Ask HN: Startups - Education background | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Startups - Education background

5 pointsbenregn13 comments

I've been wondering about education as I continue to read more and more articles and blogs about startups. Have people finished university/collage and then go on to found or work at a startup or do they drop out to pursue the startup dream? I've also noticed that when people actually discuss their educational background, often they are doing something different, sometimes completely different, than what they are educated in.

So I want to ask those who work at or have worked at a startup the following questions: What is your educational background? If you dropped out, maybe summarize the experience which landed you in Startupland. What do you actually do? (Maybe include a job title, if relevant)

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I've found the most fun I've had was when I was working on side projects while taking relevant courses. I ended up staying at MIT for all four years + an extra year for their 1 year EECS Masters program. All during that time, I was working on a variety of different projects. I purposely picked relevant subjects like Machine Learning / User Interface Studies / Behavioral Psychology.

Not only did it help me understand the subjects better, it let me master a number of direct cross-applications into web products. It does wonders for your creativity when you are actively thinking about new products while being exposed to so many new techniques.

On the topic of dropping out, an aspect that gets underemphasized in this community is how strong of an ideation muscle you have. Know that the more you do it, the better ideas you come up with. School for me was an excuse to hang around while taking a few classes while building new things. As each year passed, I realized I got better and better ideas.

It would have been rough for me to drop out of school with the first few "promising" ideas that I came up with. At that point in time, they seemed like game-changers that would transform the world. Now I realize if you are the person to come up with good ideas, you'll come up with great ideas later on.

Use those years in college to train up your ideation muscle along with your implementation skills (web dev languages / backend management / mobile dev, etc.) During your final year, apply to incubators using your uber skillset and amaze everyone. Not only will you no longer have the temptation to return to school, you will be putting yourself up for review when you are strongest.

It makes a much stronger statement to apply once and be awesome than to apply twice and try to wow people based on how much you "improved".

Thanks for a great reply. What are you doing today?

Hi Benregn,

Sorry I didn't see your response earlier. I ended up doing YC with the Summer 2010 class.

Continuing to work on the startup day-to-day. :)

I always wanted to become a scientist or a film director.

My Graduate degree is "Electronic Media" (kinda film studies). I quit pursing my film career for now, as the signal to noise ratio is not favorable for me here (India). Then, I bought my first computer to kill some time, to pirate some movies etc. Then I thought, I should learn web design, So, I made a decision to learn Photoshop, HTML/CSS and build cool orkut like websites in 6 months (yea I know, what a dumbass). I got upto speed in Photoshop, HTML/CSS in 6 months, (I realized, I can't make dynamic websites with HTML/CSS), then learned PHP, PHP was a mess. By, this time, I had a few clients through referrals from friends, after successfully completing the job, I thought, "hey may be we can start a web design business". So, Me and a friend agreed, we should start a business, so we rented the cheapest place you could find for an office space ($50 a month), and started our gig.

Since then, we are only 2 people, I was kind of demoralized, when I saw PHP frameworks and ugly OOPs syntax. It seemed like a lot of work. Then, I stumbled upon Ruby on Rails, I learned enough Ruby and Rails, Last year. RoR reinstated my confidence, now we are building two consumer apps, while doing client work. I'm hopeful, I'm on the right path,

Even more awesome thing is movie and entertainment industry is going to go through disruption, so I have an instinct that, I may make a few movies. (Like everybody is a photographer today, because of digital cameras).

Funny thing is internet has helped me more in the past 4 years, than my 17 years of schooling.

There are no educational "prerequisites" for working at a start-up. However, I would say that self-taught folks without formal education are extremely rare in technical domains start-ups or not. I have encountered no more than a handful in 20 years.

That said, educational backgrounds are all over the map for many positions in start-ups. What this means is that it is probably a bad idea to make assumptions about what people can or cannot do based on their educational background.

My degree is in Physics (MS-- bailed out of PHD to go to work). Don't use much of what I explicitly learned, but the problem-solving practice of experimental physics has served me well.

After about 12 years in the industry, I started my own consulting company. Does it count as a startup? I'm working mostly alone, and sometimes teaming up with other freelancers.

Got a University degree, and happy about that. It taught me to work on the problems in a structured way, no matter what subject.

Which field are you consulting in and subject did you get a degree in?

Consulting: network technologies and software development

Degree: applied maths. That's not exactly Computer Science, as CS was not taught well in Russia back then.

I see, thanks for your answer!

It's a question of how bright and smart you are along with how much hard work and stress can you handle.

Most successful startup founders in my area finish college, but it is not required to be successful.

I am a Founder and CEO with an undergraduate in history and finishing up my MBA.

Biochemistry degree, followed by 15 years as a magazine journalist/editor, then a couple of years as a web developer. Now running a little software development company. First product: www.tiki-toki.com - shortly to launch our second product.

Were you an journalist/editor for a magazine related to biochemistry?

BTW, nice looking product. How is the traction? The text in #818181 was a bit hard for me to read, have you done any A/B testing on the main page?

No, I was a business/architecture journalist. I have not once put my biochemistry degree to any use. A bit of a waste of time to be honest, but I had a lot of fun and got drunk a lot.

Traction for www.tiki-toki.com is pretty good, though not spectacular. Launched in April 2011. We have tens of thousands of users and are profitable.

Haven't done any A/B testing on the main age. Been more focused on improving the software following feedback from users. But will maybe look more at A/B testing this year, once we have launched product no 2. Thanks for your interest.

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