Fundamentally, what he nails is the recruitment question.
People make decisions based on their sense of what is possible. We hang out on HN and join things like YC to be surrounded by people who reinforce the possibility of our big crazy dreams.
College career offices are the single most antiquarian institution on college campuses, and the institution most letting a generation of people into the embrace of the only external groups who are willing to pay for the privilege to be there.
Still, there is massive movement against this tide. Teach for America is outrecruiting these firms at many of the best schools - which demonstrates the opportunity for alternative organizations and just generally alternative thinking.
But most schools are not Stanford, and most students don't think in terms of startups yet. Finding ways to spread an entrepreneurial culture on campus and connect it to the broader movement towards a new shape of the American business landscape has huge potential to shift what is at the root of this story.
People make decisions based on their sense of what is possible. We hang out on HN and join things like YC to be surrounded by people who reinforce the possibility of our big crazy dreams.
College career offices are the single most antiquarian institution on college campuses, and the institution most letting a generation of people into the embrace of the only external groups who are willing to pay for the privilege to be there.
Still, there is massive movement against this tide. Teach for America is outrecruiting these firms at many of the best schools - which demonstrates the opportunity for alternative organizations and just generally alternative thinking.
But most schools are not Stanford, and most students don't think in terms of startups yet. Finding ways to spread an entrepreneurial culture on campus and connect it to the broader movement towards a new shape of the American business landscape has huge potential to shift what is at the root of this story.