PETER THIEL ANNOUNCES 2013 CLASS OF “20 UNDER 20” THIEL FELLOWS

Fellowship to Host Third “Under 20 Summit” for Young Entrepreneurs in San Francisco June 1-2, 2013

SAN FRANCISCO – May 9, 2013 – Peter Thiel today introduced the 2013 class of new Thiel Fellows. The third set of young entrepreneurs to be awarded 20 Under 20 Thiel Fellowships, these fellows will pursue innovative scientific and technical projects, learn entrepreneurship from the ground up, and begin to build the innovative companies of tomorrow.

Peter Thiel said, “When we created the fellowship more than two years ago, our intention was to help a small number of creative people learn and accomplish more than they might have otherwise. To their great credit, they have exceeded our expectations, and inspired people of all ages by reminding them that qualities like intellectual curiosity, grit, and determination are more important than a degree in determining success in life.”

“As we welcome a new class of determined young people into the Thiel Fellowship community, we also celebrate the pioneering spirit of our 2011 and 2012 fellows,” said Jonathan Cain, president of the Thiel Foundation. “Over the past two years, they have launched more than thirty companies, and raised more than $34 million in outside funding, including venture investments, company sales, revenue, grants, sponsorships, and awards. They have been hiring employees, launching products, engaging with vendors and manufacturers, and advising some of the world’s most well-known technology companies. And now they’re helping the next generation of tech researchers and entrepreneurs by mentoring future cohorts of Thiel fellows.”

Over two years, each fellow receives $100,000 from the Thiel Foundation as well as mentorship from the Foundation’s network of tech entrepreneurs, investors, scientists, thought leaders, futurists, and innovators. Projects pursued by the 2013 class of fellows span numerous cutting-edge science and technology fields, including robotics, computer science, telecommunications, education, photonics, game development, cyberdefense, biotechnology, health I.T., law, neuroscience, fashion, and personal manufacturing.

Jim O’Neill, partner at Mithril Capital Management and fellowship co-founder, said, “Pessimists are correct that we still live in a world of scarcity and suffering. And optimists are correct that better science and technology can relieve these problems immensely. But contrary to both sides, nothing is inevitable. The young men and women Peter has appointed are committed to improving the quality of life for countless people through skillful execution of new ideas, and I am confident they will succeed.”

“The Thiel Fellowship has really evolved over the past two and a half years, from a small pool of idiosyncratic people willing to take a risk on our crazy idea into a robust and effective community of friends,” said Mike Gibson, the Thiel Foundation’s vice president for grants. “It’s been exciting to see how dramatically the network effects have expanded over time. The fellowship mentor network now has more than 250 experienced professionals, and the first two classes of fellows have quickly become each other’s best resources.”

“We’re also encouraging more young people to focus on entrepreneurship through our new Under 20 Summit,” said Danielle Strachman, program director of the Thiel Fellowship. “The Summit is a twice-yearly weekend-long conference where we bring together fellowship applicants, current fellows, mentors, and hundreds of young people who are excited about entrepreneurship. Since the fellowship supports just twenty people a year, the Under 20 Summits enable us to help hundreds more talented young innovators by connecting them with the knowledge and resources they need to take their ideas to the next level, no matter where they are.”

The Under 20 Summit is a semi-annual conference sponsored by the Thiel Foundation and open to young people from around the world who are passionate about entrepreneurship. The last summit, in New York City, drew more than 250 attendees from around the world. The next summit will take place in San Francisco on June 1 and 2. Attendance is by invitation only; to learn more or request an invitation please visit: http://www.thielfellowship.org/under-20-summit/

For the 2013 fellowship, the Thiel Foundation received applications from nearly every state in the U.S. and from 49 different countries. The applications represented a diverse pool of educational experiences, coming from young people in high schools, community colleges, undergraduate and graduate schools, state schools, technical schools and liberal arts colleges, students who are homeschooled or unschooled, and some who had already stopped out of college.

ABOUT THE 2013 THIEL FELLOWS:

Andrew Brackin (18, London, United Kingdom) co-founded a marketplace for designers that grew to 100,000 signups. Andrew runs Tomorrow’s Web, an event for young technologists with hundreds of attendees and major sponsors. He will be working on Bunchy, a funding platform that allows organizations to raise money from their audience on their social platforms and websites

Austin Russell (18, Newport Beach, CA) has a passion for developing innovative optoelectronic technologies for industry. His projects range from high-efficiency far-field wireless power transmission to low-cost early cancer detection systems. As a fellow, Austin will be focusing on 3D depth mapping and projection of interactive holograms through a compact laser-based module.

Christopher Walker (20, Chevy Chase, MD) is a video game designer, programmer, and artist. After leaving college to start a software company, he created a game designed to improve spatial cognition. As a Thiel Fellow, Chris will focus on developing interactive software to teach technical skills like programming, music, and mathematics.

Daniel Zulla (19, Regensburg, Germany) is a software engineer who is about to introduce a secure computing architecture used for servers and desktop computers alike.

Darren Lim (19, Singapore) came to love scientific innovation while studying in China, and remains a consumer at heart who is obsessed with cutting-edge gadgets. He is currently working on a startup to improve how we interact with technology.

Delian Asparouhov (19, Salt Lake City, UT) wants to improve health care. As a Thiel Fellow, he will work on technology to help manage disease and improve patient outcomes.

Diwank Singh Tomer (19, Palo Alto, CA) stopped out of his college in India to work on an online platform for learning to code. Aside from his love of poetry, he is an exceptional hacker and engineer who was awarded the Mozilla WebFWD fellowship for his efforts to improve learning online. He has since moved to the Bay Area to further his efforts and is currently working on a collaborative learning platform.

Gary Le (19, East Brunswick, NH) envisions a safer, cleaner, and more trustable Internet. He is working on a real-time online identity verification system for various applications in e-commerce, online communities, and collaborative consumption businesses.

James Schuler (19, Armonk, NY) started his first company when he was 12 and hasn’t stopped since. In high school he founded a health care company called Eligible and attended Y-Combinator as one of its youngest entrepreneurs. Recently, James left Eligible in order to focus on a bigger market: politics. As a Thiel Fellow, James will work to improve crowd funding in order to revolutionize the campaign finance market.

Kevin Wang (18, Vernon Hills, IL) began developing games and applications when he was 9. Since then, he has moved into entrepreneurship, applying his highly technical background to solve bigger problems. As a Thiel Fellow, he aims to simplify the world of law and open source software to end the wasteful litigation epidemic.

Laura Ball (19, Wauwatosa, WI) is researching value in neural systems. She would like to determine how information becomes important, and how important information maintains dominance over other information in order to define our conscious mind-states and behavioral responses.

Maddy Maxey (20, San Diego, CA) began interning in the fashion industry when she was 16 for companies like Tommy Hilfiger, Donna Ricco, Peter Som, and Nylon Magazine. After founding a popular fashion blog while in France and then winning a scholarship from the CFDA & Teen Vogue for her work, she started a clothing company of her own. As a Thiel Fellow, Maddy will focus on optimizing the clothing patterns and the enterprise software that make our current garment industry inefficient. Her goal is to make domestic production profitable by integrating software, not just hardware technologies, more fully into our manufacturing system.

Mark Daniel (19, Nashville, TN) co-founded social goal achievement site GoalHawk in 2011. Since then, he has been building StatusHawk, a workplace accountability tool that changes the way that companies handle status reports. As a Thiel Fellow, Mark will focus on building this early stage company into a profitable and sustainable business.

Nelson Zhang (19, Toronto, ON, Canada) has always loved making things. He has been tinkering with electronics since he was 10, and designed, manufactured, and sold several hardware products during high school and college. He is currently working on a desktop fabricator for electronics, aimed at lowering iteration time and costs for hardware companies. He hopes to make the design and production of physical things accessible to everyone.

Nick Liow (18, Vancouver, BC, Canada) believes everything is a remix and information wants to be free. Now, he’s challenging copyright by building ways for creators to get paid for giving their work to the public domain.

Riley Drake (18, Baltimore, MD) has been conducting scientific research since she was 15. She has studied immunology at Johns Hopkins University and infectious disease at Massachusetts General Hospital. During her fellowship she intends to apply physical principles to virology: using biophysics to create broad-spectrum viral therapies.

Riley Ennis (19, McLean, VA) founded Immudicon, an early-stage biotechnology company that has developed a novel cancer vaccine platform and telemetric sweat-monitoring device in order to improve diagnosis and treatment. The company was spun out of his research in high school at Georgetown University and the Sheikh Zayed Institute at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington. His ultimate goal is to exercise empathy within health care to revolutionize and personalize patient care.

Ritesh Agarwal (19, New Delhi, India) is one of the youngest entrepreneurs from India to raise angel investments. He runs OYO Inns, a chain of affordable, tech-enabled inns, and Oravel, a rising popular alternative to hotels in India. As a Thiel Fellow, Ritesh will use technology to bring affordable and standardized accommodations to emerging economies across the world, starting in India.

Thomas Sohmers (17, Hudson, MA) is a technology geek and hardware hacker who has been working at a MIT research lab since he was 13, developing everything from augmented reality eyewear to laser communication systems. Currently, Thomas is working on developing a new computing platform that uses very low powered processors in a cluster to transform the server, cloud, and research computing industries.

William LeGate (18, Marietta, GA) is an entrepreneur and computer scientist. He taught himself programming at age 14 from online Stanford lectures and has since created more than a dozen mobile apps which have been downloaded more than 5 million times and are now used by 1 in 12 American teens. During his fellowship, he plans to change the way that we discover apps for things around us.

Xinyi Chen (19, Beijing, China) is passionate about entrepreneurship and technology. She participated in the Tigerlabs accelerator last summer and developed prototypes for her project Helios, which attempts to make telepresence devices accessible to average families.

Zach Hamed (20, Holbrook, NY) originally from New York City, was a junior at Harvard studying computer science before joining the Thiel Fellowship. The son of a teacher and a computer programmer, Zach is a first-generation American who hopes to apply his interest in user interface and experience design to K-12 education. As a Thiel Fellow, Zach wants to develop a suite of beautifully-designed tools for K-12 teachers, saving them time, providing them supplemental income, and helping them do what they do best—teach.

ABOUT THE THIEL FOUNDATION

The Thiel Foundation defends and promotes freedom in all its dimensions: political, personal, and economic. The Thiel Foundation supports innovative scientific research and new technologies that empower people to improve their lives, champions organizations and individuals who expose human rights abuses and authoritarianism in all its guises, and encourages the exploration of new ideas and new spaces where people can be less reliant on government and where freedom can flourish. For more information, see ThielFoundation.org, 20under20.org, and BreakoutLabs.org.

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Download a PDF of the press release here.

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I guess what’s hard for me is that I don’t really see our lives as extraordinary in any way.  Yes, Dylan was confident and curious and wanting to learn every minute but I truly believe that most parents would want to give their child the experiences they each want and deserve.  One difference may be that rather than give it all to him and let him choose, I watched his interests and guided him along his journey to help him get where he wanted to go…for the moment until he switched paths and then I followed him along that path.  We made choices together and that did seem unique.  We even chose his preschool together!  My goal was always to prepare him the best we could to be independent and capable of navigating his world by the time he graduated high school.  He was!        Beth Field

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I asked Beth, tongue in cheek, when and how she knew her son was a  genius.

 Ahh, noo no no, that is not a term we ever used. (Laughing)

We called him the knowledge sucker. I worked with so many children with learning differences that I knew Dylan was out of the norm.

Can you give me some examples of how you knew?

 At an early age, Dylan could focus intensely.

At 6 months Dylan followed along with a book being read.

At 18 months he would spend  an HOUR with a roll of scotch tape tearing tiny pieces of tape and placing them one on top of the other.

Dylan is  very curious.

At 3 he was interested in  the computer. He was full of why questions. His dad was in charge of helping him answer some of those why questions.  We taught him to do his own research very early. No matter what he did, hiking, reading, games, he wanted to move forward, learn more, dig deeper.  He learned things so quickly

Dylan is very sensitive.

When Dylan was 2, we had a gathering at our home after his great grandma’s  funeral.  Dylan walked around with a bowl of potato chips asking all the guests if they wanted some.  Later, when we asked him why he did that he said, “Because everyone looks so sad and I want to cheer them up.”

Dylan’s got good people skills.

Dylan’s also really sensitive to who people are.  Dylan’s big heart drew people in and did make them feel happy and that continues to be a strong trait for him now as well.

When he was 3-or 4 he would come home from preschool and tell me he had a new friend.  He couldn’t always tell me their name or what they looked like, but he could tell me a complete story on what the person was like on the inside. He  feels and pays attention to the inner qualities of who people really are. But he would be a terrible eyewitness.

Dylan has drive and can think ahead.

At 2,  he would stack the deck in a game of  CandyLand to make sure he won.

In Kindergarten the teacher had letter of the week activity. Dylan always wanted to know what came next, and the teacher wanted him to wait. Dylan figured out if he snuck through the door to the next class on Friday afternoons, he could see  what the neighboring teacher had set up on her bulletin board and he wouldn’t have to wait.

I then asked Beth to tell me about finding resources for Dylan.

Beth felt it took effort to get Dylan to the things he wanted to be a part of, but that  it wasn’t difficult to find resources. She had to go to part-time work to be able to get him where he needed to be. Dylan had a lot of interests and just following those interests seemed to work. Peers were a little harder to find, but she looked for groups with multiple ages which helped. Like acting.

Dylan’s interest in acting started very early with a fascination with all things on stage and backstage. He wanted to know and do everything.  He auditioned with the Santa Rosa Players, and got cast in a lead role. That was the beginning of his acting career. Honestly, I think he got the part just because he could sit still, focus and watch the others audition. I didn’t realize it, but we were sitting  right in front of the director while we were waiting for Dylan’s turn.

 

Acting career? Tell us more.

Dylan loved being on stage and doing community theater. He loved the acting. When he wanted to do more, a friend of mine, who is a talent agent in Southern California, recommended someone in San Francisco.  But it was because HE wanted to do it, not me. I did not want to be a pushy stage mom.  As soon as he wanted to stop, he did.  Let me clarify,  sometimes he would say he didn’t want to go to an audition we had already scheduled since he wanted to keep playing. In that situation I explained that he had made a commitment and he needed to keep it. He couldn’t just not go because he wanted to play. But,  I also let him know if he wanted to stop scheduling more auditions  that was his choice. When he was around 12 he was ready to move on to a new interest.

Acting worked out really well for Dylan. There were all ages for him to interact with. He learned so much from all those auditions. He isn’t phased by public speaking, cameras or famous people. But Dylan didn’t like it when people made a big deal about seeing him on T.V.  He loved the acting but not the attention. He didn’t want another reason to feel different.

Here are links to a few of Dylan’s commercials:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juSUVf9q19w

http://youtu.be/4A_Kkb9w5bw?t=35s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OlZ2aFldSY

What came after acting?

Santa Rosa Children’s Choir, it was fabulous. Dylan loved singing and it was an amazing experience. He got to travel to Austria and Germany with the choir.  But then his voice changed!

He tried some sports but they weren’t really his thing. He did lego robotics in middle school, then a program called FIRST Robotics in high school.  He wrote a business model which helped the team win an award that took them to Nationals.

Dylan had so many interests and things he enjoyed. He had lots of options but it was always driven by him.  He learned so much and had so many good experiences.

When he was a teen he was really interested in O’Reilly Media and wanted to be an intern there. He had a friend whose dad worked at O’Reilly and one time they needed some kids to help schlep sodas at an event. Dylan’s friend asked him if he wanted to come help and Dylan jumped on it. He knew he wanted to be in that world and have a chance to connect with people. It was worth doing the job just to be there. He started working as an intern shortly thereafter and considers O’Reilly the real beginning.

Tell me about school…

Even at 2 years old people asked, “What are you going to do with him? Public school won’t work. “

But I wanted to use public school so he could make local friends, and to save money for college.  I felt like I had some support and options. I worked in a school district and was already talking to the GATE coordinator about how kids like Dylan need to be taught in a different way.

It is so frustrating that often kids like this do not get their needs met in our school system. “Oh they’ll be fine” is the attitude. And that’s not right.

Dylan started Kindergarten at the school where I worked.  He had great teachers that really understood Dylan. They were flexible about letting him go to a higher grade level for math. It worked for a while.

What was the turning point?

 One day I worked in his 2nd grade classroom and I observed Dylan with another boy who asked him how to do something. Dylan looked annoyed and said, “Why can’t you figure it out  yourself?”

We had to have “The TALK”. About everybody being good at different things and how you treat people. The teacher got him, but not the kids.

Another day he came home really upset. At first he wouldn’t  tell me what was wrong. He said I’d have to promise not to tell anyone, especially not his teacher. Finally he sobbed, “I AM SO BORED. Don’t tell my teacher.” Dylan didn’t want to hurt her feelings.

I called his teacher and started by telling her I was wearing my parent hat and asked if  she noticed anything going on with Dylan.  She had.

Beth was advised to move Dylan to a different school for third grade, the school that housed the Grade 4-5 GATE Program. His teacher said that he needed the GATE program and a different school population so he could find peers. She sent  a letter to the future teacher describing accommodations  made for Dylan’s  quick pace of learning.

At Back to School Night for 3rd grade I listened to the presentation and thought, Oh how is this going to work. The teacher pulled me aside and said “We have to talk.”

She wanted to move Dylan up to the 4th grade GATE class. I resisted. “Didn’t you get the letter, can’t you just send him out for math, isn’t there something we can do to keep him with his peers?” I was not happy about the idea of grade skipping.

She countered, “He is so far above the other kids, they aren’t his peers. I just tested him and he is beyond the end of the 5th grade GATE math test.  I can’t just send him to another class for math.”

This was a huge decision for us. It brought up all my frustrations about how we do not serve the needs of kids like Dylan. I wanted him to get to learn and still get to be a child with his age level peers.

Before deciding, I went to observe the class. What a difference. I saw kids like Dylan. Curious, creative, focused, self-directed. He had not been in that kind of environment.

Still, I felt hesitant.  I talked with my sister, and she asked, ‘Would you feel like you are holding him back?”

So, Dylan was moved up to the 4th  grade GATE class.  It was a really good decision. Those two years in school were his really HAPPY years. He fit.

Beth noted that Dylan found peers but she also found some moms who could relate to her experience as a parent and offered support with childcare.  Some other mothers were interested in finding out exactly what Beth had done to make Dylan so good at math.

They wanted a script. I didn’t make him good at math, he came that way.

How were the middle school years?

Not so good.  The kids were sent off to a bigger school and the GATE kids were split up.  He didn’t have a place to fit. Dylan was left questioning who he was and where do I belong? It was difficult because many of his other interests and groups went away at the same time.  He did play in the band which helped, but it was a small part of the day.

In math they gave him a geometry book and told him he could learn on his own. Well that didn’t work. He would be motivated to start but he didn’t have the maturity to follow through.

There was a custodian who was brilliant at math. On Sundays,  Andy took Dylan to him to be tutored and that was a highlight of this period.

How about High School?

Beth looked at options for High School, including private schools. They were relieved when Dylan was accepted into the Tech High School housed on the Sonoma State University (SSU) campus. He would have access to peers, mentors, resources and opportunities for responsibility.

It had only 240 students instead of  about 2500.  It was  focused on math, science and engineering with project-based learning geared to advanced GATE kids. There were advanced peer clusters. It was nerdy and he fit. He had people he could connect with.

The Tech School also gave him access to classes on the SSU campus which was great.  Project-based learning gave them opportunities to be responsible. That’s really important for kids to have.

The first year, one of the high school math teachers nearly wrecked math for Dylan and he was starting to hate math. But Dylan decided he wasn’t going to let that happen.

Dylan found a way to pursue math with the SSU math department which was a big deal. Some of the professors had not liked dealing with high school students but they liked Dylan. He had pretty close to a math degree by the time he left high school.  Dylan got to go to DC with the math class and compete for  prizes and awards.

All this and it was still a public school, a big win.

Is there anything else we haven’t covered?

Something  I think is important is to help these really bright kids to connect with others, to understand people have all different kinds of skill sets and not write people off if they are different or can’t understand.  There were so many times Dylan would be telling me something that didn’t make any sense to me,  but I didn’t give him a pass. I told him to find a way he could explain things so I would be able to understand.

Any parting advice?

I think the bottom line for these kids once they are out of high school is to let them know it is ok to take risks and ok to fail.  They can return home if they need, or go back to school. Figuring things out is just part of the process.

 

Beth is a  K-8 Resource Specialist, her husband Andy is a Respiratory Therapist from Penngrove, CA.  Click here to see Dylan’s Thiel Fellow bio. 

Thank you Beth for sharing your family’s  story. Thank you readers for your time. Please share this post if you know a family who might be interested.  As always, I’d love to hear from you in the comments.  

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You can read more of Lisa’s posts by clicking here.

There’s a common thread among the Thiel Foundation applicants: most of their parents have no idea what to make of them and their ambitions.

Let’s pretend, for simplicity, that the average person’s job is to scoop up cupfuls of water from a river and present them to their boss, and then your boss pays you. That’s what you, the parent, statistically probably do. You perform some sort of service for somebody or something, and you are given money for it. You, understandably, want to get exactly that for your kid except better, because you love your kid very much. Not all children wish to quietly scoop up water all day, and when they say “no” you can easily become frustrated. It may well be that your child is lazy, odd, or unruly but, if your kid “is asking too many questions,” it might be that your child is a budding entrepreneur, engineer, or scientist.

Entrepreneurs are focused on the question of “Where?” They seek to find places where water gathers and it will drain into their cup. As you can imagine, anywhere the water gathers naturally is already full of normal people scooping water, so entrepreneurs look for ways they can divert the water from its normal course into their cups. Most of the opportunities to divert the river exist only for an instant, and so much of it is being in the right place at the right time. They enjoy changing things, and would be upset if you called them “greedy” unless they need many people but only help themselves. Likewise, it isn’t fair to call them “lazy” as a good entrepreneur is willing to work hard now to make things easier later, and is really just making more time to do more things later. They normally have a knack for picking up any skills in the “Where” but don’t confuse picking up tools for a specific project with an interest in those tools specifically. Common failure modes of entrepreneurs come when they obsess over specific “wheres,” and neglect their other responsibilities and opportunities; when they fail to commit to any specific “where” and never get anything done; when they don’t estimate which “wheres” are good and bad correctly; and when they don’t know how to make an opportunity into a success. If your child shows signs of being naturally unlikely to have these failures, he or she is very lucky, and might be a great entrepreneur someday. Entrepreneurs walk the path of the greatest risks and rewards of the three, but as they love to see and create opportunities, they often find opportunities during “bad times” when others would not, and this carries them through. They are likely to be the only children who see economic downturn, mass layoffs, or drastic governmental regulatory changes as an exciting opportunity. This is because when things change drastically, there is more opportunity to catch water before it settles again.

Engineers are focused on the question of “How?” The most common version of this question is “how does it work?” In the world of playing with water, engineers dream of elaborate conveyances which move the water around, without paying particular mind to the water itself. Engineers are more likely to acquire a domain focus than entrepreneurs, and they are often not really concerned with how much water gets moved around at the end of the day. This could be worrying to you as a parent, but you should know that for at least the last 300 years there has been an ongoing race for everybody to make better devices to do the equivalent of scooping and transporting water, and so if your child becomes a good engineer, he or she will probably be well-employed and well-paid. Like entrepreneurs, engineers look for ways to make things easier and get the same results, and like entrepreneurs, their employer will reward them for this behavior instead of calling them “lazy.” They will only be called “lazy” as an insult when they make something easier and then don’t spend that extra time doing something else. Engineers stereotypically are the kids who got in trouble for “being destructive” from a parent’s view, when in their view they were “taking it apart to see how it worked.” They are frequently confused by non-engineering parents with blue-collar laborers who implement other people’s “hows” such as a car mechanic. However, even if your kid does like fixing cars, this is quite likely to be part of the process by which your child learns about the “how” of whoever made the object, and a good hands-on understanding of other people’s “hows” is considered a valuable asset for an engineer. Common failure modes of engineers are when the engineer doesn’t play nicely with the other engineers (they almost always work in big teams), when the engineer isn’t good at understanding other people’s “hows” or when the engineer isn’t good at imagining his or her own “hows.”

Scientists ask “Why?” and are some of the easiest to identify because most water-scooping folks are familiar with philosophers asking “why” all the time. They want to understand what water is, they want to understand what scooping is, they want to understand the “whys” of everything. They frequently go through several domains of scientific interest over the years, and often have an incessant loop of asking “why” and then picking apart the answer with more “whys.”  This may be seem annoying, but you will soon learn the upsides upon introducing your child to your new free babysitter: Wikipedia.

The paths of scientists can be broadly divided into two categories. Either they clamor to top-tier universities propelled by their excellent grades, test scores, and previous understanding and remain in academia asking “Why” forever as a prestigious professor (nothing to scoff at) or they capitalize on their power to generate new possibilities for “where” and “how” and have a little bit of those other two fields within them. Failure modes for “academic-whys” include not having the grades/test scores to get into top universities, and being so bad of a teacher that they can not get tenure. The failing points of “non-academic whys” normally are from whichever field they borrowed from: an engineer who can’t play in a team or an entrepreneur who doesn’t know how to execute on a great opportunity.

What I’d really like to emphasize about this whole story is that your child might take one of these paths, but that “it will all be OK” and good things are down these paths. Your child can make a comfortable respectable career at any of these things if that is what he or she chooses.

So, next time your child is engaged in something you just can’t wrap your head around, ask your child what is happening, and for your child to explain everything from his or her perspective (take note from Calvin and Hobbes). Maybe you’ll find some questions are being asked in there that will make you feel a little safer about your kid’s future.

Good Luck!

Katy Levinson is the Director of Development at Hacker Dojo, a Thiel Fellowship Mentor, a former NASA roboticist, a former Google engineer, and still an exasperating incorrigible child full of questions.

“So, um… here’s the game I made… on my own.”
That’s great, Nick, would you like to talk more about it?
“If… if you don’t mind.”

There’s some truth in the stereotype of the socially awkward programmer.

Two years ago, I took a year off from school, to fly down to the Bay Area for an internship at Electronic Arts.
On my first day, I introduced myself to our studio with zero confidence, as if I was afraid of myself.
Fortunately, each Friday, I got to show my week’s work to the team. And each Friday, I got better at presenting my work and myself.

By the end of my internship, I was confident in both my technical abilities and people skills.
To be precise, just confident enough to be dangerous.

During that summer, I made a game-creation tool, using my newfound programming prowesses.
My project garnered interest on a game developer forum, and I opened myself up to constructive criticism.
It stung for a bit, but it was much needed medicine. With the forum’s help, I made the tool bigger and better.

Confident, I took the project further.
I launched a Kickstarter campaign, thinking to myself the five dreaded words: how hard could this be?

…

For every day of the Kickstarter campaign, I pestered my friends, cold-called dozens of blogs, and spammed my favourite forums and communities.
I was strained for 30 days straight, soured some friendships, and was blocked or banned by people I admired.
The Kickstarter barely succeeded, but at what cost?

The experience left me drained. I was convinced I would never be cut out for entrepreneurship.
As school started up again, I slipped back into my old antisocial habits, and neglected the people I knew.
All my friends in school had moved on to the next year while I took a year off.
All my friends in Electronic Arts were in another country.

I was alone with the one person I was most afraid of:
Myself.

…

One month later, I visited that same game developer forum where it all began.

I helped others with technical problems, gave them constructive feedback, and shared my ups and downs with them.
A forum regular recognized me from all those months back, and wondered why my project had halted?
It turns out he once had a project similar to mine, and he was an alumnus of WebFWD, Mozilla’s startup accelerator program.
He liked what I was doing, and wanted to connect me with the Director of WebFWD.

If this was me just a few years ago, I would have sheepishly said Thanks, but no thanks.
But this time, something sparked in me. Maybe it was ambition for where I wanted to be, or anger at where I currently was.
Whatever it was, I dropped all my courses the next day, and met with the Director.

He said yes.

Social skills aren’t like technical skills.
You can’t just memorize a bunch of tips and tricks, it’s about fundamentally changing who you are.
In true techie fashion, I shall summarize my findings in a numbered list.

1) Always get outside feedback.
Not only can feedback help you test & refine your work, it can help you come up with new ideas.
If you avoid or ignore constructive feedback, that’s not “sticking to your vision”, that’s vanity.

2) Help others because you want to.
Not just because you shouldn’t expect anything in return, but also because you literally can’t.
There’s no way of knowing who your best connections will be. I’ve contacted dozens of journalists to no avail, but it was one guy on a forum who got me into WebFWD.

3) Connect with others, for your own safety.
Startups are stressful, and as young as we are, we have to be careful.
We need to support each other, and be there for each other when it all just gets too much – and it will.

…

A few weeks ago, I flew down to the Bay Area for my WebFWD inauguration.
I met up with my former mentor from Electronic Arts, to catch up with each other, for old times’ sake.

Hey Nick! How’s that game-creation project you’re working on?
“It’s going great! Would you like me to talk more about it?”
If you don’t mind.

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A member of the Under 20 Community, Nick Liow is an enthusiast of all things free culture. The above post is the story behind his open-source game authoring tool, Craftyy, and how, in wanting to help the open-source community, the community helped Nick open up.

Daniel Friedman (class of 2011) was recently on Bloomberg TV’s “Money Moves” to explain the process of becoming a Fellow, and why Peter Thiel pays kids not to go to college.

Click here to watch.

When a twenty-something year old builds a multi-billion dollar company in less than a decade, people begin to think. When magazines like Inc. and Forbes pound readers with stories of young visionaries who made millions by starting their own company, people begin to be influenced. And when people get their own ideas, they act.

The twenty-first century, influenced by visionary leaders such as Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Jack Dorsey and Kim Dotcom, has seen an influx of “entrepreneurs” pursuing their half-baked ideas. Inconceivable facts, such as an on demand car wash company raising five million dollars in funding or a pre-revenue company being sold for a billion dollars (yes, that’s a “b”), have led this new wave of ambitious entrepreneurs to join the rat race.

Many of these founders are very bright, very skilled, and very ambitious. Their pitfall, however, is that they are just not entrepreneurs. Whatever the underlying reasons may be: lacks of focus, unsustainable ideas, weak leadership skills, or just plain greed, these individuals are not meant to bring their ideas to life. But this does not mean that they cannot or will not be successful. If they realize this early enough, it may mean just the opposite.

Now, I am not writing this article in a condescending manner. I am not an entrepreneur trying to thin out my competition. I am an intrepeneur. Like many other ambitious kids in my generation, I grew up hearing about the success stories of young tech startups being sold, going public, or changing the world. So I figured I was creative, I could run a company, so why don’t I just think of an idea and build a company around it? Three failed companies later I realized, I never truly believed in my own ideas.

Luckily, I began to realize something was wrong (my three failures were a nice hint) and then I was put into a unique position. After attending an entrepreneurship conference I met someone with an idea that they were incredibly passionate about, a passion that I never truly felt and rarely ever witnessed firsthand. She built a company around her ideas because it was the best way for her to truly express and spread this passion. But as passionate as she was, the company remained small. After a short lunch meeting, I agreed to join my new partner in order to build her passion into a powerful and influential organization.

My position in this new company was the same as the one I held in my previous companies. Yet something felt different. Unlike in the past, I didn’t need to convince anyone to believe in my absurd ideas. All I had to do now was support my partner in pursuing her passion. Instead of focusing on the bigger picture, I could focus on building a strong and sustainable organization – something that I do best.

Almost everyone I have spoken to in recent years has had a novel idea. Whether it be for a company, app, or invention, most people want to bring to life their own brainchild. Very few of these will succeed. The reason for failures can vary greatly, but it is crucial to evaluate them early in order to change, grow, and move on. Everyone has unique skills and passions, but in order to be truly successful, you must determine if your passion is for your idea or if you are better off leading a company to support someone else’s passion.

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A member of the Under 20 Community, Josh Kleyman is a young and ambitious serial entrepreneur. His writing chronicles various situations he experiences in his role as Executive Director of the National Student Initiative and founder of Soho Select.