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How Universities Should Prepare Founders

paulgraham.com

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Re: How Universities Should Prepare Founders

#191

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

beklein wrote: post #163
bix6 wrote: post #61

I don’t necessarily disagree with this but is it the universities job to prepare founders at the expense of everyone else? Under his proposal the motivated founders succeed and everyone else is a loser. This is a very VC focused lens that ignores all the other possible outcomes a human could pursue that are valuable. Established corps need workers, unis need new teachers, hospitals need doctors, etc. So we should let…

"In fact there are only two things universities need to change to be perfect at preparing founders: they need to make students feel that starting a startup is something they can do, and they need to encourage them to work on their own projects." I'd argue that both of these would be highly beneficial for all kinds of students, founders and non-founders alike. Starting a startup could be generalized for all students t…

Most engineering classes include projects, but they're presented as homework and/or "something you can show an employer."

And "building things" isn't enough. Many projects have zero commercial potential.

I don't think PG is wrong, but I also don't think he's right. I think if universities wanted to do something with startup culture they could filter the more motivated and talented students into incubators of their own - not through some kind of overly academic post-grad degree, but literally a startup school where the university provides resources, subsistence, and access to funding, in return for a share of project equity. The "teaching" would be more about finding customers and handling finances and less about managerial MBA nonsense.

The big win for students would be "You don't have to worry about food, rent, or basic running costs."

Post-grad research overlaps with this, but is more fundamental. The emphasis here would be more on projects with immediate income potential, not on technology that could be commercialised in the future, possibly.

The problem is academic culture is very different to startup culture, so the startup school would need a much looser relationship to its parent than a typical academic department.

Re: How Universities Should Prepare Founders

#192

Post by wewewedxfgdf »

Founders thinking of applying to YC ......

Take any advice about "what YC is looking for" with a very large grain of salt.

Many people do the assessments, and I'm far from convinced that they are all working to assess according to exactly what PG or Garry or Michael or anyone else say are the criteria.

There's TONS of advice written and video on what YC is looking for and no evidence that all that advise is scientifically followed.

If YC is a bunch of normal humans then the assessors are just deciding however they think right.

So you will be disappointed (as I was) if you research and tune your application to "exactly what PG is looking for" and you're rejected.

In articles like this I think PG is just saying "if I was doing YC application assessments, as I did 15 years ago, then this is what I would be looking for", not "this is what todays YC assessors are definitely looking for". Big difference.

Re: How Universities Should Prepare Founders

#193

Post by [deleted] »

dofm wrote: post #152

This is shockingly vapid and wishy-washy even for PG. Leaving this weird, rather Valley-specific, even YC-specific, navel-gazing definition of "founder" aside, universities should do what they promise to do for their students. And if possible for way, way, way less money. He seems quite out of touch with the level of economic hardship involved in being a student; a huge number of students already work a couple of job…

[deleted]

Re: How Universities Should Prepare Founders

#194

Post by Juliate »

dofm wrote: post #179
figassis wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how a university could package this, or package "experience" or. "building", etc. I went to college, did engineering and also did economics and did "entrepreneurship". The last 2 were useful not in a sense that they unlocked anything, but I was already starting a business by my second or third year, that I run to this day. I took the courses because I felt I needed them as I bootstrapped. Went on to buil…

Right but what percentage of people doing any given class end up specialising in it? It's not their job to "inject" it but universities are going to have to grapple with the notion that if they want to keep admitting students, then there aren't enough jobs in any market for the students on their courses. So some truly functional support for self-employment, startups, small business working generally seems inevitable.…

> then there aren't enough jobs in any market for the students on their courses.

That has always been the case, because the purpose of universities is not feeding the market with workers or founders, it's feeding society with educated people. Which is incidentally an excellent basis for both founder and worker roles.

Re: How Universities Should Prepare Founders

#196

Post by locknitpicker »

rfgplk wrote: post #189
locknitpicker wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In an ideal world, sure. In reality, a PhD[1] is about publishing papers in the hope that you learn something along the way. You're being needlessly dismissive of what "publishing papers" mean. Writing down what you learn is what papers are for, and the only papers that count for a PhD are those which are accepted by reference journals, which impose a relatively high bar on what content they accept. So you still ne…

> which impose a relatively high bar on what content they accept. Nope. In fact they accept utter garbage most of the time. I can't count the numbers of times I've caught pure errors (literal logic errors, code errors, mathematical errors) even in highly respected journals. Journals have a high bar of entry because they've gated their communities, only allowing insiders to publish (ie tenured professors, people assoc…

> Nope. In fact they accept utter garbage most of the time.

Unless you enrolled in a fraudulent, make-believe University of Phoenix style program, no. Any real PhD program only counts publications in a closed allowlist of reputable journals. Those journals are peer reviewed and enforce quality and relevance standards.

> I can't count the numbers of times I've caught pure errors (literal logic errors, code errors, mathematical errors) even in highly respected journals.

That's fine and all, specially if what you actually want to do is take a shot at humble bragging, but back in the subject papers are supposed to be snapshots of your understanding of a topic that can be used by others to inspire or advance their exploration. This means they are not infallible or free from criticism. In fact, it is rather ok brand to publish papers improving upon prior publications by correcting errors, improving methodologies, and even presenting contradictory evidence. That is what it means to be at the bleeding edge.

Re: How Universities Should Prepare Founders

#197

Post by locknitpicker »

rfgplk wrote: post #187
maleldil wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In an ideal world, sure. In reality, a PhD[1] is about publishing papers in the hope that you learn something along the way. [1] My experience in ML in 2026.

Which is ironic, because self-publishing then should automatically qualify you for a PhD. In fact, I believe more people should take this approach. As far as I'm aware, there's no law or regulation from declaring yourself a "PhD" backed by autoresearch.

> Which is ironic, because self-publishing then should automatically qualify you for a PhD.

No. What qualifies you as a researcher is being able to output work that is accepted by your peers. Hence the peer review process is critical. You fail to meet this bar if you publish something in blogspot or even arxiv for that matter.

Re: How Universities Should Prepare Founders

#198

Post by ModernMech »

bonoboTP wrote: post #178
maleldil wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In an ideal world, sure. In reality, a PhD[1] is about publishing papers in the hope that you learn something along the way. [1] My experience in ML in 2026.

Your role is to publish papers so your PI is able to get grants, and to network, so the lab profile gets better known in the research community, and then as a more senior grad student you can help write grant applications, and you can build a track record of mentoring (e.g. master students). At the end of the day, you want to demonstrate that you can come up with projects and pursue the research up until publication…

Yes, take away all the pretense and a Ph.D. is just an apprenticeship to be a researcher.

Re: How Universities Should Prepare Founders

#199

Post by capnrefsmmat »

dofm wrote: post #152

This is shockingly vapid and wishy-washy even for PG. Leaving this weird, rather Valley-specific, even YC-specific, navel-gazing definition of "founder" aside, universities should do what they promise to do for their students. And if possible for way, way, way less money. He seems quite out of touch with the level of economic hardship involved in being a student; a huge number of students already work a couple of job…

> He seems quite out of touch with the level of economic hardship involved in being a student; a huge number of students already work a couple of jobs and are navigating small businesses, especially here in the UK where he apparently now lives. They aren't going to have enough "free time" to play with a "project" even if a bit more is made available by loosening the curriculum.

Empirically, student free time grew for much of the 20th century, and students spend much less time on school work than they used to. The decline is not explained by students spending more time on work outside of school; much of it has become leisure time.

https://doi.org/10.1162/REST_a_00093 https://doi.org/10.1177/016146811011200908

Now perhaps there has been a sharp change in the years since those two studies (there certainly has been a sharp change in UK tuition costs), but the point is that our intuitions about how hard students must have to work these days are usually wrong.

Re: How Universities Should Prepare Founders

#200

Post by tescreal »

palmotea wrote: post #131
watwut wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So we should let all those people suffer to promote a small group of founders by reducing course load? Yes, that is pretty much VC enterprenour philosophy in nutshell. It is value system that value only one small group only. And if that small group has to put in effort into learning in school or doing something other then building unicorns, that is a great unfairness.

> Yes, that is pretty much VC enterprenour philosophy in nutshell. It's time we all admit the VCs are the best people, and we're just worthless in comparison. Anyone with any value at all is an investor or a founder. No one else matters. That's why neo-reactionary ideology is so profound: it would put those best people in charge, and clear all the useless garbage out of their way.

It's frustrating that this could be read as entirely sincere in this 2026, year of our plague.
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