Drop Out, Start Up

New York Times on the Peter Thiel's fellowship:

 

From your story...

Wouldn't it be great if public education had some vision to nurture these technological minds?

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2012/07/18/white-house-announces-1-billion-master-teacher-program

http://schoolsofthought.blogs.cnn.com/2012/07/18/obama-administration-announces-stem-teacher-corps/

 

Sure, the numbers for the average person without a degree are not going to be good. We all know that.

These kids are not average. They're also still young enough to get a degree if they want. And, they have real world experience that will help them decide what they want to study.

 

Well these fellows help 50 or so kids.

Are these students financially tied to Theil? Can they do whatever they want with their inventions and never have to give any patents or percentage of profit back to the lender?

Nope. They are not average.
They are not good
They are not great.
They are not superior.
They are not the top 1%.
They are not the top .01%.
They are not the top .001%.

They are the best of the best of the best students in America and this works for them.

Question to you. Think back to when you are 18, does your coffee repair business have a chance for success with the knowledge you had then?

If you ever have a kid, hopefully they will ask you for their $50,000 in college money to start their own business. Be sure to hand it over, because if they fail, and what is the failure rate of start up businesses, you guys will have nothing to show for it.

 

Why don't kids just play professional basketball? LeBron James plays professional basketball and he didn't need college for that.

 

I dropped out of college.

I started my first business at age 20. I sold it for a profit.

I'm not sure if the specialty coffee business was mature enough when I was 18 for me to have built this business, but I wish I had started it sooner. (Though, I really did enjoy my jobs at City Hall and Continental Airlines.)

If I had an 18-year-old son, nephew, or cousin, who was mature and responsible, I would absolutely fund him to start a similar business.

 

Apparently not if the person is a woman, though.

 

Ha. I actually would consider a woman.

Illy's local tech is a woman. I had a female tech for a while.

It's juts not a business that appeals to a lot of women. But, I shouldn't have worded it that way.

 

Who paid for your college education? How did you fund your first business?

 

My parents paid for college, but I only went for a semester.

A big reason why I dropped out was that I felt like I was wasting their money. I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up.

I bought my first business for $20,000. The business was basically to be a clerk for a bunch of different clerks on the New York Futures Exchange.

The business cleared over $1,500 a week (and a lot of that was cash), but the price was low, since their was no guaranty any of the previous owner's customers would stay with me. And, she wanted to get out fast, because she wanted to move out of town for a boyfriend.

I borrowed the money, and paid it back quickly, since I not only didn't loose any customers, I was able to immediately grow the business.

My old company, REFCO, hired me to process all of their trades. I did that in my old job, and they didn't have anyone else that could do it for them. It was so bad the exchange began to fine them.

So, even though they weren't happy about it, they paid me $300 a week to keep their trades straight.

 

I assume you had to borrow the money for the business from your parents? Not criticizing you if you did, but my parents didn't have money to pay for college, or start a business.

I'm sure i'm not alone. Are those kids told they should have had richer parents? Everyone who is qualified should have the opportunity to go to college and not be in debt up to their ears for doing so.

 

Seems to me a lot of parents are going into debt paying for their kids' college. Taking out second mortgages, establishing college accounts, cashing in 401ks for their kids. Many are in over $20k themselves before their kid takes out a loan.

So if your child had a business idea and you felt she or he had a good business plan and was mature enough to handle it, which would be the better investment?