Would you rather have a college degree or $100,000?
Grace Gee enrolled in Harvard with
plans to study bioengineering, and her career aspirations aimed at
Google or Microsoft. Growing up in the small Texas town of Port Lavaca,
she thought the idea of a startup was “very odd.”
But three years later, with the help of a $100,000 check and a friend she met in the freshman dining hall, Gee founded HoneyInsured, a healthcare data startup that ran one of the first large-scale studies of Obamacare.
“It wasn’t until I started doing my own
research and side projects that I realized startups are an easier,
faster way for my projects to actually impact people,” Gee said.
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It happened through the Thiel Fellowship,
a grant aimed at jump-starting the careers of 20 young and ambitious
students every year. The catch? They can’t be concurrently enrolled in
school.
To many people, dropping out of an Ivy
might be the only thing more unimaginable than getting into one. Every
year thousands of students from across the world vie for the
opportunity.
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Zach Hamed, a former Harvard student
currently working on an internal startup with Goldman Sachs, hardly knew
anyone when he moved to California as an intern in 2013. After
attending a Thiel Foundation event for applicants, his eyes opened to
the opportunities the fellowship afforded.
“There were all these people: mentors,
other students, startup founders—everyone who’s really interested and
willing to help,” Hamed said. “I had a glimpse of the Silicon Valley
ethos, of people willing to help with everything that comes along with
starting companies.”
It’s exactly the type of community PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel envisioned when he created the fellowship in 2010. He believes in entrepreneurship, and in helping to realize good ideas.
The combination of mentorship and
funding enables students to take their raw passions and turn them into
realities. So far, dozens of companies have sprung up from the funding.
ThielFoundation.org
In 2015, the most competitive year yet,
the fellowship had 2,800 proposals. Though it was originally called the
“20 under 20” fellowship, it has expanded in recent years to
accommodate “older” applicants—people up to 22.
The extended age bracket isn’t the only reason the applications grew. Silicon Valley is a seductive destination to a generation raised on the legends of dropouts like Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates.
The fellowship provides an alternative
to attending college for four years, and emerging with a degree but
without finances to take on passion projects. It’s not anti-college.
It’s for students who don’t feel like college is for them.
Ben Yu, founder of Sprayable Energy,
felt he didn’t need to be in a classroom, dealing with hypotheticals,
when he could be in the world, learning through experience.
“I actually heard about the fellowship
my freshman fall by reading an article that basically said the Thiel
Fellowship is the worst thing ever,” Yu said. “It talked about how the
fellowship showed how evil Peter Thiel is and how messed up the Silicon
Valley Bubble is. I read it, and thought it was really fantastic.”
Yu said that the funding legitimized his
vision for his startup. He would have left Harvard whether he won the
fellowship or not, but the $100,000 vote of confidence didn’t hurt.
That type of conviction is required for
anyone seriously considering the fellowship. Even with help, startups
bring countless obstacles.
Money is always an issue. Gee and her coworkers share an apartment. They’ve even gone vegetarian to save.
Photo courtesy of Grace Gee
“We’re going to try to make [the
funding] last for a long time,” she said. “We want to keep going long
enough to validate what we’re doing. But mostly we just want to help
people with their health insurance.”
Hamed said one of his greatest
challenges is fear of the unknown. At Harvard, he faced stresses related
to time management. Realizing that he wanted to do everything, and
couldn’t, was tough. But in the startup world, the pressures are
different. There’s no playbook .
“The pressure of having to finish an
assignment is very different from ‘I don’t know where I’m going to get
five new users in the next week,” Hamed said.
While their peers volunteer on campus
and wrestle with James Joyce, fellows have to hire a competent staff and
balance vision with execution. With their stacked resumes and the
perfectly articulated business pitches, it’s easy to forget their ages.
But Yu said that he wouldn’t trade in his experience as a fellow for a
“normal” college experience.
“When I started college, I’d been cooped
up in school for 12 years,” Yu said. “I was pretty antsy to get out and
actually do something.”
Photo courtesy of Ben Yu
Yu dropped out of Harvard his sophomore
year and said he felt that he didn’t have a reason to be in college. He
later returned for another semester and enjoyed it more that time, but
departed again once his startup began to take off.
He hasn’t ruled out returning for his diploma, but his work keeps him from entertaining the idea too seriously.
“If I had nothing else to do, it’s not something I would hate doing,” Yu said.
“It’s the group that I identify
with and believe in,” Ferreira said. “The things they talk about are the
things I like to talk about.”
Her parents would like her to have a
college degree, she said. But she’d already dropped out once to launch
her first startup, so they’re not really surprised.
Gee admitted she sometimes envies typical college experiences.
“A lot of our classmates after
graduation have been going on a lot of trips, or starting new work,” she
said. “Sometimes you feel like you miss out a little bit.”
Still, Gee said, it’s worth it.
“I think the startup space needs more
young people,” Gee said. “A lot of older people come in and build
amazing tools that further an existing industry, but young people come
in with new ideas that can create new spaces, and these are the awesome
changes that young people are better at as well.”
