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I guess one thing universities have to decide is how important having founders is to them. PG talks about how Harvard has more founders than Yale and Princeton,

I guess one thing universities have to decide is how important having founders is to them. PG talks about how Harvard has more founders than Yale and Princeton, but I don't really see that as a good or bad thing for any of those schools. There probably aren't infinite good ideas that can be successful at any one time. If you encourage more people to become founders then they aren't going to go into other places where their skills might be better suited. YC's founders also skew heavily towards a certain type of person and business. The returns of VC in biotech for example are much lower than the returns in B2C and B2B software. It's just a harder, more capital intensive, and more uncertain industry. Over optimizing for the YC archetype means you get less of the people who succeed in other areas. Also, although PG disdains finance and management, many large problems are better addressed through people with skills in these areas IMO, since often the returns are not sufficient to attract VC interest but the financial and human resources that need to be coordinated to address them are substantially beyond the ability of a small, undercapitalized group.

strangattractor 23d ago
There are so many VC's and so much money today the demand for "Founders" is high. One way to increase supply is to manufacture what you need - much like Korean K-Pop bands. Band members start in a Bootcamp. They learn to dance and get a vocal coach. As their fan base grows they start to disrupt and displace older bands that are aging out. The industry as a whole does well but individual band may or may not. Do they produce new and innovative music? - meh. Let's face it - a "Founder" with the right fan base can get valuations over a trillion:)
- jeffreyrogers 23d ago
  I do think it is kind of funny when VCs talk about how they can tell who will be a successful founder. They are picking the people who get to call themselves founders so it is close to tautological that who they think will be successful matches who ends up succeeding. You don't get to see the counterfactual world where the non-funded people get given money and then you see what personality distribution the successes from that group have. The problem probably is worse now since there are fewer IPOs and more companies exit in private transactions where it's not clear how much economic value was actually created vs how much is just what the investors agree the business is worth.
  - deleted 23d ago
    [deleted]
  - strangattractor 20d ago
    When I originally started in this business it was truly exciting. VC's where the only place to go to fund truly unique companies and products that were highly risky. Disruption was often a byproduct not a goal. The goal now - collect as big a war chest as you can - disrupt something that already exist and may even be working well - own it all because you have the biggest war chest and can.
chrisgd 23d ago
Anecdotally, I think there are more rich children at Harvard than Yale (more legacies, more donations to get their child in, etc). Those people have more time to take a risk as a founder than non-wealthy.
- alephnerd 22d ago
  Other way around from personal experience. Harvard is louder because Harvard and alums from middle class backgrounds like I beat the drum. Harvard has also offered non-traditional open-entry bachelor degrees for over a century and whose endowment became the precursor for WGBH and therefore PBS, and those of us from other schools don't treat them any different. The only other ivies with large dedicated non-trad programs are Columbia (Asimov was a product of that) and Penn. Yale, Dartmouth, and to a lesser extent Princeton is blue blood af.
01284a7e 23d ago
"There probably aren't infinite good ideas that can be successful at any one time. If you encourage more people to become founders then they aren't going to go into other places where their skills might be better suited." Yes, exactly. I do not think you need to try so hard to get more founders. Most small businesses fail. And even most venture-backed startups fail. You are already throwing a ton of eggs at the wall, which is mostly a waste of eggs. Even one of YC's largest successes (DoorDash) is nothing but a middle man of fast food enabled by mobile technology, which it did nothing to invent.
zx8080 22d ago
> Harvard has more founders Rich parents/families are the actual founders, via their children. Harvard is because mostly rich can study there (and drop out at will).
zigman1 20d ago
> Also, although PG disdains finance and management, many large problems are better addressed through people with skills in these areas IMO I find this view from pg very narrow minded, and borderline ignorant. He is shaping his essay as in the role of higher education and academia is only to produce startup founders. Which is not, it is a way of a state investing into a labor force that is needed. As long as there are large corporate multinationals, there will be a need for finance, economics and yes, even management. Are a lot of that studies fugazi? Sure they are, but so are a lot of startups. If everyone coming out of academia would be startup-like, corporations and other businesses simply wouldnt have the workforce for their machinery, and then some big shoot CEO would write blogs how Universities Should Prepare White Collars. And indeed, reading period produced two trillion dollar companies, but this is statistical anomaly. You could just as well argue, that it keps economy afloat by educating up-coming workforce, but thats harder to prove.

strangattractor 23d ago

There are so many VC's and so much money today the demand for "Founders" is high. One way to increase supply is to manufacture what you need - much like Korean K-Pop bands. Band members start in a Bootcamp. They learn to dance and get a vocal coach. As their fan base grows they start to disrupt and displace older bands that are aging out. The industry as a whole does well but individual band may or may not. Do they produce new and innovative music? - meh. Let's face it - a "Founder" with the right fan base can get valuations over a trillion:)

jeffreyrogers 23d ago
I do think it is kind of funny when VCs talk about how they can tell who will be a successful founder. They are picking the people who get to call themselves founders so it is close to tautological that who they think will be successful matches who ends up succeeding. You don't get to see the counterfactual world where the non-funded people get given money and then you see what personality distribution the successes from that group have. The problem probably is worse now since there are fewer IPOs and more companies exit in private transactions where it's not clear how much economic value was actually created vs how much is just what the investors agree the business is worth.
- deleted 23d ago
  [deleted]
- strangattractor 20d ago
  When I originally started in this business it was truly exciting. VC's where the only place to go to fund truly unique companies and products that were highly risky. Disruption was often a byproduct not a goal. The goal now - collect as big a war chest as you can - disrupt something that already exist and may even be working well - own it all because you have the biggest war chest and can.

chrisgd 23d ago

Anecdotally, I think there are more rich children at Harvard than Yale (more legacies, more donations to get their child in, etc). Those people have more time to take a risk as a founder than non-wealthy.

alephnerd 22d ago
Other way around from personal experience. Harvard is louder because Harvard and alums from middle class backgrounds like I beat the drum. Harvard has also offered non-traditional open-entry bachelor degrees for over a century and whose endowment became the precursor for WGBH and therefore PBS, and those of us from other schools don't treat them any different. The only other ivies with large dedicated non-trad programs are Columbia (Asimov was a product of that) and Penn. Yale, Dartmouth, and to a lesser extent Princeton is blue blood af.

01284a7e 23d ago

"There probably aren't infinite good ideas that can be successful at any one time. If you encourage more people to become founders then they aren't going to go into other places where their skills might be better suited." Yes, exactly. I do not think you need to try so hard to get more founders. Most small businesses fail. And even most venture-backed startups fail. You are already throwing a ton of eggs at the wall, which is mostly a waste of eggs. Even one of YC's largest successes (DoorDash) is nothing but a middle man of fast food enabled by mobile technology, which it did nothing to invent.

zx8080 22d ago

> Harvard has more founders Rich parents/families are the actual founders, via their children. Harvard is because mostly rich can study there (and drop out at will).

zigman1 20d ago

> Also, although PG disdains finance and management, many large problems are better addressed through people with skills in these areas IMO I find this view from pg very narrow minded, and borderline ignorant. He is shaping his essay as in the role of higher education and academia is only to produce startup founders. Which is not, it is a way of a state investing into a labor force that is needed. As long as there are large corporate multinationals, there will be a need for finance, economics and yes, even management. Are a lot of that studies fugazi? Sure they are, but so are a lot of startups. If everyone coming out of academia would be startup-like, corporations and other businesses simply wouldnt have the workforce for their machinery, and then some big shoot CEO would write blogs how Universities Should Prepare White Collars. And indeed, reading period produced two trillion dollar companies, but this is statistical anomaly. You could just as well argue, that it keps economy afloat by educating up-coming workforce, but thats harder to prove.