The 2013 Thiel Fellows
fastcoexist.com
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> But what do these companies do? Can we get some specifics? Other than "Upstart", no mention is given of any of the companies. If you go to the Thiel Fellowship website, there is no list of startups founded by these fellows. They do have a list of present and past fellows, but the profile pages mostly link to either the fellows' personal websites (not company websites), or dead links. Without any concrete evidence of these companies even existing, or doing anything useful (instead of just talking about what they're "going to do", or name-dropping all the investors they've attracted), this all sounds like a bunch of hot air. Not to be cynical, and I wish all these people success, but so far they haven't demonstrated that they've actually done anything.
The entire Thiel fellow program is an exercise in finding out which baby can stand up the fastest and projecting that being the first to stand up somehow makes one a genius.
It's little different from child beauty pageants and dog shows.
There's a wider (but far from full) list here. https://www.quora.com/Thiel-Fellows/What-were-the-results-of...
I'd say most of the projects aren't known about (in beta, not startups, not publicised or not launched) at this point, some will fail but I can see quite a few big tech companies springing up from that batch.
I believe they said today that fellows have raised $34M+ in funding and I know quite a few YC founders in the fellowship and I've only just scratched the surface of speaking to people.
Anyways, I'll do some homework for you and dig up some concrete cases of what the fellows have done: - Andrew Hsu raised $1.5M as a solo founder for Airy Labs from Google Ventures and Foundation Capital (http://www.forbes.com/sites/briancaulfield/2011/08/04/names-...) - Ben Yu has built a transdermal caffeine company (http://sprayableenergy.com/), which he holds provisional patents for (http://benyu.org/thiel-fellowship-closing-ceremony-speech) - Clay Allsopp is building Propeller (http://usepropeller.com/), a drag-and-drop native iOS app builder. He has also authored a RubyMotion book (http://pragprog.com/book/carubym/rubymotion). - Connor Zwick is building YC-backed Coco Controller (http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/14/the-yc-backed-coco-controll...) to augment iOS and Android gaming. He also has a Flashcards app with 1M+ downloads (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/flashcards+/id408490162?mt=8). - Darren Zhu is working on a synthetic biology company and has gotten a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/06/thiel-fellows-are-making-th...). - Dale J Stephens has published a book, Hacking Your Education (http://www.amazon.com/Hacking-Your-Education-Lectures-Thousa...) through Perigee Books, and has launched the UnCollege movement (http://www.uncollege.org/) - Daniel Friedman is building personalized online education startup Thinkful, which has raised $1M (http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2013/02/26/peter-thie...). - Eden Full is building the SunSaluter (http://www.sunsaluter.com/) through her social venture Roseicollis Technologies, which has won the Westly Prize, the Mashable-UN Foundation Startups for Social Good Challenge, second prize at the Postcode Lottery Green Challenge, and the grand prize at the Staples-Ashoka Youth Social Entrepreneurship Challenge (http://www.linkedin.com/in/edenfull). - James Proud sold his company GigLocator for undisclosed 6-figure sum (http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2012/06/20/skip-school-s...) - Laura Deming has her own fund (http://www.forbes.com/pictures/mkg45jfej/laura-deming-18-2/) and has been working working closely with biotech legend Corey Goodman to fund anti-aging therapies. She also spoke at TEDMED 2013 (http://www.tedmed.com/speakers/show?id=46921) - Nick Cammarata "started a company that was recently acquired" (http://pandodaily.com/2013/04/24/examining-the-thiel-fellows...). - Paul Gu is working with Upstart, which raised $5.9M as a kickstarter for people (http://pandodaily.com/2013/04/22/upstart-grabs-5-9-million-t...) - Ritik Malhotra is working on YC-backed Streem, a Dropbox for Video (https://angel.co/streem) - Sujay Tyle is working at Developer Auction (http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/21/developerauction-sujay-tyle...), which has raised $2.7M (http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2013/03/14/developera...) - Taylor Wilson is building small nuclear fission reactors (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HL1BEC024g) - Tom Currier built out a robotic solar panel tracking company (http://www.qbotix.com/) that has raised $7.5M total (http://www.qbotix.com/pressseptember4/) and got a couple patents for it (http://www.google.com/patents/WO2011150373A1, http://www.google.com/patents/WO2012009470A1) - Yoonseo Kang has been working on Open Source Ecology and Open Tech Forever (http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/User:Yoonseo_Kang). You can check out some of the stuff he's built here: http://vimeo.com/user9565582
The fellows who haven't been explicitly mentioned here aren't necessarily dormant; they simply have not bothered to garner any press.
Please tread a little more carefully next time you label something as being "little different from child beauty pageants and dog shows" -- or at the very least, do your homework so a "college dropout" doesn't have to do it for you.
At the risk of sounding like I'm attacking Andrew, he was just about the worst possible example for you to pick. His startup is and was notorious for imploding after being run into the ground with highly public mismanagement that involved interference from his family members. If I were someone who wanted to make a spurious argument attacking the Thiel Fellowship, he would be exhibit #1.
The rest of your post is merely a long list of people all in the process of "starting" something - but not actually having accomplished anything of particular note. It is easy to "start" a company, or a fund, or an organization. It is much harder to actually achieve anything with that. And despite what TechCrunch/other mdia may wish for you to believe, raising funding, giving talks, and winning random competitions are hardly accomplishments.
Now, I don't think the Thiel Fellowship is a bad thing. If I was younger than 20 I would very much be interested in applying for the program. The fact that most Thiel Fellows have not accomplished anything of great external significance has so much less to do with the program and the fellows themselves, and so much more to do with how damn hard it is to start a successful company / solve a big hairy problem. It's not something you do in two years. It's a process and I think the Thiel Fellowship was only ever meant as an experience in independent learning/self-starting for the fellows.
I have no doubt that every Thiel Fellow has learned a lot in his/her experience, but I think it is unwise to tout many of the people in your list as having made concrete achievements.
My work isn't widely publicized because I simply don't feel the need at this stage. The community I'm working with doesn't read the tech press and I don't feel comfortable broadcasting my not-ready-for-primetime work. I don't particularly care to be famous; to be honest, the whole CNBC documentary irritated me.
Actually that's only part of the story. Another part of the story is that the project I'm working on is in a space that is a bit slow moving and requires quite a bit of learning on my part. I'm spending more than a little time exploring its nuances. It takes time to get a product to market in biomedical spaces because I have to validate it scientifically. At this stage, when I make progress, I make a note of it in my journal and smile.
And yet another part of the story is that the fellowship helps put me in a position to work somewhat quietly. You won't hear stories of my project raising a round yet, because there isn't a need right now, given $50K a year. I have sufficient connections in the life science and medical communities that I don't find myself angling for more attention.
That said, I don't operate in super-stealth mode. I'm happy to tell curious folks what I'm working on (just email me, see my profile). So, there's your open invitation, ask away.
Type 1. Last year there was a comment like "I don’t want to crush dreams. But these kids are being set up to fail. They cannot, and will not, live up to these expectations." Related to this are the complaints that these kids only achieved the things they've achieved prior to the programme because their parents were well-connected and helped them out, etc.
Type 2. Accusing hypocrisy on behalf of Thiel, who has two advanced degrees, and who often advocates for a return to advanced research which couldn't happen without higher education.
I think type 1 comments come from envy, even if they sound like something else. That's understandable, since many HN readers probably have similar smarts to these kids but didn't get the same opportunities in their teens. I know I felt jealous when I first heard of the Thiel program.
But - if you look at history, geniuses seem clustered around particular times and locations - ancient Athens, Renaissance Venice, Victorian London, and a few other cultural hubs. This implies that there were thousands of potential geniuses who died in rice paddies (or were killed in war, or who happened to be members of oppressed minorities, or who lived in an era when all the smartest people worked in investment banking, or whatever). It's not just that these individuals were robbed of their potential, it's also the world that was robbed of their contributions. So any attempt to mitigate that trend can only be a good thing, even if it means that some future Einsteins are still dying in rice paddies.
Part 2 is a more interesting critique. My response: I can't speak for Peter Thiel, but I don't think he believes that university shouldn't be an option. Rather, university shouldn't be the only option.
Yeah, that is something that remains to be seen.
This is an intervention in the lives of these students. Whether it's a good or a bad thing, for them or for society really is an open question.
Amongst the entrepreneurial community there is a lot of discussion of trying something interesting, and failing fast to learn from it. The real question is, does giving a 17 year old 100k$ help with that?
Do they need 100k$ to do something interesting? Are they at a point in their life where 100k$ the responsible amount of money to give them to experiment with? Where do they go from there? (these are not rhetorical questions, and I am not entirely convinced the answer is no)
There are also broader societal questions. There has been an impetus in the US at least that everyone should get a university degree, come hell and/or high water. That's a model that in its current incarnation is really screwing over a number of people. But I don't see that Theil's program is a solution either. He's picking people he thinks will succeed, just as much as universities are pre-selecting folks who get good marks in classes (as opposed to picking people who will be improved/edified by going through university).
100K/2 years is a $50K/year salary. It's not poor, but not wealthy either. Paid out monthly, it's serves to cover my living expenses and some other costs (travel, equipment), but not too much more. No hiring, no vacation homes. It prevents starvation, which otherwise blocks progress.
The interesting thing about that money is that in preventing starvation, it changes slightly how I approach my project. Because I know I won't starve for the next year, I can be a bit more exploratory with my work, and better understand the problems I'm solving. I can try a few more things without external pressure to make tangible progress. I can even delay fundraising for a company where I'd otherwise be in "fundraise or die"-mode.
I'm not entirely sure how these benefits generalize or apply to all projects, but I'll say that in pursuing a challenging project in a medical space, they help quite a bit.
As for whether it is a responsible thing to do, a large part of what the fellowship is is a "life accelerator", as the money is virtually "no strings attached" (Well, there are quarterly "check in" review meetings, with review forms.) There isn't a temptation to spend all the money at once as it is given in monthly payments (Though you can ask for a larger sum as long as you give a good reason.) While I suppose you aren't able to trust me due to my bias, I would say that myself and a majority of the other fellows would be "responsible" with the money we receive just on the fact that we want to succeed. I take great pride in my work, and want to fulfill the cliche of "changing the world", and I will continue trying. I think my sense of responsibility developed just like anyone else (even if the average person typically only becomes what society considers 'responsible' during/after college)... if you want to achieve something, whether it be to launch a product and start a company, get a job, buy a house, or have a family, you find a way to do it and try as hard as you can to do it. I hope that the other fellows and I are able to show that young people are able to do these things, and these "life lessons" can be learned at a much earlier age than most people think, and that we can truly change the world...with or without a piece of paper telling us what we know.
Amen. I knew through my educational life, from early on, that I was capable of more than the industrial-era training and box that the current system in the U.S. puts us through. Glad to see the open shots of the rebellion finally coming to be and wishing you the best.
I'm not quite so interested in the hypocrisy part, but as a Thiel fellow working on a pretty research heavy project (in biomedical tech), the academia + industry interplay is quite interesting.
For me, the fellowship has been anything but a way to abandon academia; indeed, my project depends heavily on collaborations I maintain with folks in the academic world, not to speak of my curiosity there. Thus, while the fellowship enables me to wear an industrial hat for the present, I see it as an interaction with a slightly different facet of academia. I've temporarily put down my classes to study the translational part of science, and hopefully help move it along.
So, for me the fellowship doesn't undermine the advanced research society needs, but enables it in another way.
Much more student/professor interaction (as opposed to now where a professor might lecture a classroom of a few hundred and leave all student interactions to a few overworked PhDs), more academic freedom and less need to cram for exams (even if the exams were tougher, people didn't need to beat the bell curve in the hope of a job at MckGoldmanDeloitte, freeing them to pursue knowledge for the sake of it if so inclined). I'm told Oxford and Cambridge still preserve some aspects of the old system, I don't know about other countries. The current system definitely slows down the smartest people unnecessarily, as the Thiel program has shown.
I imagine there are many more leverage points in the current education system that could enable similar improvements.
As a counter-anecdote, however--when I was at Harvard, I don't think I ever felt separated from professors. I spent a healthy amount of time interacting with professors from many disciplines, in the classroom, through research, and even casually. I found even the most respected professors accessible, and enjoyed discussions with them.
Harvard may be a special case; I'm not to judge other schools without experience. But I will say that I actually miss that climate a bit, rather than having tried to escape it.
Median universities (in the UK, former polytechnics, in the US, community colleges) are even worse. Students there seem to be respected about as much as companies respect their minimum-wage employees. Very low tolerance for infractions (like late assignment submissions) that would be forgiven in higher-ranked places, for example. And I know some very smart people who studied at such places.
Here is the punchline: His subsequent success was the direct result of his original path-following. He didn't go off the beaten path and make his own. He "won" the path-following game he and his classmates were all playing. He founded Thiel Capital Management using money and connections he made working at Credit Suisse, and it was that money that put him in a position to invest in PayPal in 1998. He wouldn't have had that capital without working on Wall Street, and he wouldn't have gotten in the door in Wall Street without those credentials.
To be fair to Thiel, he's not really saying that everyone should do a Thiel fellowship. He's saying that "maybe it's the right thing for some people." Which is by itself undoubtedly true. Where it goes off the rails for me is when people take the message beyond that, which I think Thiel himself sometimes does.
If you just want to start a company, take a Thiel fellowship. If you want to be Peter Thiel, take that Stanford acceptance and go work on Wall Street.
To be fair, one has to ask "Was there a Peter Thiel-like character offering anything like a Thiel Fellowship when Peter Thiel was starting out?"
Accusing him of hypocrisy seems wrong to me. For starters, because people should be allowed to learn, grow, and change their opinions over time. And also because we have, to the best of my knowledge, no particular reason to think that Thiel had the opportunity to those this (Thiel Fellowship) type of path as a youngster.
Anyway, it's a bit early, isn't it, to pre-suppose that some Thiel Fellowship recipients won't turn out just as well as Peter Thiel himself?
My point isn't that what Thiel did is the only way to success, or even really that Thiel is being a hypocrite (to be fair, I find nothing wrong with hypocrisy). What rubs me the wrong way is how his message relates to the power dynamic in Silicon Valley. If you've got Thiel fellow credentials, statistically your winning bet in Silicon Valley is not starting a company, but going to work at a venture capital firm, which is usually the result of careful path-following.
Who knows? The only possible answer to that would be utter and sheer speculation, and fairly pointless as far as I can see. But I don't see any particular reason to assume that he couldn't have been equally successful had he chosen a different route.
My point isn't that what Thiel did is the only way to success, or even really that Thiel is being a hypocrite (to be fair, I find nothing wrong with hypocrisy). My point is that Thiel is a bad messenger for the message he's conveying. A guy whose success is the product of careful path-following, and a guy who works in an industry that still clings rigidly to its credentialing tradition.
Ok, fair enough. Not sure I agree that he's a bad messenger, but I get what you're saying. Let me ask you this though: What - if anything - could Thiel do now (or around the time he launched the Thiel Fellowship initiative) that would make him a good messenger in your view?
It's sheer speculation to wonder what different thing Thiel could have done to become successful. And that gets into the "would Jobs have been as successful if he had never founded Apple?" thing, which is naval gazing.
But it's less of a shot in the dark to speculate that Thiel probably couldn't have successfully co-founded PayPal (a financial services company), without a college degree and Wall Street background. You can look at many entrepreneurs and say that they could've still founded their company if someone had given them $100k cash at age 18. I don't think Thiel is one of those people.
> What - if anything - could Thiel do now (or around the time he launched the Thiel Fellowship initiative) that would make him a good messenger in your view?
Hire people without college degrees to work at Clarium Capital.
Now that I can agree with you on. That would be a good message for him to send, given his current status.
When I asked Peter about his 20 under 20 program, here's what he told me:
"It was 20 people. It was just 20 people. You have something on the order of 6 million people a year in the U.S. who graduate from high school. If you're saying that of the top 60,000, the top 1 percent let's say, are there 20 of those 60,000 who should perhaps not go to college--that does not seem like a terribly controversial statement. That the more talented you are, the more narrow the set of choices you should make? And that if you're a really smart person, the only thing in the world you can do is to go to Harvard? That certainly is an odd state for the world to be in, even though it's surprisingly close to the state we find ourselves in today."
That said, the web page design there is abysmal - the expanding photo captions are unreadable, the animation thing is simply obstructive, and the problem persists no matter how big you make the window.