Comment by uberman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by uberman | Hacker News Reader

I think it is important to think of Thiel's program more of a black swan or ycombinator style incubator rather than an alternative to college in the general sense.

Firstly, the program is 50x more selective than Harvard so one might reasonably expect the program to produce a healthy number of successful entrepreneurs.

Secondly, while the program has had some monster successes, a large percentage of fellows end up just going into tech jobs or worse, going to college after their two years are up.

A small-ish number of monster successes with a large-ish number of mediocre failures is fantastic if you are a VC, but not so great if you are a average person looking for an average career in tech.

Still, hats off to Dylan Field with Adobe purchasing Figma. Perhaps he could pay it backwards by providing the scholarships for next year's fellows.

YC is the wrong comparison. This is a lot more like an old school patronage – give smart/talented/motivated young people money with no strings attached, just so they can live their lives without worrying about rent and food. Chances are some of them will eventually produce works of exceptional value. The MacArthur Grant is a famous modern example.

There's no point in judging the program in terms of success or failure, like this article is trying to do. Thiel isn't investing in anything. Returns, if any, aren't measurable. It is simply one of the thousands of scholarships and grants out there, with the only noteworthy thing being the "you have to drop out of school for two years" clause.

How much ETH does Peter Thiel have been able to secure at a very early stage because of the grant?

Exactly the same as you or I could have secured had we bought it early enough.

While technically true, you might be interested in how Thiel has used his self directed Roth IRA.

As a VC, working with startup stage entrepreneurs, he is in exactly the right spot to make well informed early stage investments.

Not just money, but access to Peter Thiel's network. It would be very surprising if there weren't some monster successes in there, even if they weren't given a dime.

Relevant Silicon Valley episode:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAxzkl2cmNY

> Secondly, while the program has had some monster successes, a large percentage of fellows end up just going into tech jobs or worse, going to college after their two years are up

Any reference that has data around this claim?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8007239

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