Billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel has offered to pay $100,000 annually since 2010 to about 20 students who drop out of school “to start businesses or nonprofits,” Wall Street said.・Journal reported. His program currently supports 271 people, and he says there are “more applicants than ever before” this year.
So, how are you doing?
Those who have achieved great success include Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of the blockchain network Ethereum. Laura Deming, a leading figure in venture investing in aging and longevity. Austin Russell runs self-driving technology company Luminar Technologies. and Paul Gu, co-founder of consumer finance company Upstart…
Thiel and fellow Fellowship leaders acknowledge they learned some painful lessons along the way. For example, some applicants pursued ambitious ideas that turned out to be unrealistic. “Asteroid mining is great for press releases, but maybe we should have postponed it earlier,” he says. Some were better at applying for Thiel Fellowships than starting their own businesses…They also learned that lone geniuses with great ideas are usually not the kind of people who can build organizations. “Getting something off the ground and developing it is a team sport. You can't just be a crazy genius. You need some social skills and emotional intelligence,” he said in the organization's early days. says Michael Gibson, leader and co-owner. Founder of a venture fund that primarily invests in people without degrees…
Thiel is not trying to build a better education system, which program officials acknowledge makes it difficult for the program to develop talent… He said he had not received any of the above and had limited contact with Thiel. However, access to Thiel's network of former fellows may be helpful. “Meeting other members makes you think bigger,” says Thiel, chief executive of Ocean Cleanup, a Netherlands-based nonprofit that develops technology to remove plastic from the ocean, and 2016 Thiel Research Fellow. says Boyan Slat. Surratt said he spoke to Thiel “three or four times.”
As a result, Thiel and other staff members concluded that the organization could not grow beyond the 20 or so young people selected as Fellows each year. “If you expand the program, you're going to have more people who aren't ready, and you have to have a lot of confidence that you can develop them,” Thiel says. About a quarter of Thiel's fellows eventually returned to the university to earn their degrees. This suggests that even dropouts see higher education as having lasting value.
Thiel said he “went back and made more money” after starting his business.
“The other 75 percent didn't need a college degree,” he says.
