I'd argue that both of these would be highly beneficial for all kinds of students, founders and non-founders alike.
Starting a startup could be generalized for all students to having a dream or goal, taking ownership of it, and making it happen. A startup is just one possible path, pg is probably too specific here, I would agree.
Having more free time to work on my own projects is probably the freedom I missed most at university. I think learning to choose what to work on and making something happen would benefit future workers, teachers, doctors, and engineers just as much as entrepreneurs.
It's a trade-off in terms of time and other resources, since parts of the existing curriculum would have to fade away. But I think it's a good starting point for change and a good direction to move in.
And "building things" isn't enough. Many projects have zero commercial potential.
I don't think PG is wrong, but I also don't think he's right. I think if universities wanted to do something with startup culture they could filter the more motivated and talented students into incubators of their own - not through some kind of overly academic post-grad degree, but literally a startup school where the university provides resources, subsistence, and access to funding, in return for a share of project equity. The "teaching" would be more about finding customers and handling finances and less about managerial MBA nonsense.
The big win for students would be "You don't have to worry about food, rent, or basic running costs."
Post-grad research overlaps with this, but is more fundamental. The emphasis here would be more on projects with immediate income potential, not on technology that could be commercialised in the future, possibly.
The problem is academic culture is very different to startup culture, so the startup school would need a much looser relationship to its parent than a typical academic department.
First he doesn't say universities should prepare founders - his advice is to those universities that do want to do that.
Second, his advice is basically to skip BS business education and make students good professionals, well-rounded intellectuals, not afraid of starting a business. Anyone would benefit from such education, not only prospective founders
As a university professor, I've seen that all universities want to do everything.
By which I mean, they employ all sorts of people who are pushing a huge range of agendas. You can't meaningfully speak about "what universities want", because various factions tend to expect free rein to pursue their goals, and there is no mechanism to get everyone pushing in the same direction.
I felt my most valuable formative experience for being a startup worker was the summer I was back from college and the supermarket I worked at in high school felt they owed me a job even though they weren't really hiring.
I was assigned 50% as a bagger in the front end and 50% a pinch hitter attached to the store manager who did whatever random things we needed whether it was deep clean the floor, paint a metal strip around the building, learn to work the meat slicer to sub for somebody in the deli, sub for people in the bakery, etc.
That made me into somebody who did whatever need to be done, but people who haven't had that kind of experience get really hung up on job titles and think "I'm a data scientist, I don't need to do that."
Yes, that is pretty much VC enterprenour philosophy in nutshell. It is value system that value only one small group only. And if that small group has to put in effort into learning in school or doing something other then building unicorns, that is a great unfairness.
It's time we all admit the VCs are the best people, and we're just worthless in comparison. Anyone with any value at all is an investor or a founder. No one else matters.
That's why neo-reactionary ideology is so profound: it would put those best people in charge, and clear all the useless garbage out of their way.
Mind you, I'm not totally sure how this differs from employer/employee relationships in practice except I suppose that each side has less contractual protection from the other.
Has anyone ever plotted the lifespan of YC companies from each cohort?
Most of them end up dead…
YMMV you do have to have a different less nihilistic mindset but it really is a bit of a Neo in the Matrix moment because it lets you see through a bit of the corporate veneer to see the complex mess of personal and group foibles that run our major corporations.
In the end it also ends up making you a 10x more effective worker if that’s where you end up even if just to protect your mental health by being able to explain what’s going on.
But just to caveat, its not YC or VC funding that is critical.
It’s the act of building something and trying to sell it that is.
No doubt there are learnings worth a lifetime, and changes that alter careers. You hope, the sense of superiority the experience seems to breed is not merely a coping mechanism, but an exercise in positive self-image [0]
Mostly an extremely online problem, not a real world one. More so the nature of the medium in fact.
Evidenced by how you edited out the “dead” in front of VC funded when you were quoting me. You read the tone you want to read.
Do consider re-reading my comment after a while.
> You read the tone you want to read.
Please, don't gaslight.
I dont know how re-reading is going to help me see this sentence differently. I am just telling you my lived experience shows me this prior is simply not true. That's all.
wait till you see what happens to a lot of forbes 30 under 30
Just like mostly everything he writes about.