> But what do these companies do? Can we get some specifics? Other than "Upstart", no mention is given of any of the companies. If you go to the Thiel Fellowship website, there is no list of startups founded by these fellows. They do have a list of present and past fellows, but the profile pages mostly link to either the fellows' personal websites (not company websites), or dead links. Without any concrete evidence of these companies even existing, or doing anything useful (instead of just talking about what they're "going to do", or name-dropping all the investors they've attracted), this all sounds like a bunch of hot air. Not to be cynical, and I wish all these people success, but so far they haven't demonstrated that they've actually done anything.
The entire Thiel fellow program is an exercise in finding out which baby can stand up the fastest and projecting that being the first to stand up somehow makes one a genius.
It's little different from child beauty pageants and dog shows.
I'm a Thiel fellow without much public info listed about my project. I'm not even listed in the grand list comment here.
My work isn't widely publicized because I simply don't feel the need at this stage. The community I'm working with doesn't read the tech press and I don't feel comfortable broadcasting my not-ready-for-primetime work. I don't particularly care to be famous; to be honest, the whole CNBC documentary irritated me.
Actually that's only part of the story. Another part of the story is that the project I'm working on is in a space that is a bit slow moving and requires quite a bit of learning on my part. I'm spending more than a little time exploring its nuances. It takes time to get a product to market in biomedical spaces because I have to validate it scientifically. At this stage, when I make progress, I make a note of it in my journal and smile.
And yet another part of the story is that the fellowship helps put me in a position to work somewhat quietly. You won't hear stories of my project raising a round yet, because there isn't a need right now, given $50K a year. I have sufficient connections in the life science and medical communities that I don't find myself angling for more attention.
That said, I don't operate in super-stealth mode. I'm happy to tell curious folks what I'm working on (just email me, see my profile). So, there's your open invitation, ask away.
I'd say most of the projects aren't known about (in beta, not startups, not publicised or not launched) at this point, some will fail but I can see quite a few big tech companies springing up from that batch.
I believe they said today that fellows have raised $34M+ in funding and I know quite a few YC founders in the fellowship and I've only just scratched the surface of speaking to people.
confluence, you've been awfully negative about the fellowship and Peter Thiel thus far. However, you should be careful to not conflate the lack of readily available data on the fellows with lack of progress on their end. The fact that there isn't much press is a (very) rough indicator that the fellows are spending time working with their heads-down rather than attention-whoring.
The fellows who haven't been explicitly mentioned here aren't necessarily dormant; they simply have not bothered to garner any press.
Please tread a little more carefully next time you label something as being "little different from child beauty pageants and dog shows" -- or at the very least, do your homework so a "college dropout" doesn't have to do it for you.
While I feel like confluence is being overly snarky and cynical about the Thiel program, upon hitting the fact that you listed Andrew Hsu and Airy Labs among the list of accomplished Thiel Fellows it becomes immediately apparent that you really haven't actually done your homework.
At the risk of sounding like I'm attacking Andrew, he was just about the worst possible example for you to pick. His startup is and was notorious for imploding after being run into the ground with highly public mismanagement that involved interference from his family members. If I were someone who wanted to make a spurious argument attacking the Thiel Fellowship, he would be exhibit #1.
The rest of your post is merely a long list of people all in the process of "starting" something - but not actually having accomplished anything of particular note. It is easy to "start" a company, or a fund, or an organization. It is much harder to actually achieve anything with that. And despite what TechCrunch/other mdia may wish for you to believe, raising funding, giving talks, and winning random competitions are hardly accomplishments.
Now, I don't think the Thiel Fellowship is a bad thing. If I was younger than 20 I would very much be interested in applying for the program. The fact that most Thiel Fellows have not accomplished anything of great external significance has so much less to do with the program and the fellows themselves, and so much more to do with how damn hard it is to start a successful company / solve a big hairy problem. It's not something you do in two years. It's a process and I think the Thiel Fellowship was only ever meant as an experience in independent learning/self-starting for the fellows.
I have no doubt that every Thiel Fellow has learned a lot in his/her experience, but I think it is unwise to tout many of the people in your list as having made concrete achievements.
I'm surprised with he haven't got the usual HN comments which appear every year when this story is posted. That's a good thing, but here's my "inb4" reply for when those comments finally pop up.
Type 1. Last year there was a comment like "I don’t want to crush dreams. But these kids are being set up to fail. They cannot, and will not, live up to these expectations." Related to this are the complaints that these kids only achieved the things they've achieved prior to the programme because their parents were well-connected and helped them out, etc.
Type 2. Accusing hypocrisy on behalf of Thiel, who has two advanced degrees, and who often advocates for a return to advanced research which couldn't happen without higher education.
I think type 1 comments come from envy, even if they sound like something else. That's understandable, since many HN readers probably have similar smarts to these kids but didn't get the same opportunities in their teens. I know I felt jealous when I first heard of the Thiel program.
But - if you look at history, geniuses seem clustered around particular times and locations - ancient Athens, Renaissance Venice, Victorian London, and a few other cultural hubs. This implies that there were thousands of potential geniuses who died in rice paddies (or were killed in war, or who happened to be members of oppressed minorities, or who lived in an era when all the smartest people worked in investment banking, or whatever). It's not just that these individuals were robbed of their potential, it's also the world that was robbed of their contributions. So any attempt to mitigate that trend can only be a good thing, even if it means that some future Einsteins are still dying in rice paddies.
Part 2 is a more interesting critique. My response: I can't speak for Peter Thiel, but I don't think he believes that university shouldn't be an option. Rather, university shouldn't be the only option.
Re: the Type 2 comments, it's not just that Thiel has two degrees. It's that the first 11 (18-29) years of his career was a meticulous exercise in credentialing and path-following. He got a BA and a JD at a top school. He worked as a law clerk for a federal appellate judge. He worked at an "establishment" Wall Street law firm, followed by an "establishment" Wall Street bank. This is a path that is defined at every level by artificial hurdles (mostly test-taking), and some of the most obnoxious striverism you'll ever see. At the same time it's a path that's also relatively low risk (as long as you can put up the right numbers, your risk of failure is fairly low).
Here is the punchline: His subsequent success was the direct result of his original path-following. He didn't go off the beaten path and make his own. He "won" the path-following game he and his classmates were all playing. He founded Thiel Capital Management using money and connections he made working at Credit Suisse, and it was that money that put him in a position to invest in PayPal in 1998. He wouldn't have had that capital without working on Wall Street, and he wouldn't have gotten in the door in Wall Street without those credentials.
To be fair to Thiel, he's not really saying that everyone should do a Thiel fellowship. He's saying that "maybe it's the right thing for some people." Which is by itself undoubtedly true. Where it goes off the rails for me is when people take the message beyond that, which I think Thiel himself sometimes does.
If you just want to start a company, take a Thiel fellowship. If you want to be Peter Thiel, take that Stanford acceptance and go work on Wall Street.
If you just want to start a company, take a Thiel fellowship. If you want to be Peter Thiel, take that Stanford acceptance and go work on Wall Street.
To be fair, one has to ask "Was there a Peter Thiel-like character offering anything like a Thiel Fellowship when Peter Thiel was starting out?"
Accusing him of hypocrisy seems wrong to me. For starters, because people should be allowed to learn, grow, and change their opinions over time. And also because we have, to the best of my knowledge, no particular reason to think that Thiel had the opportunity to those this (Thiel Fellowship) type of path as a youngster.
Anyway, it's a bit early, isn't it, to pre-suppose that some Thiel Fellowship recipients won't turn out just as well as Peter Thiel himself?
How would someone who achieved success by leveraging capital and connections he got on Wall Street have been equally successful pursuing a path that would have barred him admission to that particular club? There is no other industry more steeped in credentialing than his own.
My point isn't that what Thiel did is the only way to success, or even really that Thiel is being a hypocrite (to be fair, I find nothing wrong with hypocrisy). What rubs me the wrong way is how his message relates to the power dynamic in Silicon Valley. If you've got Thiel fellow credentials, statistically your winning bet in Silicon Valley is not starting a company, but going to work at a venture capital firm, which is usually the result of careful path-following.
How would someone who achieved success by leveraging capital and connections he got on Wall Street have been equally successful pursuing a path that would have barred him admission to that particular club?
Who knows? The only possible answer to that would be utter and sheer speculation, and fairly pointless as far as I can see. But I don't see any particular reason to assume that he couldn't have been equally successful had he chosen a different route.
My point isn't that what Thiel did is the only way to success, or even really that Thiel is being a hypocrite (to be fair, I find nothing wrong with hypocrisy). My point is that Thiel is a bad messenger for the message he's conveying. A guy whose success is the product of careful path-following, and a guy who works in an industry that still clings rigidly to its credentialing tradition.
Ok, fair enough. Not sure I agree that he's a bad messenger, but I get what you're saying. Let me ask you this though: What - if anything - could Thiel do now (or around the time he launched the Thiel Fellowship initiative) that would make him a good messenger in your view?
> But I don't see any particular reason to assume that he couldn't have been equally successful had he chosen a different route.
It's sheer speculation to wonder what different thing Thiel could have done to become successful. And that gets into the "would Jobs have been as successful if he had never founded Apple?" thing, which is naval gazing.
But it's less of a shot in the dark to speculate that Thiel probably couldn't have successfully co-founded PayPal (a financial services company), without a college degree and Wall Street background. You can look at many entrepreneurs and say that they could've still founded their company if someone had given them $100k cash at age 18. I don't think Thiel is one of those people.
> What - if anything - could Thiel do now (or around the time he launched the Thiel Fellowship initiative) that would make him a good messenger in your view?
Hire people without college degrees to work at Clarium Capital.
Nah, too risky at this point. If Clarium was still putting up numbers, maybe. But I doubt Calpers or any big institution is going to throw more money at a struggling outfit hiring high school kids to head the fund.
The last public data I have on the fund was a 23 percent loss in 2010 with AUM dropping under 1 billion. My comment wasn't intended as a knock on Clarium or Thiel; I admire a lot of the man's thought process. It's just that institutional investors are extremely conservative and Ivy League/credential biased. So even highly successful funds would have a PR problem with actively seeking non-credentialed youth.
> So any attempt to mitigate that trend can only be a good thing
Yeah, that is something that remains to be seen.
This is an intervention in the lives of these students. Whether it's a good or a bad thing, for them or for society really is an open question.
Amongst the entrepreneurial community there is a lot of discussion of trying something interesting, and failing fast to learn from it. The real question is, does giving a 17 year old 100k$ help with that?
Do they need 100k$ to do something interesting? Are they at a point in their life where 100k$ the responsible amount of money to give them to experiment with? Where do they go from there? (these are not rhetorical questions, and I am not entirely convinced the answer is no)
There are also broader societal questions. There has been an impetus in the US at least that everyone should get a university degree, come hell and/or high water. That's a model that in its current incarnation is really screwing over a number of people. But I don't see that Theil's program is a solution either. He's picking people he thinks will succeed, just as much as universities are pre-selecting folks who get good marks in classes (as opposed to picking people who will be improved/edified by going through university).
Definitely interesting questions. The perspective I would add with respect to the money itself (relative to the <20yr old stage of life) is:
100K/2 years is a $50K/year salary. It's not poor, but not wealthy either. Paid out monthly, it's serves to cover my living expenses and some other costs (travel, equipment), but not too much more. No hiring, no vacation homes. It prevents starvation, which otherwise blocks progress.
The interesting thing about that money is that in preventing starvation, it changes slightly how I approach my project. Because I know I won't starve for the next year, I can be a bit more exploratory with my work, and better understand the problems I'm solving. I can try a few more things without external pressure to make tangible progress. I can even delay fundraising for a company where I'd otherwise be in "fundraise or die"-mode.
I'm not entirely sure how these benefits generalize or apply to all projects, but I'll say that in pursuing a challenging project in a medical space, they help quite a bit.
As one of this years new fellows (Who happens to be 17), I would say $100 is not something that alone is going to help me do something interesting, but is going to help a lot. A lot of people that do not know the fellows and other finalists don't realize that we have gained a lot of knowledge and experience in our fields prior to applying for the fellowship. I've had three years experience in hardware prototyping and development at MIT, and have been hacking and tinkering for a much longer time. The $100k is there to allow you to follow your dreams... both as a safety net and a way to cover personal expenses. A lot of us hope to or are in the process of receiving Angel, VC, or some other form of funding to better cover our projects.
As for whether it is a responsible thing to do, a large part of what the fellowship is is a "life accelerator", as the money is virtually "no strings attached" (Well, there are quarterly "check in" review meetings, with review forms.) There isn't a temptation to spend all the money at once as it is given in monthly payments (Though you can ask for a larger sum as long as you give a good reason.) While I suppose you aren't able to trust me due to my bias, I would say that myself and a majority of the other fellows would be "responsible" with the money we receive just on the fact that we want to succeed. I take great pride in my work, and want to fulfill the cliche of "changing the world", and I will continue trying. I think my sense of responsibility developed just like anyone else (even if the average person typically only becomes what society considers 'responsible' during/after college)... if you want to achieve something, whether it be to launch a product and start a company, get a job, buy a house, or have a family, you find a way to do it and try as hard as you can to do it. I hope that the other fellows and I are able to show that young people are able to do these things, and these "life lessons" can be learned at a much earlier age than most people think, and that we can truly change the world...with or without a piece of paper telling us what we know.
Amen. I knew through my educational life, from early on, that I was capable of more than the industrial-era training and box that the current system in the U.S. puts us through. Glad to see the open shots of the rebellion finally coming to be and wishing you the best.
I like your division into Type 1 and Type 2 criticisms. I think you're right about the fellowship demonstrating that university is another option (at least for some people).
When I asked Peter about his 20 under 20 program, here's what he told me:
"It was 20 people. It was just 20 people. You have something on the order of 6 million people a year in the U.S. who graduate from high school. If you're saying that of the top 60,000, the top 1 percent let's say, are there 20 of those 60,000 who should perhaps not go to college--that does not seem like a terribly controversial statement. That the more talented you are, the more narrow the set of choices you should make? And that if you're a really smart person, the only thing in the world you can do is to go to Harvard? That certainly is an odd state for the world to be in, even though it's surprisingly close to the state we find ourselves in today."
>...who often advocates for a return to advanced research which couldn't happen without higher education.
I'm not quite so interested in the hypocrisy part, but as a Thiel fellow working on a pretty research heavy project (in biomedical tech), the academia + industry interplay is quite interesting.
For me, the fellowship has been anything but a way to abandon academia; indeed, my project depends heavily on collaborations I maintain with folks in the academic world, not to speak of my curiosity there. Thus, while the fellowship enables me to wear an industrial hat for the present, I see it as an interaction with a slightly different facet of academia. I've temporarily put down my classes to study the translational part of science, and hopefully help move it along.
So, for me the fellowship doesn't undermine the advanced research society needs, but enables it in another way.
Ah, interesting. One thing that strikes me from reading biographies of people who lived in the past is how different the university system used to be. Of course, old universities were only for aristocratic men, but they also seemed to be a lot less industrialised than they are now.
Much more student/professor interaction (as opposed to now where a professor might lecture a classroom of a few hundred and leave all student interactions to a few overworked PhDs), more academic freedom and less need to cram for exams (even if the exams were tougher, people didn't need to beat the bell curve in the hope of a job at MckGoldmanDeloitte, freeing them to pursue knowledge for the sake of it if so inclined). I'm told Oxford and Cambridge still preserve some aspects of the old system, I don't know about other countries. The current system definitely slows down the smartest people unnecessarily, as the Thiel program has shown.
I imagine there are many more leverage points in the current education system that could enable similar improvements.
I think it's very easy to cast a blanket across all universities as being more "industrialized" and having less student-professor interaction, and I'm sure there's truth to that.
As a counter-anecdote, however--when I was at Harvard, I don't think I ever felt separated from professors. I spent a healthy amount of time interacting with professors from many disciplines, in the classroom, through research, and even casually. I found even the most respected professors accessible, and enjoyed discussions with them.
Harvard may be a special case; I'm not to judge other schools without experience. But I will say that I actually miss that climate a bit, rather than having tried to escape it.
Yeah, I think Harvard is definitely an outlier. Sounds a lot like Oxbridge. I studied at two very good, but still 'second-tier' universities (Warwick and HKUST) and it wasn't much like you describe (both those universities are known for being very over-populated, which might be a factor). At those kinds of places, maybe if you have the confidence and training to push yourself forwards, you could probably build interesting relationships with professors. Most 18-year-olds don't, though.
Median universities (in the UK, former polytechnics, in the US, community colleges) are even worse. Students there seem to be respected about as much as companies respect their minimum-wage employees. Very low tolerance for infractions (like late assignment submissions) that would be forgiven in higher-ranked places, for example. And I know some very smart people who studied at such places.
Both comments can be answered easily: This is not the end of their lives. If they fail, they have merely failed at the project that they tried. They can go off to college in four years having gained some experience and, perhaps, maturity, that will serve them well in an academic environment.
Every year the Thiel Foundation filters in 20+ amazing individuals. This year is no exception. Congratulations to the fellows that made it, I'm excited to see what they build.
Yeah, it's a non-trivial filtering process (I volunteer, and a few other people I know). One of the best parts is that those selected for the last round but not ultimately accepted get most of the benefits from the fellowship (other than the money), too.
Glad to see this continuing and always an interesting set of young adults.
That said, the web page design there is abysmal - the expanding photo captions are unreadable, the animation thing is simply obstructive, and the problem persists no matter how big you make the window.
It would have been really great , if he had backed ideas with much riguor as YC does. I think the whole fiasco is about the message not it's immediate impact. I do believe he's sending us a very important message though.
> But what do these companies do? Can we get some specifics? Other than "Upstart", no mention is given of any of the companies. If you go to the Thiel Fellowship website, there is no list of startups founded by these fellows. They do have a list of present and past fellows, but the profile pages mostly link to either the fellows' personal websites (not company websites), or dead links. Without any concrete evidence of these companies even existing, or doing anything useful (instead of just talking about what they're "going to do", or name-dropping all the investors they've attracted), this all sounds like a bunch of hot air. Not to be cynical, and I wish all these people success, but so far they haven't demonstrated that they've actually done anything.
The entire Thiel fellow program is an exercise in finding out which baby can stand up the fastest and projecting that being the first to stand up somehow makes one a genius.
It's little different from child beauty pageants and dog shows.