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Comment by brandonb | Hacker News Reader

An MBA or a PhD aren't good paths to becoming an entrepreneur. A PhD takes 5-7 years to complete, the purpose of which is to give you the skills necessary to be a university professor or researcher. If you don't want to be a professor, then the opportunity cost of those years is huge! What else could you be learning in that time?

If you know you want to start a startup, the best thing to do is to START - now. If you're not ready to start your own company, then join a small startup. You'll learn more about entrepreneurship in the first month than you will in any degree program.

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If you know you want to start a startup, the best thing to do is to START - now.

I think people in the software world are inherently biased since it's possible to start dazzlingly-profitable companies at age 19 ... in many other fields (e.g., medicine, chemistry, biology, physical engineering fields), it takes years of research experience to be able to make a breakthrough that can lead to a profitable disruptive technology. In those worlds, you rarely see 19-year-old entrepreneurs who have just started college.

"In those worlds, you rarely see 19-year-old entrepreneurs who have just started college."

But let's not be confused: you rarely see 19-year-olds starting dazzlingly profitable companies in software, either. You just hear (a lot) more about the few that do.

I don't think a PhD is the greatest idea if your only goal is to be an entrepreneur. But it's a lot better than trying to make a run at the goalposts without any contacts or industry experience. If nothing else, it gives you time to ripen into a mature adult, and learn how to deal with failure.

Just starting a company and figuring things out on the go doesn't work in many fields. It can work in software, and sales and marketing oriented businesses.

I'm software developer by degree and profession, but recently I started to study bioinformatics and biology (on my own). My dream would be to do something meaningful in these areas, preferably in the form of running a company, but there's absolutely no way that I could succeed in it, if I start one now.

There are lots of things in the world that are either just plain hard or require time to learn.

Why don't you think you could succeed now? There are tons of bioinformatics problems that could be solved by software developers who have a bigger background in computer science.

For example microarray experiments using image analysis algorithms and openCL; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_microarray

Interesting. Is it still an open problem without quality software? Next gen sequencing is becoming cheaper with impressive rate, do you think that microarrays will be used in 5-10 years?

P.S. I noticed that you are based in NCL. I'm spending half of my time there (the other half in Finland), I'd love to chat sometime if you've time.

Love to meet up sometime, heard of supermondays? http://www.supermondays.org/ Its a tech meetup for designers/developers/entrepreneurs You might like it.

I have just finished a masters in bioinformatics with a phd soon to follow. I think there are many problems that can be solved in bioinformatics with a different take on things using graphics algorithms like quad trees for spatial partition of microarrays for example. But many people I meet in this field come from a biological background first then learn computer science which seems a bit rigid.

With huikea, why would you want to do something in bioinformatics? The game looks very interesting btw

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