

That drug has infected the world.. we need to review what value all this disruption is providing anyone

Re: How Universities Should Prepare Founders

#84

Post by DiscourseFan »

Animats wrote: post #56
glenngillen wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In hindsight it was quite early in my career, but a bit over 20 years ago I felt burnt out in tech and wanted to try something new. I was share trading quite a bit so thought maybe I'd become a stock broker (online trading was only just starting to become a thing, so being a broker was still a real job at the time!). I finished the degree and got qualified, and while I loved the learning I discovered I hated the indu…

To sell is human; to scam, divine.

would've been a great tagline for Better Call Saul

Re: How Universities Should Prepare Founders

#85

Post by DiscourseFan »

georgemcbay wrote: post #77
golly_ned wrote: post #66

> Merely eliminating [homework[ for a few weeks resulted in two trillion dollar companies. Imagine what the US GDP would be if reading period at Harvard were twice as long. This idea that "very large company" -> "productive economy" needs to die.

Also, just logically considering hundreds of thousands of students have been part of Harvard reading periods over the years, and there are two unicorn events where reading period may have played some small part in the formation of a trillion dollar company, I'd imagine that if the reading period at Harvard were twice as long the US GDP would likely be approximately exactly the same as it is now.

Yeah but they'd have twice as many parties at Harvard in that time, and what if that means there are twice as many chances for a Business student at frat party to hook up with the daughter of a billionaire and then rope his technically competent friend into working on this "crazy idea" he had high off his ass? I say, why do we even need classes at Harvard, we just need a lot of frat guys and slutty daughters of billionaires and they can just hire people from MIT to work under them. The system works.

Re: How Universities Should Prepare Founders

#88

Post by amoshebb »

nxobject wrote: post #68
scottfits wrote: post #59

One thing I agree with and one I disagree with: - I've always thought it was silly my university had an Entrepreneurship major. Starting a company is probably much better achieved by studying something technical or going deep into a problem space and seeing a problem there, not a generic "entrepreneurship" curriculum. - I think startups starting as side projects was more of an artifact of the early YC days where star…

> Increasingly I feel like the next generation of startups is more capital intensive and requires more time commitment from deeply technical talent. Would that be more like other engineering fields? An interesting comparison would be aerospace, for example – it took 15 years to build the first A380, and tens of thousands of indispensable technical niches.

It’s not obvious to me that a “nobody wants this” megaproject by a decades old multinational forced to succeed by government mandate wasting over a decade debating national workshare is a great example of a “startup in aerospace”.

There’s tons of startups making cool fused harnesses and phased arrays and trying to get every permutation of diesel and electric and hydrogen engines certified. Drones and rc aircraft spawn many “built in a dorm room” prototypes for people who don’t value their eyebrows

Re: How Universities Should Prepare Founders

#89

Post by koe123 »

golly_ned wrote: post #66

> Merely eliminating [homework[ for a few weeks resulted in two trillion dollar companies. Imagine what the US GDP would be if reading period at Harvard were twice as long. This idea that "very large company" -> "productive economy" needs to die.

> This idea that "very large company" -> "productive economy" needs to die.

I am economically naive, but I also have never understood this argument. I asked a Spanish friend what Spain needed, he said “more big companies”. Is it because a big company provides you something closer to a monopoly, and can do so internationally?

Re: How Universities Should Prepare Founders

#90

Post by wisty »

onion2k wrote: post #81
newbie578 wrote: post #73

PG has become pretentious and doesn’t allow people to disagree with him. Anyone following him on X can confirm that, where he chooses to reply to only certain replies with weaker arguments or just refuting the strong ones.. Don’t meet your heroes I guess…

I'm not going to argue about pg's pretentiousness or lack of, but I will suggest that trying to change someone's mind by presenting them with rational arguments is never going to work to persuade them they're wrong. What someone posts on social media is a reflection of their identity; it's literally who they present themselves as to the world. A well-formed argument will be rationalized away whether it's right or wro…

> I will suggest that trying to change someone's mind by presenting them with rational arguments is never going to work to persuade them they're wrong.

Were you persuaded of this by rational arguments?

Post reply on HN