College Dropout Entrepreneur Boasts That Peter Thiel's Book Is "Probably the Best Book I've Read, and I've Only Read a Few Pages"
Ever since college dropouts Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak began pedaling the romantic tale of founding Apple in Jobs' parents' Los Altos garage, college-age tech bros have longed to follow in their footsteps. But there's just one tiny thorn: the "founder's story" of late-night struggles and coffee-fueled breadboarding is mostly a capitalist fairy tale.
Still, it's a mythos tech billionaire overlord Peter Thiel is all too eager to stoke. His empire is built on image — even the stereotypical "evil mastermind" vibe is a carefully groomed persona — which he disseminates across Silicon Valley hopefuls via the almighty Thiel Fellowship.
Each year, Thiel selects up to 20 "Thiel fellows" to each receive $200,000 and drop out of college in order to pursuit a tech startup. Though some come straight out of high school, many Thiel fellows historically come from Ivy league schools, which isn't exactly the kind of background that screams "all or nothing."
Thanks to Thiel's massive profile and political influence, a number of Thiel fellows have watched their startups soar to billion dollar valuations. Though tech hopefuls are said to have just .01 percent of a chance to snag a Thiel Fellowship, that isn't stopping scores of wannabe founders from dropping out of college anyway.
In a profile of the growing anti-college movement festering in Silicon Valley, Business Insider's Julia Hornstein sat down with a number of young dropouts to figure out just what the hell is going on.
Sebastian Tan, one of over 500 students who applied for an internship at Thiel's surveillance and spying company Palantir, dreamed of being an entrepreneur. The billionaire's book, "Zero to One," is basically a tech monopolists' manifesto, and "probably the best book I've read," according to Tan, along with a laughable addendum that underscores exactly how undercooked his worldview is: "And I've only read a few pages."
In April, Hornstein writes, Tan got the offer from Palantir, which he accepted, deferring his undergraduate degree until 2026. "In college, you don't learn the building skills that you need for a startup," he confidently declared.
Tan's is an interesting story, especially for his early success — but he's far from alone. In 2022, there were 2.1 million college dropouts in the US. According to a World Economic Forum survey in that same year, 28 percent of dropouts did so to start a business. That's a lot of startups.
But while the country's tech bros might be agog at the idea of dropping out, the reality is that very few startups succeed without advanced degree holders, let alone people who've completed undergraduate programs. Recent research found that 56 percent of startup executives hold a graduate degree, while the average age of a successful startup founder is 45.
The trouble here isn't necessarily that it's "college or nothing," but rather the values, methods, and myths that startups engender — like that regulation stifles innovation, or that Silicon Valley startups exist separate of the massive economic inequality we see in the world today (on the contrary, startups have been key players in building that world.)
With the kind of failure rate startups engender, there'll inevitably be a flood of unskilled, untrained labor trickling back into the economy — the kind of people who've been trained to think of themselves as "high agency individuals."
That's something Arbaaz Mahmood, a would-be physicist who skipped college to do a startup developing an "AI tool for car dealerships," seems to at least acknowledge. "Honestly, nobody goes to college thinking they're going to change the world," he tells BI. "That's a vacuous lie we tell VCs to get their money. Nobody builds startups to change the world. It's just bullshit."
When it comes to startups, Benjamin Shestakofsky, author of "Behind the Startup," summarizes it well: "Our relationship with technology is socially constructed. Yes, we do make choices as individuals, but our choices are embedded in broader structures that create different sorts of opportunities and constraints for us."
More on startups: Columbia Student Kicked Out for Creating AI to Cheat, Raises Millions to Turn It Into a Startup
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Business Insider
40 minutes ago
- Business Insider
Big Tech's new recruits are skipping out on college, and tech companies are encouraging it
Welcome back to our Sunday edition, where we round up some of our top stories and take you inside our newsroom. Happy Father's Day to all of the committed and inspiring dads out there. I know I'm forever grateful to mine, Larry Heller, for his love and advice over the years — including about Business Insider! You might not know who Alexandr Wang is, but you're about to. Meta effectively just spent about $15 billion to hire the 28-year-old CEO of Scale AI, BI's Peter Kafka writes. On the agenda today: VC's new favorite guessing game: Who is Arfur Rock, the " Gossip Girl of Silicon Valley"? Advice from Goldman Sachs insiders for the 2025 intern class. From buying a house to job-hopping, taking a big financial risk is scarier than ever. Potential big changes to private-equity recruiting could benefit us all. But first: Forget college degrees. If this was forwarded to you, sign up here. Download Business Insider's app here. This week's dispatch Big Tech is turning against college Julia Hornstein covers tech and other startups in the defense sector for Business Insider. One increasingly common refrain from some leaders in this space is their disdain for higher education. I talked with Julia about her recent, great, in-depth article on the subject. Is the negative view on higher education from some tech leaders more about the value of school versus experience, or what's being taught in schools? It's both. The founders I spoke to see college as expensive and inefficient. Top four-year schools can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Some don't want to miss the AI boom while in class. Others want to become financial providers as soon as possible. Some also perceive an ideological tilt at universities, a belief that the Trump administration has also espoused. One founder who has built a billion-dollar company told me he doesn't see value in a liberal arts education and has "yet to meet people that consistently rave about that as being super useful." Palantir is ideologically opposed to college coursework, too. Its CEO, Alex Karp, said in his new book that colleges are "walled off from the world." The Meritocracy Fellowship, the company's internship for high school grads, tells applicants to " skip the indoctrination" of college. Skipping college for an opportunity in tech or startups isn't uniquely a defense tech phenomenon. I interviewed non-college founders building marketing platforms, AI startups, and nuclear fusion companies. That said, many in defense tech question higher education. Palantir cofounder and investor Peter Thiel, who has both a BA and JD from Stanford, has called higher ed "the worst institution we have." Joe Lonsdale, another Palantir cofounder and a venture capitalist, cofounded a college in Austin in 2022 out of a frustration "with how modern universities stifle free thought and academic diversity," he wrote. Some founders I spoke with decided to ditch college in their early teens. A few dropped out of high school. The Palantir fellows are different: For now, they told me, they're taking a gap year and holding their seats in college. Their decision about college might depend on whether Palantir makes them a full-time offer they can't refuse. Silicon Valley's little whisperer Serena & co. had Gossip Girl, and Bridgerton has Lady Whistledown. Silicon Valley has Arfur Rock, the anonymous X user who posts scoopy info about startups and VC. Identifying only as an "anon GP at your favorite multistage-VC," Rock has the tech industry in a twist over their true identity. Some regard Rock's transparency as a breath of fresh air, while others question their motives. Here's what Rock told BI about the guessing game. Dear Goldman Sachs interns … About 2,600 students are kicking off their summer at the investment bank. Working on Wall Street can be overwhelming, though, so BI spoke with three former Goldman interns who rose through the ranks. They encourage interns to bring a positive attitude, share fresh ideas, and take advantage of the "coffee culture." How to land a postgrad offer. Also read: Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon to interns: 'The only constant is change.' See the letter. Meet the 0.4% of students who made it into Citadel's 2025 summer intern program — the firm's lowest acceptance rate yet. Big financial risks are scary right now Recession worries and inflation are keeping Americans on the edge of their seats. Some are stuck in their jobs, and others are reminiscing about the days of dirt-cheap mortgage rates. BI's Emily Stewart broke down how Americans are confronting this uncertainty — and what that means for their spending. While it may not be the best time to take a big leap, the impact on the broader economy can be even trickier to decipher. Stuck reading tea leaves. PE takes a pause The path to a prestigious corner of Wall Street is hitting a roadblock. JPMorgan and Apollo recently announced plans to slow down the ever-earlier recruitment of junior bankers to PE jobs. The decision created shockwaves among young Wall Streeters, who had spent years preparing for the well-worn recruiting cycle that's now been put on hold. But the impact could extend well beyond those in finance. And it's not a bad thing. Also read: Jamie Dimon just made good on his promise to crack down on bankers with hush-hush private equity jobs Apollo pulls the plug on a hiring practice for junior bankers that Jamie Dimon called 'unethical.' General Atlantic halts a recruiting practice blasted by Jamie Dimon a day after Apollo also slammed the brakes. This week's quote: "It's human nature to gravitate toward shortcuts." — Cedric Bryant, the president and CEO of the American Council on Exercise, on Americans' desire for quick-fix fitness hacks. More of this week's top reads: Oracle appears to have named two new presidents. Dell wanted everyone back in the office five days a week. Employees say it's been open to interpretation. How a flood of retail investor money into private markets could stress the whole financial system. Citi doubles down on WFH, offering two weeks of fully remote work in August. See the memo here. Documents reveal what tool Google used to try to beat ChatGPT: ChatGPT itself. GitHub's CEO says startups can only get so far with vibe coding. New York's tech industry has a warning for San Francisco: We're coming for your AI crown. Hulk Hogan wants to reimagine Hooters restaurants as his Real American Beer brand makes a new bid to save the chain. A big shake-up at Amazon finally brings Whole Foods into the fold.
Forbes
an hour ago
- Forbes
Exactly When Apple Will Launch iPhone 17 And iPhone 17 Pro
that's when the company has said the next generation of software, iOS 26, will go on general release — it's just had a surprise update to the developer beta cycle. Exactly when the phones will launch hasn't been announced, but it's possible to nail down the date with some accuracy. Here's all you need to know. Apple's current series is iPhone 16. When will iPhone 17 launch? Apple's biggest keynote of the year always features the iPhone, and usually the Apple Watch plus, sometimes, another product like AirPods. It always falls in roughly the first half of September, mostly on a Tuesday or Wednesday. And never on Sept. 11. This gives us three possible pairs of dates: Tuesday, Sept. 2 or Wednesday, Sept. 3, Tuesday, Sept. 9 or Wednesday, Sept. 10, or Tuesday, Sept. 16 or Wednesday, Sept. 17. We can rule out the first pair as that completely clashes with the big consumer electronics show in Berlin, IFA, which runs Sept. 5-9, with press days just before that. U.S. and international press will be tied up in Germany that week. Also, Labor Day is Monday, Sept. 1, and Apple doesn't choose the week Labor Day falls in. The final pair of dates seems too late for me, though they're not impossible — if Apple hits a snag in production, it can move the launch to that week. Most likely are Tuesday, Sept. 9 or Wednesday, Sept. 10. Last year, Apple chose Monday, Sept. 9 for the keynote, so the Monday in that week, Sept. 8, is also possible. My gut says it will be on Tuesday, Sept. 10 at 10 a.m. Pacific in Apple's Cupertino HQ. Assuming the keynote is on Sept. 10, or one day that week, the release date, as sure as eggs is eggs, will be the Friday of the following week: Friday, Sept. 18. If for some reason the keynote moves to the week beginning Sept. 17, then Friday, Sept. 25 will be the onsale date for the iPhone 17, iPhone Air, iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max (if those are the names selected for the phones expected). But my money's on Friday, Sept. 18.
Business Insider
an hour ago
- Business Insider
'Slow down' and 'deeply observe' the company culture when starting a new job, says ex-Apple director
When job-hopping, make sure not to accidentally bring your old company's culture along for the ride, said Bob Baxley, a former director of design at Apple. "I think my own particular mistake, and I've seen this with some other Apple executives as well, is we went directly from Apple — I left Apple on a Friday and I started Pinterest on a Monday," Baxley said on a recent episode of Lenny's Podcast. "And I didn't give myself time to recalibrate to the Pinterest culture." After leaving Apple in 2014, Baxley went on to work as the head of product design at Pinterest, where he said he "bounced off" the culture, given that he was still acting as he had in his previous role. "I came in thinking I was supposed to behave the way I behaved at Apple, which is very direct, fighting hard. It's very — everybody cares about each other, it's never insulting, but it's intense," he said. "That's not really where Pinterest was at the time." It's not just Apple's working environment that has a way of sticking with you, Baxley added — most major tech companies have " really powerful cultures." "You get kind of indoctrinated into all those standards and it's really deep. It infuses all of your behavior and how you conduct yourself in the company, away from the company," he said. "And so, I think it's pretty hard to immigrate successfully from one of those environments to another." Baxley said that other former Apple employees have smoother transitions, purely by virtue of taking time off before taking up a new position. Baxley cites Hiroki Asai as a prime example — as Apple's former Vice President of Global Marketing, Asai took years off for "re-wirement" prior to joining AirBnB, according to his LinkedIn. "It also should be noted that he had — it was a multi-year gap between the time he left Apple and the time he started Airbnb," Baxley said. Asai and Apple did not respond to a request for comment by Business Insider prior to publication. "At Apple, I think it was Tim or Steve, used to talk about the Apple car wash," he added. "That when you started Apple, they kind of had to take you through the car wash and get off all that stuff that you'd accumulated at other places. It turns out there's a car wash you need to go through when you leave Apple as well." Though eschewing old habits as you move into a new role is important, that doesn't mean you should forget the lessons your old job taught you, Baxley said. "The thing I took away from Apple, and I think this is true for anybody changing from one major culture to another, is most likely, the new place hires you because of the values of the organization you left, but not the behaviors," he said. As you move on, it's worth asking how you can best incorporate the best aspects of your old company's culture in your new workplace, Baxley added. "And so I think it's important to recalibrate and say, well, I want to hold onto these values," he said. "So at Apple, attention to detail, product excellence, doing everything you can for the customer and the user — so, try to hold onto those values but then think, 'Okay, how are those values best expressed in this culture?'" Still, Baxley told Business Insider, it won't always be possible to pause between roles — particularly in the tech sphere, where companies usually want new hires to onboard right away. Even if you have to start immediately, it could be helpful to go in while expecting a period of adjustment. "My biggest point on this topic is that when you go into a new culture you really need to slow down, deeply observe, don't judge or compare, and then when you have a reasonable handle on things, reflect on the best ways to express the values from the old place with behaviors that are appropriate to the new," he told BI.
