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Silly me. A good job is definitely important. However the majority of people we know that OWN their own companies are not graduates of Ivies.
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If you want to talk about entrepreneurship, there is a boatload of academic literature that specifically details the nexus between certain 'gateway' schools (i.e. Stanford, Harvard, MIT) and entrepreneurship. Facebook, for example, was founded by 3 roommates at Harvard. Google was founded by 2 Stanford students who were assigned to work on the same research project. Harmonix (developer of Guitar Hero) was founded by 2 guys who met at MIT.
Granted, Stanford and MIT obviously aren't Ivies, but the general point stands. It has been proven time and time again that certain schools strongly foster entrepreneurship and new business creation.
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Those people like to hire smart people, possibly from top tier schools, but that doesn't mean those people have a clue what to do when they get hired. Everyone must get trained.
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Well, I don't know, does everybody need to get trained? Most of the early employees of Facebook were Harvard buddies of the founders. Exactly what training did those early employees? In fact, in the early days of Facebook, it was hard to find anybody at the company who was even old enough to buy alcohol. Similarly, most of the early employees at Google were Stanford pals of Sergey and Larry. Again, who trained them?
Look, the fact of the matter is that when a company is first started, especially a high-tech startup, you don't really go out to hire the truly 'smartest people' per se. Frankly, you don't even have the time or resources to think about that. What you
really end up doing is hiring your friends because that's who you know. After all, if nothing else, at least you know you can get along with your friends. Ever work with somebody that you know is smart, but that people in the office personally hate? I have (at a large company). Trust me, it sucks. It drains productivity at a large company. In a startup, it will probably kill the company, because startups don't have margin for error. Hence, if nothing else, at least you know you don't hate your friends.
And, the fact is, college is an excellent opportunity to meet new friends who will be going places. I still keep in touch with my old roommate, including one who is a millionaire from his high-tech startup that he founded. That's the advantage of social networks. Surely we've all heard the phrase 'It's not what you know, it's
who you know'.