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Most unicorn founders are graduates of Stanford, Harvard, and the IITs

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Re: Most unicorn founders are graduates of Stanford, Harvard, and the IITs

#61

Post by fjdlwlv »

ssivark wrote: post #34
itsdrewmiller wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IITs collectively have only 33k undergrads, according to wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Institutes_of_Technolog... That would make the entire system comparable to a large state school in the US. They do have proportionally more grad students, so total student body is right around the biggest state schools - Florida, Texas, Ohio, etc. Definitely not on the same level as Stanford or Harvard, but still…

That's after accounting for the recent increases in student intake. All but the oldest seven have started in the last decade, and the older seven have also increased their intake by 50-100% in the meanwhile. So, as of a decade ago, the IITs would have been graduating ~2000 undergrads per year, all seven institutions combined. (The counting is a little complicated, but I expect that number to be less than ~3000 noneth…

A billion people and such a tiny investment in education. Wow. Indians are lucky that's finally starting to change.

Re: Most unicorn founders are graduates of Stanford, Harvard, and the IITs

#62

Post by fjdlwlv »

elmar wrote: post #12
tristanj wrote: post #6

This ordering is bunk because the author makes no attempt to normalize for student population. Larger schools have a massive advantage compared to smaller ones. Compare the University of California and MIT. University of California has 250,000 students and MIT has 11,000. After normalizing the data, MIT produces 1 unicorn per 1,200 yearly enrolled student, while UoC produces 1 unicorn per 13,900 yearly enrolled stude…

Interesting fact, per capita Israelis have founded more billion dollar startups than any other nationality.

Populating a nation completely with immigrants, and getting a lot of foreign investment, creates and enablesand ambitious population.

Re: Most unicorn founders are graduates of Stanford, Harvard, and the IITs

#63

Post by fjdlwlv »

snarf21 wrote: post #22
ryandrake wrote: post #15

The article stops just short of implying a causal connection between what school you go to and whether you're going to "found a unicorn" but come on! Maybe, just maybe , could it be that this deserves a little deeper look? Perhaps people who have the opportunity to go to one of these top schools have that opportunity because of some other structural advantage that also provides them the opportunity to found a unicorn…

Obviously. I think the biggest benefit this group has is the safety to fail. I worked 40+ hours and was doing 12+ credits for my undergrad. When I graduated, I had massive loans and bills to pay. I wonder what I could have done if I had two years with no bills to work on something and zero debt looming.

More than safety to fail , they have millions of dollars of investment waiting for them before they even start

Re: Most unicorn founders are graduates of Stanford, Harvard, and the IITs

#64

Post by bayonetz »

ryandrake wrote: post #15

The article stops just short of implying a causal connection between what school you go to and whether you're going to "found a unicorn" but come on! Maybe, just maybe , could it be that this deserves a little deeper look? Perhaps people who have the opportunity to go to one of these top schools have that opportunity because of some other structural advantage that also provides them the opportunity to found a unicorn…

One simple, practical factor that shouldn't be overlooked in the case of Stanford's rank here is that it is literally in the middle of Silicon Valley. The physical and mental inertia to moving to SV from wherever else you are can be very real. I'd bet the distribution of where those unicorns were started location-wise is like 70% SV, 30% spread across Boston, SoCal, and the rest. Similar to how YC makes everybody move to SV to start...

Re: Most unicorn founders are graduates of Stanford, Harvard, and the IITs

#65

Post by tzs »

Unicorn startups seem to tend to be things with mass public appeal, and also often tend to be losing money and fail to ever turn into a sustainable profitable business.

If you broaden this to look at startups in general, then the list of top schools is a bit different. UCLA is at the top [1].

They have a lot of startups that most of the public, and probably most of HN, would never have heard of. These are companies doing things like cancer therapy or treating industrial wastewater. They come out of the biology or chemistry or civil engineering departments, not the computer science department.

Caltech has a similar startup profile [2]. That link gives a big list of Caltech startups and what they do. Most of them are working in areas I don't think I've ever seen mentioned on HN. I read somewhere that when size is taken into account, Caltech is at or near the top in startup creation rate.

I think MIT is similar.

[1] http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ucla-startups-20170707...

[2] http://innovation.caltech.edu/startups/

Re: Most unicorn founders are graduates of Stanford, Harvard, and the IITs

#66

Post by babesh »

1. Why are they interested in unicorns? 2. Are these just US companies? I would assume that there are a bunch of Chinese unicorns? 3. The study looked at only a few factors and correlation does not imply causation and the past is not a predictor of the future. The factors were school, gender, and previous attempts.

Therefore without more measures, we seem to be doing a whole lot of speculating on cause and effect with a very, very narrow lenses. Seems like we are mostly exposing our own narrow views rather than how the world actually is.

Re: Most unicorn founders are graduates of Stanford, Harvard, and the IITs

#67

Post by aviraldg »

fjdlwlv wrote: post #61
ssivark wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's after accounting for the recent increases in student intake. All but the oldest seven have started in the last decade, and the older seven have also increased their intake by 50-100% in the meanwhile. So, as of a decade ago, the IITs would have been graduating ~2000 undergrads per year, all seven institutions combined. (The counting is a little complicated, but I expect that number to be less than ~3000 noneth…

A billion people and such a tiny investment in education. Wow. Indians are lucky that's finally starting to change.

Surprisingly, most oppose the creation of new IITs, claiming that it "dilutes" the brand.

Re: Most unicorn founders are graduates of Stanford, Harvard, and the IITs

#68

Post by nnfy »

34090doood9 wrote: post #57
18nleung wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's merit to both arguments - but I agree with the grandparent comment in that too often nowadays we tend to dismiss people in Ivy League colleges as simply products of a wealthy background. As a current public high school student, I can assure you that the ivies are more selective than ever and kids who are being accepted nowadays are truly exceptional.

I've worked with lots of people from different backgrounds, including individuals from elite schools (hell, I guess I'm married to one), and what frustrates me isn't the wealth (although there is always that story lurking in the background among those I know--they're never wealthy themselves, but they tell stories of legacy students everywhere). What frustrates me is the assumption that because an elite school is so…

You have difficult accepting the generalization and judging individuals by it; however, statistically speaking, you are more likely to find intrinsic merit and accomplishment in those from ivy league schools; which is why when an assessment of an individual needs to be made, ivy league heritage is a useful heuristic.

There is also the age old question of nature vs nurture, and I suspect that we disagree in that those of a certain superior nature+nurture tend to congregate in prestigious and productive institutions.

I would love to know why my original post low quality, but I suspect people are once again absuing downvotes to shame me into avoiding taboo.

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