Ask HN: Is the Thiel Fellowship worth it? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is the Thiel Fellowship worth it?

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http://thielfellowship.org

I want to apply, but i need advice from someonewho went through it.

I cofounded Figma with the support of the Thiel Fellowship. It was definitely worth it to me, but dropping out of school is a very unique and personal decision. You should definitely apply and you should introspect deeply before taking it.

BTW, some of the statements on this thread that "fellows are used as poster children for Thiel's vision of society" and equating taking the fellowship to becoming a "living cog in his anti-education political statement" are just downright false.

I actually assumed going in that we would need to do press or something; after all, I've always heard "there's no free lunch." However, in reality I found the fellowship never pressured me to do media if it wasn't helpful for Figma. In fact, Figma was in stealth mode for the entire two year fellowship. There's literally no downside other than not attending school for two years. (And you can quit at any time to go back.)

If anyone has specific questions about the fellowship, feel free to reply and I'll try to answer later today.

I am currently in my first year studying B.Architecture. But I want my lifes work(my core passion) to be around Software/Tech.

I enrolled to Arch school simply because I thought it was cool and did not do Computer Science cause the syllabus here is kind of out dated (they lack, an Artificial Intelligence module, something i want to get deeply into)

The vast majority of what you learn in a CS program was published in the 50-70s. Just because it's a little outdated doesn't mean there isn't a lot to learn. Also, don't forget that you can always change schools, as hard as it might seem, it can be the right call.

One thing that modern CS programs should give you is more insight into the engineering and craftsmanship side of programming. Also, I think most of techniques we use to build distributed systems today were built way after the 90s. Think of the all the stuff google invented, plus other significant systems paxos, etc. In the 70s they were trying to build scalable relational databases, now we can build things that scale much more, and it's not just hardware, it is the techniques to handle them.

All that stuff might not matter if you are most startups, because they don't need to build that huge shit usually, you can just use someone else's infrastructure.

The article introducing Paxos was first published in 1989.

I think he means the rise of commodity cluster computing, a la http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.co...

Chiming in as another participant in the Thiel Fellowship who's had a similar experience. Dylan's spot on.

Thiel Fellow here. The question is not whether or not you should take it, it's whether or not you should drop out.

I had already dropped out when I took it so it was a no brainer for me. If you've already dropped out or decided to I don't even know why you're asking - at worst it's free money.

If you're asking whether or not you should drop out, that's a pretty opinionated thing and depends entirely on your circumstances, but I'd recommend you go for it (fellowship or not). As morgante said, you can always go back to college. 10 years from now sillicon valley might not be so friendly to us tadpoles

While I completely agree that attendance at a four-year university is overhyped as The Key to Success, the idea that "you can always go back to college" is flawed. While people do go back to school all the time, calling a multiyear timeout on making money is extremely difficult once you start acquiring real responsibilities, and working a real job while in school is no cakewalk.

source: I dropped out, worked as an engineer, then went back and graduated at 29.

It's not flawed at all. You can always go back to college if you want.

If you don't want to go back to college (because you don't judge it to be worth taking time off your career for)... yes, I suppose that will make going back to college rather difficult ;)

And another thing you might not consider if you drop out or delay college now: college tuition has been increasing really fast for well over a decade now, and it's not clear when that's going to stop.

I took an 8 year hiatus from school, and when I went back, tuition had doubled since the last time I attended. I ended up graduating with $25k in student loan debt, whereas if I had stuck it out the first time around it would have been a much more manageable $12k.

I wouldn't be anywhere near in as much debt right now if I had taken out loans and stuck with school the first time around.

The Thiel fellowship is for individuals who have a clear idea what they want to do and how they are going to execute it. It's for those select few individuals who think school will only slow them down on their path to making a difference. If you're already second guessing if it's worth it or not, before you've even applied, you should take a step back and think about how important school really is to you and if you're the type of person who believes in themselves so much you'd think it a waste of time to sit in a classroom.

That is not true. I know multiple Thiel fellows who either don't have a definite goal or have wildly changed their goals since becoming a fellow. A bit of soul-searching seems to be encouraged.

You also don't have to think college is a waste to think that being a Thiel fellow is better. You just have to think that a Thiel fellowship is better. That's not difficult, you're given some pretty incredible resources.

How has it turned out for them?

Why not take advantage of college and all that you can learn there first? The chance won't come again to study the world ... not just IT but history, natural sciences, neuropsychology, literature ... and to do it surrounded by peers and with a faculty of experts to advise and teach you, and all those resources: Labs, libraries, etc.

You can do startups later and will work for the rest of your life. Does the Thiel Fellowship really reject the same person if they happen to have a college degree? They must forgo college?

I want to build a company, my course is 5 years, am already 20 and the age limit for application is 22.

in case i wait, I do not think i have another chance of getting 100K like that again.

If your idea is truly good enough to build a company, you will.

That's too bad about the age limit. You could change to a program that you can complete by the time you're 22, but I'm sure you've considered that.

> I do not think i have another chance of getting 100K like that again.

I certainly am in no position to make recommendations (nobody is), so I'll add some general observations:

1) You'll have other chances at $100K (if you're someone who has the skills to build companies). It's a good opportunity, but $100K investments aren't once-in-a-lifetime for a moderately successful entrepreneur. In fact, I would guess that the social capital, the network, is worth far more (and will yield far more investment than $100K).

2) Life will not work out at all like you plan. That doesn't at all mean that you shouldn't pursue goals and dreams, but I wouldn't be too rigid about any particular opportunity or outcome as the only option, do-or-die. Most startups fail; many others end up doing things their founders never expected. And life is much more than startups and work. Enjoy the ride.

I hope whatever you choose turns out to be a fantastic experience.

thanx!

You're getting 100k around 6 years sooner, and your degree postponed indefinitely.

I did 5 year double degree in finance and software engineering finishing at 23. The education helped me gather $100+k by 26, (and looking like $200k by 27, unless I get fired and can't find a job for the rest of the year starting tomorrow).

If I could go back in time with a guaranteed ticket to be a Thiel Fellow I don't think I'd take it. The knowledge I learnt at my university is invaluable, and continues to be useful everyday.

Your experience may vary.

The general answer to this question for any accelerator-type program is: talk with someone who went through it and you trust.

Alternatively, look at outcomes of the companies from (recent) batches, but be careful -- that can lead to attributing too much to the program vs. innate qualities of those founders.

If you can't find a connection to someone who went through it personally, try a cold email.

Many founders will give you a short call or respond to a well-written email that briefly and directly asks about their experience and recommendation if you can prove (briefly) your qualifications. If you're going to take this approach, expect to be very open with sharing details of your idea.

With the Thiel Fellowship specifically, you may consider reaching out to the founders of Sprayable Energy. They ran a successful Kickstarter campaign [I was a backer], and are pretty cool dudes.

http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/20/sprayable-energy/

If you aren't already plugged in to Silicon Valley in some way, getting accepted will definitely help your startup career, mostly through knowledge and mentoring acquired and the relationships. Social capital, essentially. Plus all the knowledge you get trying to make a startup go.

I would imagine if you'd been accepted, you could always go to University once your startup is 'done', either finished or acquired, and you would likely have your pick.

That said, you get a different sort of social capital from going to a top-tier school and graduate school, and of course, in a good technical degree program you will learn a bunch of useful things, largely around rigor of thought, how to learn, how to work with peer groups and just how much smarter than you many people are.

Peter says those things don't matter, and in a way he's right; for the indomitable, driven hard-working, socially skilled, lucky entrepreneur, college is bullshit. Seriously, a total waste of working years. For the rest of us, there are benefits, especially at a top-tier school.

I didn't go through it, but you should almost certainly apply. You can always decline later.

I'm too old for it, but it's basically free money. You can always return to college later if you really want to.

> but you should almost certainly apply

Also, need to remember it adds up - YC, 500Startups, tech stars, etc. and then pondering about the results and then the sorrow phase after not being accepted.

Weigh your trade offs.

don't apply to things because you might get rejected from them is certainly good life advice

I think they are talking about the time involved with the application and the associated worry and issues of rejection after rejection (on odds).

If you can't deal with rejection or selling people on your idea/yourself, then entrepreneurship is likely not the right path for you.

If it takes a few rejected applications to learn that, it is time well spent.

Sorry, I didn't make myself clear. Dealing with rejections takes time, you get distracted, you get sad, it kills time which can be put in much better use.

You can deal with rejections, but that doesn't mean you have to deal with rejections.

You can use the time to make your product better. Someone famously said "Be so good, they can't ignore you", being mediocre and spending time in those activities is not very fruitful.

What every you do do not go back to college! Go work at Burger King, go into the woods and forage for nuts and berries.

Ha. I'm stoked for season 3 in a couple weeks.

Kind of, in the sense that fellows get a large check and few responsibilities. You have to drop out of college, but you can always reapply and return.

Not really, in the sense that fellows are used as poster children for Thiel's vision of society. If you don't agree with the seasteader movement, you probably won't appreciate being a spokesperson for that worldview. If a different organization you disagreed with offered you a big check to drop out of college and act like a true believer, would you do it?

Are you really asked to be a spokesman for seasteading? Or are you just pointing out that fellows will find themselves associated with it

Fellows will find themselves associated with Thiel's political stances.

I have 3 friends who did it. Of that, 2 eventually went back and got their degrees. They also commented that their parents were a bit upset about the whole thing. It seems like the Thiel Fellowship doesn't have the same kind of formal, large investor network that a program like YC offers, which is important for success. You should apply to YC and Thiel and then make your decision once you get accepted to both!

These fellows are selected for high IQ will benefit either way. By virtue of his intelligence, connections, and family wealth, Bill Gates would have been successful whether he stayed in college or not.

I'm sure many of these failed fellows will go to college and resume where they left off.

I wasn't in it myself but am friends with several who were. It seems to be absolutely worth it. As morgante said earlier, you can always turn it down.

What you get.

- Incredible peer group

- Access to the best professional network on the planet

- Help to make things happen

- Introductions to investors

The price you pay.

- Part of billionaire's PR effort. Personal consequences for mistakes that might lead to negative PR

- Pressure on fund raising. Big raise == success

Something that rung true with me was something one of my friends told me long ago.

  You go to college not to build your dreams, but to build someone else's.

If you know what you want to do, and know how to do it there is no need for a college.

If you want to go and work for someone else, you need a college education.

There is so much more to college than learning vocational skills and a certification. Those skills are only a tiny part of it and self-development, especially of your intellect and knowledge, is most of it.

I don't think that anyone would suggest that someone motivated could get by with building their own dreams without subjecting themselves to academic torture.

> academic torture

If you start with that premise, there's nothing left to discuss. But many find college worthwhile and the best years of their lives, personally and intellectually.

Meta, the lack of https and the outdated copyright is a bit embarrassing imo.

you probably should apply soon, they take forever to respond :/

Doesn't hurt to apply, right?

Are you morally and ethically comfortable with taking money from a fascist to be a living cog in his anti-education political statement?

Isn't he mostly a libertarian? You can't just label all political views you don't like "fascism".

I'm not a libertarian, but I'd consider libertarianism pretty opposite to fascism.

He's buds with the NRx scene, funds Moldbug's company, and the two basically quote each other's anti-democractic, anti-education, anti-woman rhetoric regularly enough to be a known quantity. He basically wrote a whole book aping Moldbug's "Cathedral" theory. FFS, he gave money to Ted Cruz, a guy who makes Donald Trump look less frightening.

I sure as shit don't want his dirty money, not even to slack off for two years.

"Anti-woman"? On what is that based?

(Agree that the other antis listed are indeed self-evident, btw.)

You could infer that from this:

"The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” into an oxymoron."

- http://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education...

So basically women have ruined any chance of democracy achieving the political goals he wants. I'm sure he would disagree that this is anti-women, but it's not hard to read it that way.

He sort of addresses this criticism at the bottom of the article, but not really:

"It would be absurd to suggest that women’s votes will be taken away or that this would solve the political problems that vex us. While I don’t think any class of people should be disenfranchised, I have little hope that voting will make things better."

Just educated myself on the Moldbug fellow and The Cathedral and Dark Enlightenment. Liberal progressivism, such ideas as civil rights for women, civil rights and tolerance for gay people and people of color, health care for poor kids are seen as terrible?

What's wrong with these D.E. people? If you are born into a poor family you should just die, or starve to death?

I think the idea is that classes are a good and natural thing, and if you're born into a poor family, that's because you and your family are naturally (genetically) inferior and you deserve to be there. And they like hardcore unrestricted capitalism, so if you're a worthwhile person you'll pull yourself up and be successful. The ideal government is just a monarch who enforces the law and does nothing else, so you wouldn't have welfare of any kind.

As for civil rights, I think basically they look at old successful civilizations and say "they were all sexist and racist, so that must be part of their success". But as I'm sure you know, capitalism solves all problems, so if social equality is really a good thing, countries will compete to ensure equality so they can retain the best citizens and businesses.

I apologize to any darkly enlightened people if I have misunderstood your beliefs. Feel free to darkly enlighten me.

No one can enlighten anyone; you have to enlighten yourself.

Where did you get this picture of the pre-1968 world? For instance, your picture of classical Europe as "hardcore unrestricted capitalism" is frankly bizarre; you seem to be projecting 19th-century classical liberalism, a left-wing ideology in its day, back two or three centuries:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercantilism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Baptiste_Colbert

My turn: feel free to undarkly enlighten me. Watch this movie, or even skim it, then tell me that all is for the best in this the best of all possible worlds:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBZ6hgA-Cc4

When this film was made, most women didn't have to work; now they do. When this film was made, African-Americans had a 25% illegitimacy rate, which Moynihan thought terrifying; now they have an 75% illegitimacy rate (with whites at 25%). When this film was made, women in college were treated like ladies; today they're treated like Casanova's whores. When this film was made, Detroit was America's third-largest city; today it's a ruin.

Tell me again what your abstractions have done for women and African-Americans? For Detroit? For anyone, for anywhere? Can you find me a population that was struggling in 1966 and is thriving now? Can you find me a place that was a shithole in 1966 and is gleaming now? I can sure as heck find a lot of examples in the other direction...

Oh I wasn't trying to describe classical Europe, I was describing what it looks like DE people want from the little I've skimmed. I won't pretend to know much about either topic.

Your "ideas" are abstractions. These abstractions are new (they are a product of 19th and 20th-century ideology). The realities behind them (charity, social mobility) are anything but new. For instance, Cardinal Wolsey was born into a poor family:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Wolsey

In general, the answer to your question is "the Catholic Church." This was not a perfect institution. Ours are not perfect, either. The present has had many opportunities to give you its view of the past; the past has had no opportunity to give you its view of the present.

I get it, you don't like him and his views, but none of the things you listed have anything to do with fascism.

I don't like that stuff either, I'm just saying you should describe them as they are, not with the scariest name you can think of.

so I guess questioning the merits of democracy makes one a 'fascist'. there is no in-between

Fascism is anti-democratic, but not everything anti-democratic may be fascism, true. I don't know if it's an issue of 'in between', I wouldn't say monarchism for example is 'in between' democracy and fascism in any way.

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