Ask HN: Where to find founders in their early 20s? I'm 20. Last year I launched a fairly successful SAAS startup. I recently dropped out to work on it full time and moved to NYC. I have friends here but they're all in college and I'd really like to meet people who went down the same path as me in life. How can I meet other people like me? |
BTW, did you consider applying to YC? You don’t have to move permanently to SF to join.
I considered YC but I ended up not needing funding and just bootstrapped it
Wealthy parents mean that their kids are more likely to be able to do risky things like doing startups, and their connections allow the kids to get funding that is otherwise unavailable. And so there's a real temptation for the kids to do something risky, as they know they can get bailed out if they fail too hard. So the question then: How to keep them in school?
A degree provides its own sort of security, which any parent would want for their kids. A naive way would be to just cut off the kids if they fail at some risky scheme to make money; But I doubt many people would be able to do that, it's just too cruel. Then, incentives don't work very well, as the kids already come from money, and there's few other incentives to offer, since money simultaneously provides security and makes life generally easier. Punishment also comes to mind, but again the problem with the parents enforcing that sort of thing. I'm honestly stumped.
Then, if it's hard(er) to keep kids of wealthy people in school, does that mean that that process results in a generation of people that have inherited wealth and that are poorly educated? Does wealth naturally lead to people that have trouble with advanced topics and concepts, because their education is lacking? That paints a pretty grim picture of the future, since wealth controls so much of many people's lives, and having the poorly educated as part of the de-facto ruling class is generally bad for everyone involved (even them).
Do you really want to restrict yourself to meeting people in their 20s ? If you expand your horizon a bit, plenty of exciting founders in their 30s,40s or even 50s .
Maybe the institutions near you do the same, I am sure your input would be invaluable there and also the (future) founders would be right in your age range.
You can try milling about various startup accelerators, I guess. You might find a few who did what you did, and they tend to have a younger crowd.
> Then, if it's hard(er) to keep kids of wealthy people in school, does that mean that that process results in a generation of people that have inherited wealth and that are poorly educated?
Students with poor parents are still several times more likely to drop out (https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/pdf/Indicator_COJ/coe_coj_2...). I'm sure very very few dropouts did it to chase an opportunity (I haven't met anyone who did what I did). They did it because they couldn't handle the schoolwork or couldn't afford college anymore.
OP notwithstanding, congrats saas_man. But yeah, most rich people would stick it out to get the bachelor's unless their startup was doing really well.