The Startup MBA

Extending that principle sideways, a hacker should be someone who has written (and can show) a decent code base. A designer someone who has made some good designs, an entrepreneur someone who has made money running a business , a grad student applicant someone who has a significant research result and so on.

I am sure it sounds very obvious when I write it down like that but I am surprised at how often substitutes are demanded - a CS degree, years of experience, an MBA, GRE/GPA scores.

If I were interviewing a hacker for a startup my only demand would be send me (a url to) some code you wrote and are proud of. The cv can come later (if at all).

It seems perfectly natural to hear currently successful people recall the learning experience of running a business early in life. It's seems perfectly natural that if you meet a 21 year old that has been running a business for some time, you will expect future success from them. This is obviously due to the (a)educational value of these activities & (b) what personality traits these suggest (It is usually not because this business is especially successful). You can speculate about which one is dominant, but (a) is unlikely to be insignificant. Already this sounds like a discussion about the value of going to a top Uni.

Like I said, I think a good speaker could take a friendly audience through something like this thought process & come to the conclusions that spending time & money running a business early on is valuable.

But if it comes to making a practical decision based on the above it quickly starts to feel radical. A proactical decision could be to take the time & money it takes to attend University & spend it creating a business. If the educational & associated benefits are similar to a University education, there are two outcomes. (1) The business fails - Education is acquired (2) The business succeeds - Education is acquired + the business can be sold or operated.

The risk doesn't seem that big.

Where I live (Australia) International Undergraduates typical need are: 20k-30k USD * 3-5 years. Students are often from Malaysia, Indonesia, China & India.

60k - 150k buys you a fairly substantial education business experience in these countries. But even some place like England, it is substantial.

In essays, PG implies "risking" about a year and little or nothing out-of-pocket. That is an order of magnitude less "risky" then University typically is.

The logical case is there. What's needed is the emotional resonance. I don't think it applies only to startups in the YC sense.

There's the classic, "What if you fail?" question that people tend to ask founders leaving otherwise "good" jobs. One of the local startup old-hands put it well when I was talking with him:

"The value of your startup is unpredictable. The value of your person will certainly increase."

But the MBA programs have already de-valued themselves into the garbage can. The burden is on MBA programs to prove that they are valuable as these blogs, not the other way around.