How Universities Should Prepare Founders • Hacker News Board

Re: How Universities Should Prepare Founders

#241

Post by parineum » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 1:40 PM UTC

FuriouslyAdrift wrote: post #232

capnrefsmmat wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

When I was an undergrad (35 years ago) I had at least 2 days a week where I was so busy that I had to choose between eating or sleeping. I usually picked eating because not sleeping meant I could pick up another shift or grind on a class project (also because I was young... if I tried that now I'd probably die)

And there's someone on the opposite end of the Bell curve that balances you out.

Re: How Universities Should Prepare Founders

#242

Post by fantasizr » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 1:40 PM UTC

youngtaff wrote: post #148

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…

Article also ignore’s that very few founders succeed Has anyone ever plotted the lifespan of YC companies from each cohort? Most of them end up dead…

Imagine a university's pitch to their students in this model, most of you will fail but that's the nature of what we do now.

Re: How Universities Should Prepare Founders

#243

Post by matherial » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 1:41 PM UTC

neomantra wrote: post #222

I am more interested in the question of how Y-Combinator has changed Stanford over the last two decades rather than the question of how Stanford should change to accommodate Y-Combinator. Notice there is no mention of ethics, philosophy, or human connection, except maybe Zuck being a psych major. Do we really want the future of education to be an incubator pipeline? That said I wholehearted agree with the second half…

To be fair, I wouldn't pin the blame on YC. Few people go to Ivy League universities to ponder ethics or philosophy. These schools are widely seen - by students and by parents - as an incredibly expensive way to "10x" your earning potential and influence. They were producing Mark Zuckerbergs for a good while.

Yes, they accept some number of gifted people from underprivileged backgrounds, but these people are not the ones defining the school's culture. For most people, success at Harvard is to become a politician or to get very rich (or both).

Re: How Universities Should Prepare Founders

#244

Post by elomnusk » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 1:43 PM UTC

Universities need to get better at rounding out one-dimensional tech bros so they have some semblance of a conscience, ethical backbone or creativity. How many more slimy purveyors of disinformation bot farms do we need run by billionaires intent on killing the internet, "disruptive" businesses that break laws and destroy jobs until their ubiquity makes them de facto quasi-legal and yet more AI slop served to us in a subscription web app?

Re: How Universities Should Prepare Founders

#245

Post by Merad » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 1:47 PM UTC

phyzix5761 wrote: post #95

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.

Large companies provide people with jobs and fund many suppliers with their transactions/operations. Walmart and Amazon are the two biggest employers in the US.

And both of them rely on government welfare to keep their employees from starving so that they can pass more wealth on to shareholders. A study earlier this year (below) estimated that more than a million Walmart and Amazon employees nationwide depend on Medicaid.

https://www.ips-dc.org/report-americas-20-largest-low-wage-e...

Re: How Universities Should Prepare Founders

#246

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 1:49 PM UTC

dofm wrote: post #156

Swankivo wrote: post #65

Agreed. A university is a place for learning how to ask questions, and it runs on curiosity. Starting a company is just a means. When there is something you are curious about, or a problem you want solved, a startup is one of the ways to go after it. I went to university in Korea and I'm on my third startup. I watched startup clubs, government grant programs, and university-run programs all operate with the stated go…

> Agreed. A university is a place for learning how to ask questions, and it runs on curiosity. This is a rather oversimplified, old-fashioned take on the purpose of university. University in the 21st century is surely a straightforward high-stakes gamble, particularly in the UK and the USA: can I risk taking three or four years away from the job market, and go into life-changing, multi-decade debt, in order to gain q…

[deleted]

Re: How Universities Should Prepare Founders

#247

Post by PaulHoule » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 1:49 PM UTC

I like

   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 work at a major research university now but spent a lot of time working for various startups. I felt PhD training was great for being involved in startups, I mean, either way it is about making it routine to do things people have never done before. It hurts so much to see the "Ask HN" questions from people who want to do something new but have no idea how to get started... but PhD-track people think they want to work at established companies with prestige like Google.

Re: How Universities Should Prepare Founders

#248

Post by PaulHoule » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 1:52 PM UTC

matherial wrote: post #243

neomantra wrote: post #222

I am more interested in the question of how Y-Combinator has changed Stanford over the last two decades rather than the question of how Stanford should change to accommodate Y-Combinator. Notice there is no mention of ethics, philosophy, or human connection, except maybe Zuck being a psych major. Do we really want the future of education to be an incubator pipeline? That said I wholehearted agree with the second half…

To be fair, I wouldn't pin the blame on YC. Few people go to Ivy League universities to ponder ethics or philosophy. These schools are widely seen - by students and by parents - as an incredibly expensive way to "10x" your earning potential and influence. They were producing Mark Zuckerbergs for a good while. Yes, they accept some number of gifted people from underprivileged backgrounds, but these people are not the…

I am LMFAO about claims that Cornell is too "woke", like there is a woman's studies department, but also a Hotel Management school, a Business school, an Engineering school, ROTC, an ag school, a vet school, etc. Very vocational stuff. My wife studied animal science and she teaches people to ride horses. Yeah I am proud of the Nobel Prize winner who teaches an introductory physics class that I helped with, but I am also proud of the guy who grows potatoes on top of Mt. Pleasant to test their suitability for potato chip production.

Re: How Universities Should Prepare Founders

#249

Post by palmotea » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 1:53 PM UTC

louisbourgault wrote: post #139

palmotea wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think universities should focus on academic studies, not as a pipeline to YC. No, they should focus on providing investors the resources they want to get richer. Investors are the only people who matter in the world. Academic studies and knowledge are literally a worthless waste of time, compared to the investments of investors.

I assume this is satire. I hope it is, at least.

> I assume this is satire. I hope it is, at least.

How could it be satire? If you don't believe that investors' investments are the most important good-thing in the world, you must be an anti-capitalist in favor of Soviet-style central planning, and we all know how that turned out. There is no alternative.

Re: How Universities Should Prepare Founders

#250

Post by dofm » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 1:53 PM UTC

Juliate wrote: post #194

dofm wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Right but the tenor of it is different. In the 90s if you went more than a fortnight of job search after you graduated and didn’t get to being offered an interview, either you only had a third class degree or there was something very wrong with your CV.

These days every job has hundreds of applicants. In the AI era, thousands.