Even though I'm sure just about everyone here on HN will somewhat agree with the gist of the slides (startups are fun!), I'm not sure if this is good advice for students. I'm 27 and just now finishing up my undergraduate degree (at a top 10 US university) as I took several years doing various startup stuff and working. Most of my friends have already been done with their degrees for a while -- a very small minority work in start-ups. The start-up world is NOT for most people. To be successful (which I am not, don't get me wrong) you have to be very smart and technical, but you also need luck, good timing, and (most importantly) persistence.
In many ways, the start-up world is like professional body-building. Sure genes can help (genius prodigy 16 year old goes to MIT), but what really makes you a winner is persistence. Also, steroids can't hurt (connections in the Valley).
Most college students are NOT fit for the start-up world. At all. Especially considering CS departments have taken a dive since the late 90s.
> To be successful (which I am not, don't get me wrong) you have to be very smart and technical, but you also need luck, good timing, and (most importantly) persistence.
Do you mean that you need these things be a cofounder in a successful startup? If so, I'd agree.
If you mean to define everyone's personal success on these terms, though, then I beg to differ. Zach's slides clearly state that the startup world is for him. Slide 27 ("You'll be filthy rich"--crossed out) even sets the tone that it's not something you do for the money.
There's a world of difference between various types of startups. Each will deliver different employee experiences. Consider whether the company is bootstrapped or VC-funded (even within VC-funded startups, is it Series A, B, or C?). Being employee (developer) #1, #5, #10 or #25 are all likely to be very different as well. Oh and of course, is the company already profitable or not?
> you have to be very smart and technical
This talk was given at Carnegie Mellon--I'm willing to bet the people graduating are both smart and technical.
> but you also need luck, good timing, and (most importantly) persistence.
I'm not sure why someone following his advice would need luck, timing and persistence. My interpretation of this talk is that he's encouraging people to work for startups, not found them. Github launched in 2008 and Holman joined in 2010. Github was operated profitably since the founders started the company [1]. As far as salary goes, Zach was probably looking at a comfortable--not handsome--but consistent salary.
I think you make fair points and I don't have any strong disagreements. And it's true that I may have extrapolated "working for a start-up" to "founding a start-up."
However, I really do think that places like Github aren't dime a dozen and even calling Github a start-up (at this point, or even in 2010) would be somewhat of a misnomer. Working for a start-up seems to be defined by "wearing many hats" as the presentation states. The "wearing many hats" phase generally only occurs in the early phases of a start-up. That's where my extrapolation stems from.
And don't forget that many start-ups go under (again, we're talking about actual start-ups here, not Github in 2013). This was briefly mentioned in the presentation. But again, I don't think most college grads are resilient enough to handle that. I guess I just have a very serious problem with the romanticization of start-up culture -- it's a jungle out there.
Those concerns are valid, but I disagree with you about college grads lacking that resilience. By your own admission you've been through some start ups. Could you handle it? What does it mean to not be able to handle it?
I think this touches on the core of the talk--people are afraid to jump into the startup world because they don't think they can handle it. It sounds like he's saying it's not that bad. Your company may fail, yes...but then you just get out there and find a new company to work for.
Zach Holman was Github employee number 9 [1]. I'd say they were a startup at that time. His perspective is obviously colored by their success, but they only sought funding 2 years later. Still, the definition of 'startup' is indeed vague, and PG wrote an essay on it [2]. I interpret PG's definition--a company designed to scale fast--to mean that so long as a company is growing by a multiplicative factor, it's still a startup.
In many ways, the start-up world is like professional body-building. Sure genes can help (genius prodigy 16 year old goes to MIT), but what really makes you a winner is persistence. Also, steroids can't hurt (connections in the Valley).
Most college students are NOT fit for the start-up world. At all. Especially considering CS departments have taken a dive since the late 90s.