The man who financed Facebook is offering 20 two-year $100,000 fellowships to teenagers with big ideas - as long as they leave university. Jon Marcus reports
Before he was 21, Peter Thiel was a ranked chess master and founded the Stanford Review, a libertarian newspaper at Stanford University, which he attended.
Now a billionaire venture capitalist and hedge fund manager with a sometimes controversial reputation for pushing unconventional ideas, Thiel is betting that others also can succeed at a young age - and don't need a university education to do it.
The San Francisco-based founder of PayPal and co-founder of Facebook is offering two-year fellowships of up to $100,000 (£63,800) to 20 entrepreneurs or teams of entrepreneurs aged under 20 in a worldwide competition that closes this week.
With the money, the recipients are expected to drop out of university - Thiel calls it "stopping out" - and work full time on their ideas.
"Some of the world's most transformational technologies were created by people who stopped out of school because they had ideas that couldn't wait until graduation," Thiel says. "This fellowship will encourage the most brilliant and promising young people not to wait on their ideas either."
Thiel says the huge cost of higher education, and the resulting burden of debt, makes students less willing to take risks. "And we think you're going to have to take a lot of risks to build the next generation of companies."
But his plan also clearly challenges the ability of conventional universities to foster innovation. "I do think there are a lot of things people learn in school," Thiel says wryly. "I don't think they learn anything much about entrepreneurship."
Thiel, 43, who was born in Germany, is best known as Facebook's first outside financial backer, fronting the company $500,000 and allegedly playing a role in the divisive infighting that ousted some of the original founders. He is portrayed briefly but harshly in the recent film about Facebook, The Social Network.
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All of the would be Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerbergs step right up!!
No good idea too small!
I don't have too much of a porblem with this as sometimes, hands on is the best way to learn but by doing this, there IS NO GUARANTEE that you will be financial set after doing this...but I suppose that is the RISK one must take!
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