Entrepreneurship
1. Should You Become an Entrepreneur in College?
If you need encouragement or are hoping I’d try to convince you to become an entrepreneur, I won’t.
Creating a company is a way to solve problems. Some problems require you to create a company. Others don’t.
Should you start a company while you’re in college?
NO!!!!!
Use your college years to follow your curiosity, to learn, to do research, to create projects, and to figure out what you love.
- Audit any class you want
- Build projects that make zero business sense
- Work on crazy research projects
Don’t start by trying to create a company. Start with your curiosity, your interests, and your desire to solve real problems.
If you work on problems you care about and create projects you find interesting, sooner rather than later, you may find yourself with the need to create a company.
But honestly, just enjoy the ability to pursue new ideas and learn about whatever you want without the pressure of the thing making sense or having to find customers. How cool is it that you can spend your time creating things because you find them interesting and because you want the thing to exist in the world?
That’s the real luxury (and value) of college.
But don’t start at the end: creating a company. Start from a place of curiosity and exploration. If the need to create a company comes your way, by all means, go for it. But don’t chase it. You’ll have time for that later on.
Mark Zuckerberg said it best:
For me, so much of the lesson that I feel like I’ve learned is that it’s really hard to decide to start a company. You know, Facebook—I didn’t start it to start a company; I started it because I really wanted this thing personally and I believed it should exist globally, although I wasn’t quite sure that we would be able to play a role in doing that.
It was mostly through wanting to build it, having it be this hobby, and getting people around me excited that it eventually evolved and gained the momentum to become a company. But I never really understood the psychology of deciding that you want to start a company before you understand what you want to do.
Having the flexibility to explore a lot of different things, which you can do when you’re in college, is one of the amazing things about being in college. You can work on all these hobbies, code a lot of stuff, and try a lot of different things. It’s this amazing flexibility that I think most people take for granted.
Once you decide, ‘Okay, I’m going to start a company and do it with someone else,’ you immediately need to convince someone else if you want to change your mind on something. I think people really undervalue the option value and flexibility.
Explore what you want to do before committing is really the key thing, and keep yourself flexible.
—Mark Zuckerberg, Mark Zuckerberg at Startup School 2012
Personally, I explored like crazy:
- Created so many programming projects
- Conducted biocomputational physics research
- Taught myself mathematics for fun
- Worked on neuroscience theories
- Did stand-up comedy to embarrass myself
- Ran a few marathons because I had never done it
- Learned how to play the guitar and the piano
- Auditioned for an a cappella group
- Started a marketing business to help local businesses
- Learned how to deal with bureaucracies
- Started a talk show with a friend and interviewed over 80 people
- Learned how to ask good questions, how to record, and edit videos
- Wrote a book about lithium
- Wrote another about aerospace
- And then tried to create a personal flying vehicle
- Built a vertical landing rocket with a few friends
- Made a TikTok video every day for over 100 days (~300 in 16 weeks)
- Tried to create affordable, profitable housing
- Joined an organization to help solve social problems in Venezuela using technology
- Started a newsletter where I shared internship opportunities
- Made trippy short films
- Created a shitty ChatGPT before ChatGPT existed called FuckGenEds.com
- Sang to people in the quad
- Created my own major after getting rejected three times
- Created a summer program for people to come to UIUC for a summer
- Sold boba on the quad
And way more stuff I forgot.
Explore, and do what excites you.
2. When Should You Actually Start a Startup?
Only start a startup if you’re:
- Fully committed to solving a specific problem.
- You can’t think about anything else.
- One of your projects takes off naturally and demands your attention.
So many people tell themselves they’re entrepreneurs but don’t know how to do anything. That’s fine. But the best way to become an entrepreneur is to follow your curiosity and learn a lot about whatever it is you’re curious about.
3. Fuck Teaching Entrepreneurship
YOU CANNOT TEACH ENTREPRENEURSHIP.
Instead:
- Learn how to get shit done
- Learn a skill people need
- Learn how to sell
- Learn how to never give up
- Learn how to be adaptable
- Learn how to be comfortable with uncertainty
4. How to Learn Entrepreneurship
You can’t learn entrepreneurship, but you might find the following useful:
- How to Start a Startup Lectures Series by Y-Combinator
- Startup Playbook by Sam Altman
- CS183: Startup by Peter Thiel
- Paul Graham Essays
- The Pmarca Guide to Startups
Or, you can skip all of this and just start building things.
5. The Most Important Thing To Learn
When you create a company, you need to know what problem you’re solving. You also need to know about hiring, accounting, fundraising, and so many other things.
All that helps, but what is a business at a fundamental level? It’s a group of people who come together to solve a problem.
How do you get people to join you? How do you get them, once they join, to work toward the same goal? How do you get people to stay and not leave for another job? And this should have been the first step: how do you convince yourself that what you’re doing matters?
You have a team. You have yourself. But what else? Now you need to convince investors to give you money, and you need to convince customers that what you’re offering is the best product or service for them.
You’re selling your story constantly—to employees, investors, customers, the outside world, and yourself. If at any point that story stops being convincing, the company risks falling apart.
That’s why you need to learn storytelling. It’s the most important thing.
A company is a group of people who come together to solve a problem, and what keeps it together is the belief in a collective story about why the problem matters, what’s being developed, and how it will be done.
But you can never change the world as George Lucas once put it, “It’s not possible. All you can do is try to make your own world and then invite other people to be a part of it.”
Creating a company is a way to create your own world with its own culture, mission, and values.
6. Being an Entrepreneur Isn’t the Only Way to Live a Meaningful Life
Telling everyone that becoming an entrepreneur is the best thing that has existed since the dawn of civilization is wrong.
Entrepreneurship is not the highest form of human life.
There are more things than just being an entrepreneur. For some people, they can’t help but be an entrepreneur, it’s just in them. For others, it’s a desire for a certain lifestyle; perhaps they want to make more money, work for themselves, and have more control over their destiny. Whatever your reason to become an entrepreneur, cool.
But don’t forget, life is much broader than whatever society deems desirable at any given moment. What about creating art? What about doing science? What about journalism? What about filmmaking? What about whatever it is you find interesting?
William Deresiewicz noticed this and called it the entrepreneurial ideal. The idea that every artistic, moral, and social aspiration eventually gets expressed as a small business. The startup became the creative act. The business plan became the art form.
Forty years ago starting a business was selling out. Now it is the most admirable thing a young person can do. The cultural hero stopped being the scientist, the artist, the reformer, the person who devoted their life to understanding something true. Steve Jobs became the god. The founder became the saint. The pitch deck became the prayer.
If you want to become an entrepreneur, fine. But be aware, this is a part of a larger trend in society, and you may not be as original as you might be thinking.
7. Entrepreneurship Center at Universities
Don’t.
You’ll waste your time.
Go for the free food and free pizza. But don’t go for anything else.
At a university, they’ll want to teach you entrepreneurship because they think it’s what they’re supposed to do.
Entrepreneurship has become incredibly popular in recent years. It's the new "cool." It's trendy enough that even universities, famously sluggish institutions, have scrambled to churn out countless programs to teach "bullshipreneurship," I mean, entrepreneurship.
Universities also want to use it as a selling point: “Come here and you’ll create the next billion-dollar company (like one of our famous dropouts).”
Is that supposed to make you want to attend the school, or make you realize you might not need to go to school at all? I’ll let you be the judge.
Expect pitch competitions, classes, clubs, and a whole lot of baloney.
Pitch Competitions
Pitch competitions rarely, if ever, produce successful startups. Why do universities push these events?
Universities like pitch competitions because they are visible, sponsor-friendly, easy to photograph, and easier to organize than the messy work of helping students build useful things for months.
Maybe they also think this is what students want. They see other universities running pitch competitions, so they feel obligated to do the same.
Some universities create a semester-long program where they turn the whole thing into another class with assignments and endless nonsense.
Most of the time, these competitions are a waste of time. Don’t be lured by the money they might offer.
You’ll learn about networking, how to be fake, and slide-polish.
But what about building something you love? Learning specific skills? Or even just the importance of following your curiosity and doing whatever the fuck you want while you’re in college?
That’s not even the worst part. It gets worse.
I remember asking an alumnus who became a very successful entrepreneur why the people in these college entrepreneurship communities are not that interesting, and whether it was the same during his time.
He told me these people are rarely interesting because most of the time they are pretending.
However, he did tell me that every once in a while, he would find one or two genuine people who were serious, and finding those people made it worth going every once-in-a-while.
That’s the same thing I’ll tell you now: Go for free food and for the occasional interesting people you’ll find. Otherwise, run the fuck away.
Most campus entrepreneurship culture is heavy on pitch and light on substance. That's the environment. Some are performing, sure, but some are genuinely hungry and just haven't found their real project yet. What's missing isn't talent. It's the willingness to experiment, follow your true and genuine interests, and do something for its own sake rather than for the resume line. Many people there wanted the identity of "entrepreneur" more than the thing itself.
Many students do these programs and go get jobs anyway, which is fine. But it's worth being honest about what the program actually is.
Should we talk about the mentors and judges? The best mentors at these events are rare, and you'll know them quickly. They ask questions instead of giving speeches. The rest are people who've stopped being curious. Learn what you can and move on.
Even the successful ones are working from the past. Knowing what worked before doesn't mean you can see what's coming. No one can. If you’re young, the biggest opportunities for you are what most older people don’t understand. What’s obvious to you that’s not obvious to your parents, grandparents, and professors? That’s your goldmine, and know that it will go over the heads of most mentors and judges.
The most serious entrepreneurs are often not waiting around at entrepreneurship events. You’re also not going to find them in any business or entrepreneurship classes. They will be working their asses off on a personal project in some obscure part of campus, staying up past midnight creating something for fun, tinkering on some research project no one really believes in yet, taking the hardest classes on campus for fun, or not taking any classes at all and might be considering dropping out because a random project they created is taking off like crazy.
They're learning. They're following their curiosity. They're doing things for their own sake.
Entrepreneurship Classes and Clubs
Avoid them. Avoid them all.
You won’t learn much. The lecturers and students won’t be that interesting, and you’ll learn about what you’re supposed to do. But there is no supposed to do, especially when you create a company. Focus on following your curiosity, building something people want, and you’ll figure everything out along the way.
What’s the point in taking these classes, then? Exactly. There is no point.
Take classes that challenge you and work on fun projects, and if they ever lead to a startup, great. If not, that’s also great. But don’t fake it.
Most important of all, don’t be a business pretender who doesn’t know how to do anything.
Don’t be the “business” or “idea” person. That shit is fake. You’re either doing the work or you’re not.
What about entrepreneurship clubs?
Yes, what about them? (yawning) It’s the same people again. Predictable. Dull. And absolutely not worth your time.
You know college entrepreneurship is squirrelshit when they have a big banner saying “Startups are fun.”
Thank me later.
8. College Entrepreneurship Is Like High School Sex
Entrepreneurship in college is like sex in high school. The people who talk about it the most usually have the least real experience.
The kids who actually do it learn way more in one weekend than in four years of lectures.
The kid wearing the “Ask Me About My Startup” hoodie has a pitch deck and zero revenue. The quiet kid who never speaks in class just quietly sold one of his projects for $40k last month.
Learn to tell the difference.
9. Take ZERO Entrepreneurship Classes
Interviewer: So, you took so many computer science classes and other classes. How many classes did you take on entrepreneurship back then?
Max Levchin: Zero.
—Max Levchin, Fireside Chat with Max Levchin
Max Levchin, co-founder of PayPal and founder of Affirm, and one of the most successful entrepreneurs to ever come out of his university, never took a single entrepreneurship or business class.
Zero.
What else do you need to know?
A few minutes later, in the same interview, Max Levchin explained how to learn entrepreneurship:
Entrepreneurship is one of those things where there are really only two ways to learn it.
Two ways of learning it: you can either just dive off into the deep end and see what happens. It’s not a zero chance approach—in fact, there’s a pretty high chance that you’ll have a very hard time learning how to swim.
Or, there’s a sort-of “training wheels” version: you can join an early-stage startup. It’s a little safer, though it could still fail. You could still end up jobless, but it’s slightly less burdensome because you’re sharing the angst with a group of people, instead of carrying it all alone.
As a founder—be it CEO or something else—the angst is very real, and it’s on your shoulders. Every day, you look at your employees and everything else, and if you screw up, it’s on you. That’s the biggest obstacle: you just have to be okay with responsibility.
Or, you can join an early team, watch how others cope, and participate. It’s a little easier to handle, but still valuable experience.
—Max Levchin, Fireside Chat with Max Levchin (slightly edited for clarity)
10. How to Fix Entrepreneurship at Universities: A Modest Proposal
- Start by assuming most entrepreneurship programming is ornamental until proven otherwise.
- Stop hosting pitch competitions.
- Replace bullshit events with genuine resources.
- Direct, no-strings-attached grants for students building projects (learn from Emergent Ventures).
- Don’t focus on output or even the idea itself. Focus on accelerating the rate of progress, learning, and growth of students. That’s the only thing that matters in the long run.
- Tools, servers, API credits, GPU clusters, lab equipment, motors, hardware, and 24-hour labs. Make it easy for people to play around and build what they want to build, not what you approve or think is worth doing.
- Hire only one administrator whose only job is to approve purchase orders faster than Amazon Prime.
- Bring inspiring alumni speakers, who have succeeded spectacularly and failed tremendously, who can give genuinely motivating talks, not generic business advice. Inspiration all the way through. If you’re not slightly uncomfortable by who you’re bringing, you’re not bringing the right people.
- Direct, no-strings-attached grants for students building projects (learn from Emergent Ventures).
- Remember that entrepreneurship can’t be taught.
- Everything else is confetti.
A note on arrogance for staff.
I have noticed staff tend to dislike arrogant students. That’s normal. Most people don’t like arrogance. But your job isn’t to like anybody, it’s to help students achieve what they want to achieve.
This should be engraved on your mind. If you see an arrogant person, he or she will likely go far because belief comes before ability. The kid kissing your ass won’t. You might prefer the polite one, and the arrogant one might be a pain in the ass, but your job is to help the pain in the asses. They’re usually the ones who try something difficult and will attempt the impossible.
I was too naive to realize this for a long time, but there is a real tension between confidence and persuasion. People don't like certainty because no one enjoys feeling cornered. You can be completely right and still lose the room.
America's Machiavelli with charm, Benjamin Franklin, figured this out early. In his youth, he was a ferocious debater and he slowly realized it was making people resistant rather than convinced. So he changed how he spoke. He dropped words like "certainly" and "undoubtedly" and replaced them with "it appears to me," "I imagine it to be so," "if I am not mistaken." Not because he was less sure of himself, but because he understood that the point of conversation is to actually move people, not to defeat them. He became one of the most persuasive men in American history.
The arrogance I described above is fine, necessary, even. But learn to carry it quietly. Read The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. It will teach you more about how to communicate and persuade than anything else on the subject.
11. What Do You Know That Older People Don’t?
A few years ago, I was at a party in Miami Beach filled with investors, entrepreneurs, and people who worked with or had been backed by Founders Fund, the venture capital firm started by Peter Thiel. The collective net worth at that party was more than that of most countries, with all the big names behind the apps and companies we use every day. And depending on when you read this, maybe even future presidents or cabinet members of the government.
Thiel is famous for asking this question: What important truth do you know that most people disagree with you?
It’s his way of filtering for people who see the world differently and are willing to bet on it. As an investor, he isn’t just looking for good ideas. He’s looking for contrarian insights that, if right, could change the world.
That night, Mike Solana, Vice President at Founders Fund, kept asking me a slightly different version: What do you know that older people don’t? What’s obvious to you that your parents’ generation doesn’t get?
I knew that if I ran into anyone from Founders Fund, I’d be asked something like that. Still, even knowing it was coming, I didn’t have a good answer at the moment. It took hours and days for something interesting to come to mind.
That question stayed with me. Our greatest insights, or perhaps our most original contributions, are often hiding inside seemingly obvious questions like that.
Sometimes the answer is simple. Like the fact that kids are using certain apps to communicate, and most adults haven’t even heard of them. Those gaps in awareness can turn into opportunities if you pay attention, whether in business, science, or anywhere else.
Older people might know yesterday inside out, but young people—you, right now—can see tomorrow more clearly because you can notice tomorrow’s habits before they become obvious.
Your understanding of young people makes you valuable. You can use this to help businesses or investors like Cory Levy once did, or you can use it to create companies and solve problems that older generations overlook.
Trust your judgment. Use the newest tools. Chase the ideas that feel obvious to you.
12. What Businesses Can You Start in College?
Learn from Carmen Rossi.
His masterclass on becoming a successful college entrepreneur is one of the best resources you’ll ever find.
Watch the masterclass here.
I have personally watched it over ten times, and every time I learn something new.
If you’d like a preview, read Carmen Rossi’s profile on Jailbroken People.
13. Problems, problems, problems
“The value of a company is the sum of all problems solved.”
—Martin Lorentzon, co-founder of Spotify
That’s the whole point of starting a company, and that’s what you’ll be doing all day, every day.
It doesn’t get simpler than that.
14. Your Real Advantage at Any College Campus
A college campus has students, and those students are your potential customers.
For example, UIUC has over 50,000 people.
That’s amazing. Why? Because that’s 50,000 potential customers, and if you’re creating a business or a project, that’s 50,000 people who might buy your product or use your website.
Take advantage of that.
That’s one of the reasons I loved UIUC so much.
Remember, Zuckerberg started Facebook exclusively at Harvard, and once it grew, he expanded it.
You can take Zuckerberg’s strategy and start UIUC-only projects, and when they grow, start expanding to other places and take over the world (wink, wink).
One good way to reach those 50,000 people is through Reddit. The UIUC Reddit is great. Use it to promote your projects, understand what people are like, what they need, and what they want. Ask questions, shitpost, and don’t take it too seriously.
If you need more ideas to reach people, read How To Actually Get People To Care About Your Event, Project, Startup, Party, or RSO (at UIUC or wherever you are).
If you want to create a company in the future, take the time to truly understand the people around you, including their needs, desires, fears, and aspirations. Not only will they be your future customers, but you might also get ideas about how you can solve their problems, and thus, create a successful company.
The appendix keeps the examples, guides, profiles, and source trails close. The book gives them sequence, context, and a way to turn curiosity into action.