[markonthewall]

>The success of many companies, and probably all of the unicorns, has nothing to do with technology.

Most of the unicorns are founded with engineering talent coming straight from Stanford, MIT, Harvard, UCB, Waterloo etc. you name it.

Making a company successful is as much about economics of scale than raw engineering and of course, both are closely related in this day and age. Engineering shapes what and how your products feels like in real-time (= understand very short code-to-production lifecycle).

It might not be politically correct to say but I am not here to make you feel better. Anyone who has actually been in a team at a company that has exponentially grown will tell you the same: your chances to ever survive that "first wave" of users is directly proportional to your ability to hire the best, which of course is a lot easier when they are your current or former classmates.

That's not to say there aren't companies founded by people not going to the schools mentioned above or that engineering talent is only available at these places. It is obviously not the case.

However, the density of talent at top-schools is absurdly high. And this is a game changer for most early stage companies and even more so for soon-to-be-unicorns.

[wangchow]

Probably why a lot of professors say that University is often about networking opportunities just as much as it is about learning.

But aside from knowing talented people, it takes visionaries to generate fantastic outcomes. Walt Disney for example stopped drawing cartoons himself early on because he had better artists around him. However, he had the vision that ultimately brought the best out of each artist.