Entrepreneurship is risk free: Heads I win, tails I don’t lose much

Its quite possible a kid leaving college not only fails at the startup, but fails at networking and building contacts, and also fails at learning anything at all.

There's a lot of free time in college, if you can keep your time organized. It's very possible to (a) get decent grades (GPA 3.3-3.7), (b) learn something in the classes that are interesting, (c) hang out with friends, party like it's 1999, get laid, and (d) work on a "startup" (more like a side-project at this point) for 10-20 hours per week.

If you're effective for those "startup" hours, you can have something to show for it in a year -- maybe a business worth pursuing, maybe just an amazing addition to your resume.

In any case, going to college and working on a startup shouldn't necessarily be exclusionary, unless the startup proves to be successful enough that it makes sense to drop-out or finish your degree remotely.

In the Indian context, this article makes much more sense!

Note for instance the opening, "Recently I met with parents of the founder of one of our portfolio companies." :) How many times would PG have met with the parents of a YC founder?

Money during bootstrap phase would be from parents -> A middle-class kid fresh out of college, could be easily supported by his parents for 3-5 years, staying at home, with no additional expenses. Given many parents support grad school, supporting their kids while they're working on a startup would not be a stretch (if they agree with this article or see the fire in their kids).

If the startup goes anywhere but dead, (in a year or so) the founders would have got a reasonable amount of independent mgmt experience, ability to startup and deliver, and exposure to industry far greater than their peers.

Now in India there is a severe lack of middle management capable of independent decision making, project level leadership, and delivery. There is also a shortage of folks who can think at a product and market level, as opposed to a customer/service level. A guy coming out of a startup (even failed) who can demonstrate these skills would be quite better than his peers who may have far more experience in sw development.

If the startup fails within a few months or years, worst case, an MBA may be in store, although it would certainly not be as exciting :)

Many of the guys who are doing this would probably be of upper-class, or upper-middle class, whose families would certainly encourage such risk taking.