Frowning takes 68 muscles.
Smiling takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.
Posted on 10/13/2010 11:39:06 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Meg Whitman may have a plan for education in California but if high schoolers could vote in the upcoming election odds are their money would be on PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel.
That's because the 42-year-old billionaire is putting his money on 20 kids who promise to quit school to pursue their dreams.
Thiel calls it his "stopping out of school" program because he believes higher education properly trains would-be dreamers for entrepreneurial success. At the ripe old age of 31, Thiel sold PayPal to Whitman's eBay for $1.5 billion and he later invested in Facebook when people were still on Friendster.
The odd thing is, Thiel is not a high school dropout or even a college dropout. Hell he isn't even a grad school dropout. He has a B.A. in Philosophy from Stanford, where he also earned his J.D.
He was once a teacher at the Stanford Law School as well, which may have given him some insight into the system. Regardless Thiel is offering 20 students, under 20-years-old, up to $100,000 to drop out of school, or at least put education on hold, to work on their business ideas.
Not gonna lie, if even one of these guys works out, he’s looking at OODLES of cash as an angel investor.
That is one hell of an opportunity for those kids. Plenty of capital, free expert advice, the near-certainty that your main backer is not going to betray you...
Well.. if we’re talking public schools...
While I appreciate what he is doing, just about any business idea would benefit from strong financial backing unless one was trying to sell ice cubes to Eskimos.
That said, the problem is not enough small business and entrepreneurial support in this country.
If he believes highter education properly trains these kids, why is he paying them to drop out of school?
Because he’s evil?
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