I am a start up founder as well and I am facing the same problem. Most of freshers applying for the jobs claim to have decent "Java", "SQL" knowledge in their resume. But they cannot even write a simple program that reads and writes to a file.

They don't even know that there is something called "Open Source Technology". Absolutely no one has hands on experience with Linux. And they haven't even heard of technologies like ROR and Node.js.

I had to invest in their training. But even after 3 months of rigorous training, they still fail to grasp basic concepts.

I am not blaming parents for their child's failure. Of course, they pray that he should have a better life than themselves. That's why they pay for his education.

I will blame these petty colleges with their petty engineering degrees.

Paid projects are killing "problem solving attitude" of entire engineering generation.