Juan David Campolargo

Scott Banister

You’ve probably never heard of Scott Banister, and that’s exactly how he likes it.

He keeps a very low profile: no social media, no conferences, and barely any public appearances.

Yet Scott is quietly behind some of the most transformative tech companies of our generation, investing early in companies like SpaceX, Uber, Facebook, and DeepMind, just to name a few. He’s the type of investor that Silicon Valley insiders deeply respect, even if the public barely knows him

Scott’s entrepreneurial journey began at UIUC.

Initially, he planned on becoming a computer science professor.

But during his sophomore year, he became restless with traditional education and started treating college like a system he could hack.

At one point, he started a small company, hired himself as an intern, and managed to grant himself college credit.

Soon after, he dropped out to fully focus on building businesses.

He went on to start a number of companies such as the email-security company IronPort, which Cisco acquired for $830 million.

Today, Scott and his wife Cyan Banister (a renowned angel investor herself) have invested in over 100 startups, earning a reputation as one of Silicon Valley’s sharpest early-stage scouts.

College is Just Another System to Hack

Hailing from Missouri, Banister took to technology early. In high school, and then college, he kindled a passion for creating websites and came to UIUC because of its exceptional reputation in computer science...

Banister also chafed against the confines of traditional education, and he began to treat college as a target to hack. He devised workarounds to UIUC rules, including an audacious scheme in which he created a company, hired himself as an intern, then used the internship to earn course credit.

—Jimmy Soni, The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley

I just love this story. It’s just so obvious, if you aren’t afraid.

There are so many clever things like this you can do, but most people never try. Why? Because they assume the rules are fixed.

But... they’re not.

Get creative and do whatever you want to do.

Everyone's Vocation is Business

Self-educated serial entrepreneur Scott Banister, who sold his IronPort Web security appliance company to Cisco in 2007 for $830 million, is a living example of focusing on outcome instead of output. Scott was studying at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the late nineties, with the intention of becoming a professor of computer science. On the side of his studies, he began teaching himself HTML (hypertext markup language). He soon applied for and got a job as a webmaster, and then started various Web companies, including a banner ad company with college buddy Max Levchin (who later went on to cofound PayPal).

"We tell kids school is important, and most kids, including myself, believe that, and keep going further and further into formal education, with the attitude that 'this is what's important in the world.'

"Well, the problem with that is that that's just a cliff that just ends at some point. It's like 'Do well in school! Do well in school! Do well in school!' And then, once you're out, you realize: oops, actually, this is not how the world works, you don't earn any money directly from doing well in school, and you can't even support yourself! It's a road that might go somewhere, but it might not. For a lot of people, that's a really disappointing thing. They dutifully go through the process, and they finish high school, and they go to college, and they finish college, and they're like, 'Great, where's my red carpet to financial security!'

"That's just not how the world works. I found quickly that, by day, I was going to class, learning a bunch of abstract, theoretical stuff, whereas by night, I was working on a business. I could see that business is how things actually get done in the world, and how people make money in the world: you build stuff, things that consumers want." See how Scott is focusing on contribution and outcome here, rather than on entitlement and output? This is pure entrepreneurial mind-set at work.

"I realized that was how I would achieve my goals—through business. For a while, I kept those goals going simultaneously—I was like, 'Oh, I have this set of goals around going to school, which I was ingrained with as a child, and then I have these goals related to creating new products and businesses.' But very quickly it became clear, business is where I'm learning all the real skills that are going to help me for the rest of my life. And this stuff in class, I didn't even know when it is going to help me or anyone else, ever. I realized, getting involved with business sooner rather than later, as opposed to being off in this education bubble, which is very different from the way the work world works, was incredibly important for me.

"There's this really weird notion out there. All the way up through college, we assume we're learning a vocation, separate from business, such as being a doctor, or a lawyer, or an engineer, or a nurse, or a computer programmer. And then, alongside all these vocations, there's this other vocation over here called 'business.' And that's for some small number of people, who go learn about 'business.' And the rest of us will become doctors, lawyers, engineers, nurses, computer programmers. The reality is, no matter what vocation you're in, you end up working for a business of one kind or another. Thus, everyone's vocation is business. No matter what you're doing, your vocation is business. The more you can understand the machinery that you're working in, the better off you're going to be.”

—Michael Ellsberg, The Education of Millionaires: It's Not What You Think and It's Not Too Late

Achieve your goals through business because your “vocation is business.”

Learn more

Front cover for The Jailbroken Guide to the University
Use the appendixThe back of the book is part of the book.

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.