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Comment by rdl | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how long until YC goes upstream of fellowship/startup school: consolidated remote/mini internships for high school students, or some other "get involved with YC companies early" kind of thing.

Especially likely to happen once the first cohort of YC founders has kids of age 12-18.

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Are those 12-18 year olds well served by something like a startup themed summer camp? If there are kids who are truly interested in it than so be it but I'd hate to see something like this turned into just another impressive extracurricular checkbox on college applications.

On a particular occasion, PG said that people are better when they have 10 years of experience in programming. He created a few workarounds so that people from one minority and suitable experience get favourable exposure, but to my knowledge he didn't come back on the "requirement". Does it do well to tie 12-18 years olds into a formatted scheme?

It's more common nowadays for an 18 year old to have 10 years of experience programming.

Certainly it's uncommon, but the set of all 18 year olds who've been programming for 10 years are a subset of those who'd benefit tremendously from a YC program for young adults. And YC has shown that even though money is a focus, it's not their primary focus.

Is there value in such a program? I think so. Even if the program serves as nothing more than a reminder to young people that there are those in the world who believe in them, it would be a win. Getting young people to consider "What are some strategies for me to change the world?" before "What type of job do I want?" might yield a better world.

Well, the way they're taking signals the opposite: more and more domain-specific expertise for tackling big problems, so would say that median age (aka training years plus relevant experience) is going to increase. That said, starting with kids can only do good for inspiration, evangelism and first steps. I can see happening both, YC partners and alumni are a pretty heterogenous bunch, other than smart.

Why not go earlier and just steal babies from parents, figure out which ones are Destined For Greatness, then throw away the rest? After all, you've either got it or you don't. (Imagine if you could genetically test people for Founder Greatness. But then you'd have to take them away from home at a young age so they don't see their mother sold into slavery. Otherwise they'll return 10 years later for revenge, fully succumbing to the dark side.)

At some point life experience has to happen outside of YC VC invest startup win exit pivot iterate mvp lean partner found excellence smartest-founders-under-8-years-old bubble land.

There's also the risk of "startup dynasty" — like how mark's sister became an associate parter at a VC firm and his other sister turned into a "self-made" social phenom of blandness-by-association. meritocracy for all, but meritocracy more for the friends and family of the already successful.

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