Tag Archives | Entrepreneurship

Peter Thiel Will Pay You $100,000 To Drop Out Of College (If You Have An Idea He Likes)

By on June 8, 2012 in News 0

Considering student loan debt is now a trillion-dollar industry, maybe this PayPal co-founder is on to something. Via 60 Minutes:

One of the wealthiest, best-educated American entrepreneurs, Peter Thiel, isn’t convinced college is worth the cost. With only half of recent U.S. college graduates in full-time jobs, and student loans now at $1 trillion, Thiel has come up with his own small-scale solution: pay a couple dozen of the nation’s most promising students $100,000 to walk away from college and pursue their passions. Morley Safer takes a look at Thiel’s critique of college.

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Why Can’t Real Life Be More Like Double Dragon?

By on May 3, 2012 in News 6

Double Dragon“People get really tired of having all the tough villains front-loaded against them and resent getting short changed on play time because some fat mouth-breather’s hogging it all with a stack of quarters that could knock out a Clydesdale. If that’s all on offer, can you blame folks for staying home?”

Games are the repositories of our culture’s most primal values. As ostensible objects of complete fancy, they (can) deftly sidestep at will many of the extraneous ambiguities that force us to compromise our deepest values and thus help give clearest expression to our highest ideals.

For starters, game consequences are not so final or existential as they are in real life. You’re typically given at least 3 initial ‘lives’ to perform strategy experiments and become comfortable with play options before you’re fatally croaked. And even then you’re usually offered the option to restart the game. You have an opportunity to weigh options with some level of maturity and develop a play style that suits you personally.… Read the rest

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The Need For State-Based Innovation

By on February 8, 2012 in News 6

onegoodthingleadstoanotherPoliticians and pundits constantly call for the government to step out of the way and let entrepreneurs and “job creators” build the industries of the future. New Left Project argues that this current conventional wisdom is all wrong, and more often than not, game-changing innovation is funded by the government, not the private sector:

The current debate, in the UK and abroad, on the need to cut back the state in order to unleash the power of entrepreneurship and innovation in the private sector, builds upon a stark contrast that is repeatedly drawn by the media, business and libertarian politicians: a dynamic, creative competitive private sector versus a sluggish, bureaucratic, inert, `meddling’ public sector.

It is assumed that the private sector is inherently more innovative, more able to think out of the `box’ and to lead a country towards long-run innovation-led growth. But many examples in the history of innovation, entrepreneurship and competition, in different sectors and across different countries, paint a very different picture – of a risk taking innovative state – especially in the most uncertain phases of technological development and/or in the most risky sectors – versus a more inert private sector, which only invests (in innovation, in new start- ups, in networks) once the state has absorbed most of the uncertainty.

… Read the rest

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Can You Get Paid $100,000 To Not Go to College?

By on June 4, 2011 in News 6

School's OutNadine Bells writes on Yahoo News:

It sounds like a teenager’s dream and a parent’s nightmare. Peter Thiel, PayPal’s co-founder, is paying 24 college-aged students $100,000 to just say no — to college.

For two years, winners of the 20 Under 20 Thiel Fellowship have focused on developing business ideas instead of heading to class.

The fellows will work in Silicon Valley with a network of more than 100 mentors where they “will pursue innovative scientific and technical projects, learn entrepreneurship and begin to build the technology companies of tomorrow,” the press release states.

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