Many people are doing startups or "startups" because that's what they are being told to do (as opposed to being encouraged to do). Nothing wrong with that. Many of these businesses are really just making a feature. So the seed investor who cashes out soon via an acquihire is really more of an agent. So what? And of course many businesses are just retail shops like people have always started; but when they are started online and not funded by a bank loan (which young people have trouble getting anyway) they are called "startups". But they are simply small businesses (hence my startup and "startup" distinction above).

Folks are still starting more traditional startups all the time, both bootstrapped and externally funded. Encouraging more people to do this is hardly bad news.

"they rush out of university to start companies regardless of having no experience of working in the private sector, thus increasing the chances of failure."

These successful entrepreneurs never rushed out of university to become entrepreneurs. They were successful entrepreneurs already. When you're so successful, staying in school stops making sense. And if you're at that point, you aren't taking a risk by quitting school. The risk is with staying there.

Bill Microsoft, Steve Apple, Mark Facebook, Larry and Sergey Google, Elon Tesla. They all tried to stay in school. They were good students with no intentions of leaving.

So just like any other college student trying to balance school and work and play, replace the work and play with entrepreneurship, and when you are successful, do what makes the most sense. If you graduate, then get a job and do the same. Now replace school and play with entrepreneurship.

These kids who quit school just want to quit and are using entrepreneurship as an excuse. Good for them. No one can say if it's better or worse for them. But if anyone thinks they're mimicking successful entrepreneurship behavior, they're misinformed, be it the students dropping out or the media portraying it as such.

Good entrepreneurs quit their day job when they have to. Not when they want to. And they have to because they're successful already.

This is false for Jobs and Musk. It wasn't until 4 years after Jobs dropped out from Reed that Woz showed him the Apple I, and Musk started Zip2 with $28K of his dad's money after dropping out of a Stanford physics PhD with no specific plans.

It's only semi-true for Gates (Gates and Allen had obtained a deal with MITS over the summer when he chose not to return to Harvard in the fall), but Harvard allows students to take indefinite leaves of absence, so he took a risk-free path.

It was only after the rise of the internet made exponential growth in the space of a few months a real possibility that you saw Page, Brin, and Zuckerberg leave college with very clear evidence of growth to point to.

For Steve Jobs:

"If I had never dropped in on that single calligraphy course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts."

Also I looked up Larry Oracle, and for him he quit school because of a family tragedy.

Elon also quit his phd at a new school after 2 days, which seems more like he changed his mind than "dropped out".

Of course, life is complex. But the point is, none of these people were anti-academic or anti-school. They were anti-wasting time and pro-opportunity, but they were never for dropping out.

The caption "Nor are they Zuckerberg" is outrageously condescending and judgmental. "None of these people are smart enough to become successful entrepreneurs," judges the author, "and they shouldn't even bother trying."

Is it a surprise that lots of people have the wrong idea about what it takes to be successful with a startup? No, and it shouldn't be a surprise.

Just like any profession that pop culture heaps praise upon, there will be many who have an unrealistic view about what it takes to gain success. It's the same as starting a rock band - some people are going to be outrageously successful and most won't, but most who fail will gain experience and will not regret having tried.

For those who think that this is a problem, try to fix it - go give a talk to some young entrepreneurs about how hard it is. Let them know what the risks are and how much work it's going to take. Try to help them be better equipped for the challenges ahead.

Now I advise others, salary is THE most important thing, in fact working for a startup should carry a salary premium, because of the uncertainty and pressure. Crunch time happens but if it is always crunch time, something is going wrong, and you should look at what your hourly rate actually is. The VCs won't burn out or get carpal tunnel. The founders will swan into their next round of funding. No-one cares about you, so you have to care about yourself.

When people talk about a shortage of people in tech, they specifically mean, a shortage of people experienced enough to be useful but not so experienced that they understand the game...

Sure, it's more mating display/beauty contest than entrepeneurialism, but are we not entertained? In the meantime, how else is one supposed to get the cash to bootstrap their big idea in the first place?

It's kind of like how John Williams wrote the theme to _Lost in Space_ long before he wrote the soundtrack to _Star Wars_, no? Or, ya know, Paypal before Tesla and SpaceX.

This rip-and-flip startup model is really just a poorly disguised form of gambling. Sure every week someone wins a massive payout, but for society as a whole it is a negative.

But I agree that startups are a terrible proposition for those with 0.5% or less, which is a matter of choice for the employee who could go get a higher expected return from any of the big tech companies for equivalent (and maybe even much less) time and work. This subject has been rehashed many times on HN.

As for society, um, the US (at least) is a "society" composed of many people who treat buying state lottery tickets as a retirement plan. MVP startups IMO are far less toxic than that. That said, when I made a little $$$, the most toxic thing I encountered was several supposed friends suddenly begging me to fund their ideas because VC wouldn't. @#%$ that, I have plenty of my own ideas to bootstrap with my hard-earned cash.

Yes it is amazing how people react once they realise you have money.

Many people want to work in startups for the wrong reasons. A desire for social cachet or the lure of quick riches are bad reasons to work for startups. You can make more money for less work working at an established corporation. And who cares about what twentysomethings think of you.

Good reasons for working in startups include wanting to build, rather than maintain, products, learning faster, gaining experience faster, working on the cutting edge, and dealing with less bureaucracy. There is also a contrarian or rebellious streak in some startups that can suit certain people.

That said, all these good things can be had, and had more of, in a bootstrapped company rather than a funded company.

See Y Combinator now. Which people go to for the name and the network - not the money.

VC funding is all about eating the world. That's a high bar.

But a burning passion, persistence, a virtual server - and some luck - should be enough for anyone to take a bite out of it.

Innovators are free to innovate and services eventually get the backing of established companies.

But in many cases, the acquiring companies have no interest in the acquired product and shut it down immediately. They're only interested in acqui-hiring the people, who have demonstrated a certain degree of talent in creating a new product. (In some cases, they also buy the company to eliminate a potential competitor.)

I'm starting to think startups are a meme pushed by the VC industry.

In what way is a VC firm a "victim" of investing millions in a startup to try to get in at the ground level of the next unicorn?

The whole thing is this weird self-fulfilling prophecy cycle. I don't blame either side of the equation, per se. But it sorta kills me how people think of this standardized rite of passage now for launching a startup, getting a ton of money before you've made any, and then exiting. I wouldn't take any of that for granted.

In reality, doing the math, startups are major bargains since the teams are working for near zero and their work and health, etc... may not even come into play when a VC or another company purchases. Had the companies or VCs used their own professional teams, they would have had to have paid more to account for working conditions, health-care, salaries, equipment, insurances, etc...

edit: In a tldr; sense, the VCs and major companies can reap the benefits of the "startup" while having to pay nothing to little in the initial cost. This is why ZUckerberg and the rest of the SV hustlers tout "youth" over "experience" because the youth are far more likely to fall into their traps and scheming.

I think the world will benefit from people presenting their ideas rather than not.

1) Society benefits when people work on what they love and do best. Founders, with rare exception, are best at innovating and building new things -- not running large organizations. If we allow founders to exit early, they can work on their next idea, which maximizes the amount of time they spend doing what they love (innovating). This is a net good.

2) Liquidity in the form of early exits attracts more founders, which leads to more overall innovation. I think there's a social judgement against trying to "make a quick buck" which should be discounted. Real value was created whenever an acquisition takes place, and this value isn't destroyed when founders sell -- it just exchanges hands (and sometimes gets transformed).

Reads like a 'knee-jerk' reaction rant to a changing world. The (financial) rewards are going from 'build it to last' to 'work your connections to get funding and work your other connections to sell and exit ASAP'.

Neither approach is the 'right way' or 'wrong way', but I see this situation more as something in the lines of 'this is how the tech / startup landscape has turned into, so go with the flow or get burned'.

Thoughts anyone?

except they totally did

people and businesses had no intention of actually pulling paper-based systems into computational ones, and thus all Steve Jobs had to do was reproduce office-quality typography and document presentation on a screen, selling 1870s typewriter workflows as innovation well enough to convince the world they were revolutionary

MEVSGP MPIZ JBKQSI DBAPH TLUM XFEA HRBH CNUDNT PZIZDK VZOPZW DX. TO BE OR NOT TO BE THAT IS THE GZINCLE FLORTEN GLOFFLE.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

SO CLOSE.... SO VERY CLOSE....

PERHAPS WITH JUST A FEW MORE MONKEYS........

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfMDWhc_ohU