Can someone explain how Sam is able to run so many things at once? I am working on my startup and I barely find time to scroll HN during my toilet breaks.
Or is this the primary/hedge-fund part of the university rather than the professional sports organization or the vestigial academic departments?
Smaller universities seem to make a lot on student rental accommodation, at least in places like Australia.
Maybe tuition is their side business.
Specifically, regarding property, at schools I’ve attended they owned real estate in the city around the campus, not just the campus itself. Part of that is investment and part of it was looking to the future for when they run out of space on the current campus to build new facilities and need to grow the campus
We don’t think of pension funds as hedge funds either but they also invest heavily to grow the fund.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universit...
In UMich's case, the State of Michigan only covers 3% of the entire funding for UMich. The university needs to foot the bill for the remaining 97% on their own [0].
That's where endowments come in. By trying to be savvy with the rate of return on your endowment, you can create a self sustaining budget for your institution.
Also, UMich Ann Arbor's yearly budget is $10 Billion, but their endowment (aka their piggybank) is only $17 Billion. If they raided their piggybank, they could only keep the lights on for 2 years at most.
> professional sports organization or the vestigial academic departments
Professional Sports is self funded by the athletics department.
What's a "vestigial academic departments". For example, Computer Science was "vestigial" in most universities until the 1970s, often being a wonky major in the Math or Physics department. What makes you an arbitrator for what field is more important than others?
[0] - https://publicaffairs.vpcomm.umich.edu/key-issues/tuition/ge...
Just one possible correction: the AirBnB guys were about 4 years later than the 1st batch. I don’t think any of them were in the 1st batch with a different startup like the Twitch crew.
YC succeeded in collecting all the companies that were going to be founded anyway, but were too inexperienced/naive to get real VC money. YC took a big cut of all of them for peanuts.
And they exploit those types of founders to this day. It’s a sweatshop wrapped up in a cult of the fruit-fly startup. The odds of success are low, but YC has a share every lottery ticket, so they come out ahead even though most everyone they support fails.
Altman realized what a great business that is, so he wisely pivoted away from his failed startup to exploit startups instead.
> Law 7: Get Others to Do the Work for You, but Always Take the Credit: Get others to do your work for you. Use their skill, time, and energy to further your ambitions while taking full credit. You’ll be admired for your efficiency.
Sam is more of an investor than anything else.