I am beyond jealous. That instructor list is unreal. Students at Stanford get another peg up on the starting ladder...
(Also there is only 90 universities signed up for watch parties, yet copy lists "hundreds")
(Also there is only 90 universities signed up for watch parties, yet copy lists "hundreds")
I could expand this sentiment to every teacher or lecturer who has chosen to put their video online, especially the great ones. They have done a great service to the world (probably beyond what they may themselves realize).
I recently met an undergrad student in India who considered Steve Huffman to be his guru (he was a fan of his Udacity course, and so am I, btw) and swears by everything Steve taught him. And, Steve probably does not even know that he has a fan following in a small town in India :)
I've experienced this many times while living outside of the US, in recent years. All of the people you'll read about in blogs, or see in videos -- they're perceived like movie stars or legends that must have been greatly distorted on their journey to the opposite end of the world. Keep in mind that many small countries have never seen a single big tech-startup success happen within their borders. Even suggesting a remote possibility of successes, will be met with the argument that every successful person they've ever known hasn't followed what they call the "American" startup way.
In-person role models -- can't underestimate the psychological impact.
That sounds more like a difference caused by economic and cultural circumstances than whether you've met a rockstar in person.
If Country X is unable to produce viable startups, it's probably because it doesn't have the economic and cultural infrastructure to support startups yet, not because Peter Thiel has never graced that country with a royal visit.
> every successful person they've ever known hasn't followed what they call the "American" startup way.
Of course they haven't. The "American startup way" is optimized for the specific economic and cultural circumstances that are only found in certain parts of the United States. Some aspects of it may be generalizable, but most of it isn't. Following it to the letter in any other country will probably earn you nothing but ridicule and bankruptcy.
One of the perceived privileges of the elite is their very access to opportunity, and being there is to provide that access.
Not being there is to observe the access, which is the addition of transparency that never existed before, but fundamentally the access hasn't been granted.
If you're already in a tough place without access to these kinds of opportunity, this is just going to underline and bold that some more.
I say bugger that for a game of soldiers. No, you don't have to meet one of the 'legends' before you can succeed. That sort of thinking is false, poisonous and destructive. In almost all cases, the first step on the road to success is understanding that life is not a zero-sum game.
There's no reason to be jealous...if you spend your time doing actual business while they're taking classes, you'll win.
The only question that matters to investors is, "Will the next Google or Facebook come out of Stanford?" If the answer is "No," then everyone investing in Stanford-related startups will lose.
There's a higher chance that the right talent, idea, and motivation might come together at Stanford, but it's far from likely. I don't know too much about elite universities, but the fact that Facebook originated from someone attending Harvard and Airbnb originated from an RISD alum is evidence that any university has a fair chance of starting the next hot company. Maybe even someone who hasn't attended university at all might start it.
Imagine if Google wasn't able to raise funding because someone was prejudiced against where the founders went to university, or whether they attended university. How different would the world be? That's why it's mistaken to place so much emphasis on Stanford. It shouldn't matter, except insofar as there's a lot of talent there.
I think the question comes down to, does the school give the unfair advantage or does the school attract smart people that are more likely to accomplish something great. I think its already accepted that there is a correlation.
There's a correlation, but rich kids can also buy their way into schools like Stanford: http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html
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It's dangerous to design your life around getting into college, because the people you have to impress to get into college are not a very discerning audience. At most colleges, it's not the professors who decide whether you get in, but admissions officers, and they are nowhere near as smart. They're the NCOs of the intellectual world. They can't tell how smart you are. The mere existence of prep schools is proof of that.
Few parents would pay so much for their kids to go to a school that didn't improve their admissions prospects. Prep schools openly say this is one of their aims. But what that means, if you stop to think about it, is that they can hack the admissions process: that they can take the very same kid and make him seem a more appealing candidate than he would if he went to the local public school. [6]
[6] I don't mean to imply that the only function of prep schools is to trick admissions officers. They also generally provide a better education. But try this thought experiment: suppose prep schools supplied the same superior education but had a tiny (.001) negative effect on college admissions. How many parents would still send their kids to them?
It might also be argued that kids who went to prep schools, because they've learned more, are better college candidates. But this seems empirically false. What you learn in even the best high school is rounding error compared to what you learn in college. Public school kids arrive at college with a slight disadvantage, but they start to pull ahead in the sophomore year.
(I'm not saying public school kids are smarter than preppies, just that they are within any given college. That follows necessarily if you agree prep schools improve kids' admissions prospects.)
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I'm going to go with "unfair advantage," but there are a lot of smart people there too.
I know that funding is kind of like a nice additional checkbox on your list of upper-middle class elite treadmill objectives, but outside of sanfranistan we've somehow managed to build entire empires of real value without having to rely on venture capitalists who happened to get drunk in the same dorms that we did.
I work in the finance department for a large corporation, I'm not a start up guy. I don't even live in "Sanfranistan", or California.
I'm really surprised at the negative reactions I'm getting by stating that what school you go to can give a leg up on being successful.
Success and funding are not necessarily correlated, right? We saw that back in the 90s and are seeing it again.
I don't disagree that having these connections can ease certain parts of the fundraising (and even customer acquisition!) process--that said, I'm concerned that the emphasis placed a lot of times in the ecosystem is on funding and not the boring part of, you know, business.
My cynicism stems from the fact that, to me, the hip path these days has you going to an Ivy-league school or Stanford, starting a company, going through a well-known accelerator, raising funding from VCs, and then -~=magic startup time=~-. And for a lot of people, this path isn't about actually doing business--it's simply the thing that they're supposed to do and which it is implied is expected of them. All the while, spouting rhetoric about how they're going to "change the world" by chasing the same boring set of business concepts. I find it irritating.
(This is something that online education misses entirely and will largely never be able to replicate.)