[edw519]

The simplest test of whether or not you should drop out is this one: If you have to ask someone if you should then you shouldn't.

I think I have a simpler test: Do you have a customer?

Of all the things that you need to do to start a successful business, I think that getting someone to pay you for your work is the hardest. Deceptively hard.

I've seen it all too often: Good technical skills. Check. Good design skills. Check. Work well together. Check. Building cool stuff. Check. Have passion and in the groove. Check. Sell something. Oh shit.

Let's not overlook the single biggest common thread to all those successful startups founded by college dropouts: they already had huge demand, often accompanied by people with checkbooks.

Don't forget the story of Bill Gates' parents telling him that if he dropped out of Harvard, he was on his own. By this point Micro-soft already had several $100K CDs in the bank and he said, "I don't think that'll be a problem."

That would be about the only way I would want to do it.

[johnohara]

Don't forget the story of Bill Gates' parents telling him that if he dropped out of Harvard, he was on his own.

It didn't hurt that his mother was on The United Way's National Executive Committee along with then IBM Chairman John Opel.

I'm from Chicago, "the city that works," and that IS how it works.

[acqq]

http://articles.latimes.com/1994-06-11/news/mn-2837_1_mary-g...

"In 1980, she discussed with then-IBM Corp. Chairman John Opel, who was also on the United Way committee, the business IBM was doing with Microsoft. Opel, some accounts say, knew little about the venture, but mentioned Mary Gates to IBM executives who introduced Microsoft at a meeting of IBM's top-level management committee a few weeks later. IBM contracted with Microsoft, then a small firm specializing in computer languages, to create an operating system for its first personal computer."

[brudgers]

>"I think I have a simpler test: Do you have a customer?"

Hopefully, a person's optimism and lack of experience still allows them to distinguish between actual customers and possible customers [Hint: until money changes hands a person is not a customer].

One thing which struck me after reading the article was the difference between today's typical customers and those of Jacques' younger days.

Although today's base of potential customers is much bigger due to the expansion of computing devices into the consumer market segments, their expectations about software costs approach $0.00.

Conversely, back in the day, the smaller market expected to pay real commercial money for software - i.e. one typical customer could sustain a person for a year whereas today one customer won't even get you fries off the $0.99 menu after the app store takes their cut.

[matwood]

I agree with you. Students have more disposable time than any other segment of the population except the unemployed/out of school. If a person in school cannot build and sell something while still in school, then dropping out isn't likely to help.

Getting an MVP build and finding those first critical customers (if they even exist) should be perfectly feasible while still going to class.

[nostrademons]

Time is rarely the limiting resource for a startup - attention is. Students (at least ones who want to somewhat keep up with their schoolwork) do not have more disposable attention than most working people. As a student, you need to balance your attention between 4-5 different courses, all of which have their own deadlines and assignments and new concepts to learn, and you'll probably be distracted by parties and girls and campus events and a social life. As an entry-level worker, you will probably be given a well-defined task to do and can focus on it, and once you go home, you don't need to worry about it.

I found it much easier to launch side projects once I got out of school, because I could leave my work at work and didn't really care about it anyway. I don't think I reached a level of distractedness equal to my college career until I made senior engineer (and hence have everyone asking me for advice) and started dating, 5 years later.

[usaar333]

I'm really not sure if that is true for those in technical majors like comp sci. While I've never had a full time job working for someone else, I definitely had more free time during summer internships (40 hour workweek) than while in school. YMMV.

[webwright]

This.

Passing college is cake. It requires very few hours of time compared to a real job-- it's a GREAT time to spin up a side business to see if you can generate/find demand for what you have. It's also a great time to experiment with co-founders.

That said, necessity is the motherhood of invention and failure isn't going to sting THAT much. It's not terribly challenging to un-drop-out of college is it?

Finally, I suppose if someone is racking up debt and getting an art history or philosophy degree, you should advise them to drop out immediately whether they have a business idea or not. The common thread I see here ( http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/ ) is student loan debt.

[hessenwolf]

Ha ha. That really depends on your Uni. I remember severe health problems due to the amount of study in my undergraduate.

[contravert]

I would have to agree. When I was working as a full-time developer (for internships), it felt like I had all the time in the world compared to homework and studying.

[webwright]

I think folks are missing my point. If you're considering dropping out, I think you can lower your class-load to the minimum, be willing to get barely-passing grades, and test out whether you really have an interesting opportunity before you take the plunge.

School CAN be a really free time. You live in a tiny room, Have access to a cafeteria, have a 0-5min commute to work, and are surrounded by an army of peers who are segmented by interest (field of study). As evidenced by the number of startups that started in college dorm rooms, it's a great place to start a company.

[hessenwolf]

Again... wtf university did you go to? Slackers U?

[xibernetik]

This depends on your degree, university, and year of study. 30 hours/week of class is pretty normal in my program, and I've seen schedules with 40 hours/week. The rule of thumb thrown around is 1 hour in class == 1 hour studying on your own: 60 hours/week. There are definitely design project classes which eat up a disproportionate amount of time on top of that, so that's pretty conservative for some years.

Funnily enough, the time that I have to experiment with side project is during the summer months when I have a full-time job.

[dlo]

There was a course back in college that alone required 30 hours per week. And it was only the third most difficult course or so in the program, which was computer science.

[WalterBright]

At Caltech, the usual rule was 2 hours of study per hour of class. Sometimes it was a lot more than that :-)

[lurker17]

That story is not true at all. Bill Gates's mother set him up with IBM years after he dropped out. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Mary_Maxwell_...

[maximusprime]

> I think that getting someone to pay you for your work is the hardest. Deceptively hard.

Agree. That's why I think people aiming to make money from software should look more to advertising income. Much easier IMHO ;) Anyone can make a good income with a little effort.

I dropped out of uni after a year, with no idea what I was going to do. I dread to think what I'd be doing if I'd stayed. Probably some corporate drone at a bank.