Peter Thiel: $100k grant to 20 founders who drop out of school

http://thielfoundation.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=14:the-thiel-fellowship-20-under-20&catid=1&Itemid=16

by iamelgringo • 16 years ago

41 66 16 years ago

thielfoundation.org

zbanks• 16 years ago

That just seems like a bad idea. Aren't successful dropouts an edge-case?

gdl2• 16 years ago

Successful founders are already edge cases, and these grants won't be handed out to the stereotypical "dropped out to play World of Warcraft" population. If someone is capable and driven enough to attract these sort of awards, I wouldn't expect their (dis)taste for formal education to have much effect on their odds of success.

I think the real point here is that they are making bets on the young and idealistic kids that haven't been tarnished by years of drudgery, beauracracy, and being told that they can't do things. So they do whatever wild ideas interest them, and if any one of those kids happened to be right about something that more 'educated' people would consider idiotic, it's a massive win. Kind of like the old DARPA approach or Google's 20% time. In that respect going after dropouts would make a lot of sense, since those are going to be the types that care less about following the establishment and will be more likely to execute genuinely novel ideas.

purpledove• 16 years ago

I'm 30, and I've worked at various corporations, both small and large, for 5 years. I've never once been told "I can't do things". Not once. Rather the opposite - I've worked with people who went on to found start-ups, and I've learned a great deal from my colleagues.

The larger question is: should a person in a position of power be encouraging young people to drop out of school? It strikes me as irresponsible.

sscheper• 16 years ago

Really like this part:

"Because education seeks to impart past knowledge, when you are trying to create a technological breakthrough, you have to create new knowledge, and there is no way to teach that. There was no course at University of Arizona on ‘‘how to cure aging.' Hopefully, this program will allow others to work on ambitious projects themselves, before they've taken on a crippling amount of student debt,”

_delirium2• 16 years ago

I'm curious how he expects people to study "how to cure aging" without first becoming "knowledgeable in biology". Scientific breakthroughs are rarely made by people who aren't familiar with the existing state of the science they work in ("past knowledge").

There's definitely ways besides university courses that you can pick up that past knowledge (Einstein spent about 10 years studying physics in a sort of unofficial study group before he set off in his own radically new direction). But surely you have to pick up at least the equivalent of an undergrad science degree worth of past knowledge somehow. Thiel sounds sort of like a messianic-futurist religious figure if he really thinks otherwise.

It's possible it'll work anyway, because presumably his grants don't actually require people who receive them to refrain from studying past knowledge. ;-)

edit: It looks like that quote is actually from William Andregg, not Peter Thiel. Andregg doesn't seem to take it too literally, though, because his own company's job openings have pretty detailed past-knowledge requirements ("The chemist should have a deep theoretical as well as practical familiarity with essential analytical techniques such as NMR, LCMS, elemental analysis, UV-Vis, and others. An understanding of surface chemistry/analysis, and experience working with nucleic acids in monomer, oligo, long, single stranded, and double stranded forms would also be valuable.").

sliverstorm• 16 years ago

It's romantic to imagine you can make breakthroughs without a solid grounding, so the image is promoted, and occasionally you get people like this with a handle on a lot of money who subscribe to the image.

Eliezer2• 16 years ago

> There's definitely ways besides university courses that you can pick up that past knowledge

And the amount of damage done by universities is now so severe that I've switched from telling people "Don't try following in my footsteps" to telling them "Okay, maybe you should get the hell out of school."

robryan2• 16 years ago

What if someone has a good mentor in a field that helps them along to way in selecting what to study? For the most part someone who isn't a graduate should be able to access the same papers as people doing post grad, given enough motivation and a bit of guidance I don't see why they couldn't get to the top for their field.

bhiggins• 16 years ago

cargo culting

todayiamme12• 16 years ago

Why? I'm toying with idea of applying, but why is it cargo culting?

I would love it if someone allowed me the time and the intellectual freedom to make things instead of filling in tiny, dark circles on a piece of paper as proof that I'm worthy enough of a future as judged by some vague overlord.

I want to learn and understand things thoroughly, but I will not learn anything to pass some exam. So, for someone like me, but smarter and more driven, this might actually be a net win. I fail to understand how this might be a cargo cult.

blaines3• 16 years ago

You should apply. Out of curiosity, what's your age? Have you dropped out?

hristov• 16 years ago

Exactly what I was going to say. He might as well give 20 kids $100 000 each to get dorky haircuts hoping that they each become the next Bill Gates.

fauigerzigerk11• 16 years ago

I think it's a really stupid idea to link a grant to dropping out of school. If an idea is worth a $100000 grant, why does it stop being worth that money as soon as someone turns 21 or has a degree?

I did drop out of school and I don't regret it. Many dropouts are very successful, many more are not. And to be honest, I would sue that guy if my kids dropped out of a computational biology program to go write some social picture upload site in PHP.

The odds of some web startup working are non zero. But the odds of doing something more interesting later with that degree are also non zero. Computational biologists can create social picture upload sites as well, even when they're over 20 believe it or not.

robryan2• 16 years ago

What if your kids didn't really enjoy computational biology but were passionate about building web products?

fauigerzigerk11• 16 years ago

Then they drop out of school, as I did, and don't need to be bribed to do so.

todayiamme12• 16 years ago

>>>And to be honest, I would sue that guy if my kids dropped out of a computational biology program to go write some social picture upload site in PHP.<<<

That's precisely the problem. Writing a social picture upload site in :gasp: PHP has become a well trodden path of sorts. A supposedly sure shot guarantee for something vague and undefined. I think that the problem with trends is that the minute something becomes a trend. It stops being something worthwhile 15 minutes before that.

What's so shocking and wrong to walk off the well worn path? If they actually choose to use the $100,000 to work on something meaningful then the world might actually be a better place.

Of course, you say they don't know the basics yet! That's the interesting thing. When you learn something in the heat of passion then you burn through the same material at a rate faster than you could have ever dream of. You learn through trial and error. Understand things at a deeper level to make stuff work. Why is that so wrong?

Instead of some dumb exam your trial now lies in your creation. It either works. Or, it doesn't. Period.

Wasn't this the entire point of having an education in the first place?

fauigerzigerk11• 16 years ago

I don't need to be convinced that learning can be much much more intense than it usually is in school.

gdl2• 16 years ago

College-aged people are grown-up enough to live their own lives. I know it would be painful to see one's child getting involved with PHP, but in the end that should be their own choice to make.

fauigerzigerk11• 16 years ago

Absolutely, I just don't want some rich guy bribing them to drop out. If they develop a great passion for a startup idea, I will provide that grant myself after a period of time and after a rigorous debate.

lionhearted3• 16 years ago

> I would sue that guy if my kids dropped out of a computational biology program to go write some social picture upload site in PHP.

So, your kid applies for a grant because he thinks it's good for his life. The Thiel Foundation gives him $100,000. And you'd like to sue the foundation for giving your kid money that the kid applied for to do what he wants with? That's... kind of crazy to me.

fauigerzigerk11• 16 years ago

No, you shouldn't take "sue" too literally. I know it's totally impractical. I just think it's a stupid and completely unnecessary stipulation to _require_ kids to drop out of school and at the same time exclude everyone else who might have a good idea and a passion.

hop2• 16 years ago

Learning is a life long process. I would very much encourage my kid to do it - they would get to bring a passionate idea to fruitition, get exposed to running a company and get mentored by very smart entrepreneurs.

If it doesnt work out, I'll still pay for them to finish their degree the next year.

What is the downside?

fauigerzigerk11• 16 years ago

Good if it works out like that. But what's the point of linking the grant to dropping out?

arethuza2• 16 years ago

My initial reaction was that I agreed with you - but then I considered that an awful lot has changed in the 20+ years since I graduated with a CS degree (and indeed I dropped out from the latter stages of a PhD to co-found a startup).

I have an 11 year old son and his school has started to talk about University (mostly as vieled threats of - if he keeps his attitude to homework up he won't get into a good University etc.). By I do keep asking myself what the value of a degree is - I enjoyed the course I did immensely but I have to say that I've never regretted dropping out of the PhD I was doing, so why should this not apply to a first degree?

I suspect that, on balance, that if my son was 19 and got this offer I would say "go for it" - the experience, the opportunity and the exposure you would get is likely to be worth far more than any purely academic qualification.

fauigerzigerk11• 16 years ago

What if it turns out you're a lousy entrepreneur and still want to solve hard problems? Without a degree, you're forced to be an entrepreneur. They won't employ you to work on interesting problems without any kind of formal education. Not having a PhD isn't quite the same.

blaines3• 16 years ago

20 is arbitrary, I don't understand why they would choose 20, especially since some of the people mentioned in the article have degrees or started after 20. Also, I'd like to know when they got funded, it seems many of the [other] companies that Thiel has invested in had founders over 20.

Elon Musk dropped out at age 24 - started Zip2.

Scott Banister started ListBot at age 20.

Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook at age 20 dropped out at 20.

William Andregg no info.

Peter Thiel himself graduated (J.D. from Stanford in 1992)

Add info or submit corrections.

hop2• 16 years ago

This could have a great return on investment and probably quiet many of the naysayers when successful companies roll out of it.

He will likely have a lot of candidates responding to this (I sure as hell would have in college) and be able to pick and choose the top of the crop. No one else is proactively going after this huge talent pool.

And it could also be a lifesaver for would-be entrepreneurs that come out of college with $80k of debt and forced to work for someone else.

tdmackey• 16 years ago

It will be interesting to see what comes of these grants.

I feel that the companies that were successful when their founders dropped out of school were driven by a founder who believed so intently and was committed to his idea that he was willing to drop out and pursue it despite the lack of incentive to do so. Instead of the alternative where a halfway decent guy who just isn't that happy at school goes off to pursue some startup because someone gave him a decent amount of money which i suspect will end in failure almost all the time.

jscore• 16 years ago

So basically $100k for some teens to build a bunch of RoR CRUD sites.

And ""Our world needs more breakthrough technologies,” said Thiel. "From Facebook to SpaceX to Halcyon Molecular, some of the world's most transformational technologies were created by people who stopped out of school because they had ideas that couldn't wait until graduation. "

Don't know about the other companies beside Facebook, but it seems that Facebook doesn't belong on that list of "breakthrough technologies"

ramanujan• 16 years ago

Facebook doesn't have the same optics as Google (a friend list/profile seems much easier than search), but things like Haystack are pretty impressive.

pcwalton• 16 years ago

Facebook has some very interesting open source projects: http://github.com/facebook

Particularly interesting to me is their static analysis tool for PHP written in OCaml.

Aegean• 16 years ago

It sounds populist. Less than 20 year old is not a sweet spot for investing in a founder. It's only good for media coverage.

rdl2• 16 years ago

I'd rather see a new university which figures out a way to support founders starting startups AND grant them some kind of credential (in case it fails). Unfortunately much of the world is credential-based (especially Asian parents...), so being able to award a degree would make a difference in who could participate. Plus, if someone's startup fails, or he just realizes he'd rather do something other than startups, the credential makes getting a regular job much easier, preserving options. And of course immigration often depends on a degree, and using educational visas to get people into the USA in the first place would be a great hack.

I think a 5-6 year program to get a SB in tech entrepreneurship, where 1-2 years are spent doing smaller projects and some regular classes (as applied to those projects), and then 4 years in a co-op program with your startup and students from the first 1-2 years, would be ideal. Maybe even grant a SB/SM in 6-8 years.

psyklic2• 16 years ago

Olin College is one pioneering example. However, the main problem with the startup education + credential approach is that the barriers to such a school offering an accredited credential are overwhelming.

However, imo traditional universities also support founders and grant them a credential. Students typically have a lot more free time than if they were employed (depending on their major). It's just that the student would also have to be incredibly resistant to peer pressure.

rdl2• 16 years ago

Olin College was amazing; I wish I'd been a year or two younger so I could have been part of the founding class.

They did backpedal a bit on the "free for everyone", unfortunately.

vaksel• 16 years ago

I think this is stupid...most founders who dropped out of school..did so only after they got traction, an saw that the business was going somewhere.

I'm not sure...but I don't think any of the big name founders(you know those that are always brought up as examples) ever dropped out of school before actually finishing their product...and seeing early traction

pragetruif• 16 years ago

The funny thing is, I was willing to drop out of school to work at one of those Thiel-network companies (I was interning for the summer, and my team wanted me to stay), but they told me they wouldn't hire me full-time without a degree.

I ended up dropping out anyways, but to do something else.

Peter Thiel: $100k grant to 20 founders who drop out of school

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