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Comment by pg | Hacker News Reader

I suspect it may not be so much that the kind of people who don't finish college make good startup founders as that many other jobs filter them out. But that may be changing. General Motors probably still cares if you have a college degree, but I wouldn't be surprised if Facebook doesn't, so long as you can hack.

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Dell (another company founded by a dropout) has divisions that wont promote a non-college-grad. We were bought by Dell, my friend had to leave because VP Mike Lambert told him he could never be promoted.

The filtering phenomenon is obsolete; as you note, GM probably still cares because it's old fashioned, but modern companies don't care at all. Even if the filter exists/existed, that's hardly a sufficient or effective motivation to start a startup -- good startup founders don't seem like the type who'd just take a salaried gig and become complacent if it was offered to them.

There's probably some traits useful to startup founders that are more common amongst dropouts than the general population -- like a willingness to take responsibility for one's future into one's own hands.

If widespread filtering means a founder couldn't get a salaried gig long enough to pay the bills and accumulate some savings, that's a worst-case problem they need to be aware of. I keep hearing it really is rough out there without a degree, but I started out with one so I don't actually know.

Besides the fact that technology makes it easier to develop a network, a good reputation, and a track record for shipping, do you see any other factors driving this change? These factors are more than enough to allow someone to start a startup or get a job at one, but the biggest problem at big companies is that taste still doesn't scale.

Performance is more easily measurable (a) for hackers and (b) in small organizations. And economically both hackers and small organizations have been increasing in importance.

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