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Student Entrepreneurs: If Peter Thiel Calls, Hang Up

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Re: Student Entrepreneurs: If Peter Thiel Calls, Hang Up

#51

Post by RougeFemme »

tobyjsullivan wrote: post #27

I appreciate the article and the point of view but I have to disagree completely with his recommendation that you spend your years working for someone else before you launch your own business. He talks about working for a company after finishing college to learn about how they operate and do business. You know what I learned in the five years after college I worked for a company as a dev? A whole lot about software d…

I agree that working for another company doesn't always make you a good entrepreneur. But I do think that, depending on the size of the company, the dynamics and your role within the company you can learn, for free, a lot about what not to do, particularly regarding the basics of management. And regarding hiring, you can learn, what you actually want/value during the interview and in an employee vs. what you think you want.

Re: Student Entrepreneurs: If Peter Thiel Calls, Hang Up

#52

Post by michaelt »

seiji wrote: post #29
kyzyl wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry but that's a pretty outlandish statement. dogs may occasionally act like people, and they may require management, but they are not people. It doesn't follow that if you can't/haven't managed dogs you have no hope with people. I've done both and it's a different ball game.

I've worked under multiple managers who: gave no positive feedback, set no expectations, and provided no treats. That's really the minimum you should do with dogs or people.

Have you told your employees that you're managing them based on techniques you learned from a dog training book? How did they react?

Re: Student Entrepreneurs: If Peter Thiel Calls, Hang Up

#53

Post by jessaustin »

enraged_camel wrote: post #49
saryant wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's for non-residents. At least look at the in-state number which is less than half the one you quoted.

Most of the resident students live on or around campus, as opposed to with their parents. For them, total cost comes down to around $110,000. That's still a six-digit number.

So it's the non-resident students who live with their parents? That seems impractical. b^)

Re: Student Entrepreneurs: If Peter Thiel Calls, Hang Up

#54

Post by ewang1 »

thejulielogan wrote: post #50
zhemao wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you will at least learn how not to do it.

Not true. Rarely do you (a cog) see the hiring process (a different cog) used by your massive company (the machine). Especially when you're just out of college.

Agreed. Ideally, you are an early employee at a startup where the founders had some previous successes. This way you get to see and take part in behind the scene processes as implemented by the experienced founders.

Re: Student Entrepreneurs: If Peter Thiel Calls, Hang Up

#55

Post by chasing »

enraged_camel wrote: post #36
jeffasinger wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of school options that involve much lower debt than that. You don't need to go to a school that costs $50k a year, there are plenty of alternatives.

There are plenty of alternatives, but do they provide the same quality of education for your degree of choice?

Many do, yes.

Re: Student Entrepreneurs: If Peter Thiel Calls, Hang Up

#56

Post by UK-AL »

seiji wrote: post #8
auggierose wrote: post #3

Also, yes, hiring is difficult. Do you really think you are learning how to do it properly by working at Big Corp first?

There's value in learning from how others have screwed up the world. Learn what sins not to repeat. Sometimes you can only see the brokenness from inside the system. Some people are geniuses and can run billion dollar companies when they are 16. Other people can benefit from learning by doing for a few years. Everybody is different.

More to do with chaos more than anything. Some businesses get lucky, others don't.

There was study that showed that entrepreneurial success has extremely weak correlations with previous experience.

Most successful entrepreneurs that I know were terrible at first and had little experience, but there companies still succeeded.

I know experienced people that started companies, and did things right and failed.

The difference was that things were in the right place at the right time.

Re: Student Entrepreneurs: If Peter Thiel Calls, Hang Up

#57

Post by wellboy »

You can gain more "experience" before you try to do your own thing, however the more experience you gain, the worse you become at creating the next billion dollar startup. For every year that you don´t start your own business, your capability to think large and taking risks and your resourcefulness dramatically declines.

That´s the reason why none of the four horsemen in tech, Google, Apple, Amazon or Facebook were founded by founders over 30.

Looking at all the other billion dollar startups Microsoft, Dropbox, Airbnb, Twitter, Instagram, Waze, Paypal, Tumblr none of their founders were over 30. See a pattern? There are probably billion startups who were founded by founders older than 30, but there are very few.

The less experience you have, the more likely you are to create the next billion dollar company. If you start your startup after 30, it's very unlikely that you will be able to make it into a $1B startup.

Re: Student Entrepreneurs: If Peter Thiel Calls, Hang Up

#58

Post by UK-AL »

seiji wrote: post #10
colinbartlett wrote: post #4

"Management is a tremendously undervalued skill on the tech startup scene, and that single fact contributes, I believe, to the failure of more companies than any other factor." Truth.

If a company let's children be managers without any prior experience or training, the company should force all their child prodigies to at a minimum read http://www.amazon.com/Great-Danes-Barrons-Dog-Bibles/dp/0764...

That's just plain offensive. If you start trying to command people like you command dogs, people are just going to disrespect you. You will have no power.

People don't react to pain/rewards like dogs do. They see through it instantly.

Re: Student Entrepreneurs: If Peter Thiel Calls, Hang Up

#59

Post by UK-AL »

seiji wrote: post #29
kyzyl wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry but that's a pretty outlandish statement. dogs may occasionally act like people, and they may require management, but they are not people. It doesn't follow that if you can't/haven't managed dogs you have no hope with people. I've done both and it's a different ball game.

I've worked under multiple managers who: gave no positive feedback, set no expectations, and provided no treats. That's really the minimum you should do with dogs or people.

"gave no positive feedback" "provided no treats"

Seriously? If you try to control people pain and reward system, most people see through it and hate you for it.

You want them to have a innate feeling of accomplishment. You completed something difficult? And that felt good. You don't need cookies from a master for that.

The number one thing you need to do, is set something up which they can measure themselves against. 90% of the time people will enjoy improving it, without any input.

Re: Student Entrepreneurs: If Peter Thiel Calls, Hang Up

#60

Post by tensor »

wellboy wrote: post #57

You can gain more "experience" before you try to do your own thing, however the more experience you gain, the worse you become at creating the next billion dollar startup. For every year that you don´t start your own business, your capability to think large and taking risks and your resourcefulness dramatically declines. That´s the reason why none of the four horsemen in tech, Google, Apple, Amazon or Facebook were f…

This is abhorrent ageism, and completely wrong.

Peter Thiel, 31, Paypal, 37, Palintar. Larry Elison, 33, Oracle. Reid Hoffman, 35, Linked In. Evan Williams, 35, Twitter. Mark Pincus, 41, Zynga. Arianna Huffington, 54, Huffington Post.

Can we stop making things up? Maybe five minutes of research would be good? You know, there is a place they teach these things.

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