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How Universities Should Prepare Founders

paulgraham.com

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Re: How Universities Should Prepare Founders

#211

Post by dfklamp »

If YC is financing 500 vibe coding Electron apps it is not up to the universities to create a new pipeline with biochemistry founders.

AI will destroy YouTube, Facebook, Google Search, programming and all the business models that made Silicon Valley people filthy rich. People will finally leave the Internet. It will destroy Ycombinator. You are sawing off the branch that you are sitting on.

None of it is necessary or inevitable, but SV follows SciFi trash like it's Dianetics from L. Ron Hubbard.

Re: How Universities Should Prepare Founders

#212

Post by rTX5CMRXIfFG »

hamza_ali_shah wrote: post #209
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…

His point is to rethink the purpose education... Yes, there's a privellaged sense in assuming every student has equal access to time,resources, and family dynamics and economics. I feel the idea that universities and education system in general needs to move away from purely academic style of education to practical startup-forcused is needed for the new era.

You’re talking about trade schools with 3 units in financial accounting.

This “rethinking of education” you’re on about is already incredibly rigid from the start, and will not give young people the generalist skills to weather cycles of hype and economic downturns.

Re: How Universities Should Prepare Founders

#214

Post by bluegatty »

PG is surprisingly ignorant of economics, finance and how normal businesses operate at scale, and has this weird bigotry against it.

The 'best thing' they could do is teach literally every students basic commerce, finance and econ.

Literally every student.

If you can understand the bond market - you can understand how the whole world works.

Behind every major conflict is finance.

The Napoleonic wars are about about finance and logistics, particularly issues in the treasury, international lending.

The doldrums of the 1970s were about monetary system.

Great Depression was about markets.

Roosevelts transformation of the US bureaucracy is is an operational and financial socialization of 30% of the US economy.

None of any of that happens until the Fed came into being.

PG reviles in illiteracy of these macro things like an anti-vaxxer.

If people understood these things, we'd have a different kind of democracy entirely.

Re: How Universities Should Prepare Founders

#215

Post by Perseids »

mettamage wrote: post #157
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…

> And if possible for way, way, way less money. Enough universities in Europe that do this. I am thinking of studying maths at the German distance university. I forgot the name. It would mean that I neef to speak good German. I might just do that too

That would be the FernUni Hagen: https://www.fernuni-hagen.de/english/

> The FernUniversität in Hagen is Germany’s only state distance-learning university, and its largest in terms of student numbers. Its flexible degree programs and continuing education options make higher education accessible to students in a variety of life situations. Its five faculties conduct a wide range of theoretical and applied research in their subject areas of Humanities and Social Sciences, Psychology, Mathematics and Computer Science, Economics and Business Administration, and Law.

I believe some exams have to be taken non-remote: https://www.fernuni-hagen.de/english/study/distance-learning...

Re: How Universities Should Prepare Founders

#216

Post by locknitpicker »

tescreal wrote: post #204
locknitpicker wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

A key problem is upper-level academia is rife with the same sorts of human-scale power dynamics. Petty squabbles, ideological (and ideological-flavoured) views can and do hold entire fields from time to time. It is only a particular type of tenacity that breaks up the status quo from time to time. (consider the Marvin Minsky era of AI research. A big personality can stifle an entire field). Peers aren't usually the a…

> A key problem is upper-level academia is rife with the same sorts of human-scale power dynamics.

You are trying too hard to come up with excuses. The paper review process is double-blind, and nothing prevents you from publishing the same work in multiple journals. If your goal is to do meaningful contributions to science then "power dynamics" are irrelevant.

You do need to develop a meaningful network in the field if your goal is to collaborate with other researchers, but that's basically what everyone needs to do in any professional field.

Re: How Universities Should Prepare Founders

#217

Post by tescreal »

locknitpicker wrote: post #216
tescreal wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A key problem is upper-level academia is rife with the same sorts of human-scale power dynamics. Petty squabbles, ideological (and ideological-flavoured) views can and do hold entire fields from time to time. It is only a particular type of tenacity that breaks up the status quo from time to time. (consider the Marvin Minsky era of AI research. A big personality can stifle an entire field). Peers aren't usually the a…

> A key problem is upper-level academia is rife with the same sorts of human-scale power dynamics. You are trying too hard to come up with excuses. The paper review process is double-blind, and nothing prevents you from publishing the same work in multiple journals. If your goal is to do meaningful contributions to science then "power dynamics" are irrelevant. You do need to develop a meaningful network in the field…

Entrenched ideas have momentum. Your lone-warrior attitude is admirable if not lacking in substance. Most fields have had occasional hangups on dead ends, such as the aforementioned Minsky "symbolic > connectivist" debacle. Behaviourism in psychology. String theory. The list goes on.

Re: How Universities Should Prepare Founders

#218

Post by bluegatty »

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…

"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 this is beyond bad.

The #1 thing anyone could ever to do study entrepreneurship is to do 'case studies'.

Liteally just learning/observing how they work - the nature of founding, structure, power relationships, what debt and equity are for.

Learning 'how a VC firm' operates, and indeed how other kinds of investment bankers work is golden.

HBS is almost a glorified 2 years of basic concepts + 'a lot of case studies'.

Learning how IBM, Standard Oil, Apple and a host of companies you've never heard of operate is deeply enlightening.

The 'Naive By Design' approach by the YC people is almost toxic.

There is definitely some insight in it - that 'seasoned executives' are probably worse at starting small companies in many ways, but, understanding why that is is really important. It has a lot to do with risk, the kinds of things CEO's of established companies are good at etc..

It's as absurd as saying 'Don't Learn Nursing By Studying Nursing - Just Do Music and Engineering'.

Doing 'projects' however, is a wonderful idea.

Re: How Universities Should Prepare Founders

#220

Post by latexr »

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.

> Walmart and Amazon are the two biggest employers in the US.

One of the two biggest employers in the US is one who treats their employees so poorly that they have to pee in bottles and continue working after a colleague has died and been left on the floor? If that’s the kind of jobs large companies “provide”, it’s not worth it. We’d much better off with several small companies that give people the flexibility to escape draconian working conditions.

https://nypost.com/2026/04/15/business/amazon-warehouse-empl...

https://futurism.com/future-society/amazon-accused-hiding-de...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherinehamilton/2023/05/24/de...

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