How Universities Should Prepare Founders

Paul Graham essay:

August 2026

How should universities prepare students to start startups? Y Combinator is in the perfect position to answer this question, because we get them next. We're like grad school. And because YC has had 20 years to refine its model of what a promising founder looks like, you probably won't find a better target.

What do the YC partners look for? It's surprisingly simple. They want people who are good at building things and have a habit of doing it.

The hard part of startups is product: knowing what to build, and being able to build it. And that kind of knowledge comes from studying computer science or mechanical engineering or molecular biology, not management or finance. [1]

So the way to prepare undergraduates to become successful founders is...

Paul Graham essay:

August 2026

How should universities prepare students to start startups? Y Combinator is in the perfect position to answer this question, because we get them next. We're like grad school. And because YC has had 20 years to refine its model of what a promising founder looks like, you probably won't find a better target.

What do the YC partners look for? It's surprisingly simple. They want people who are good at building things and have a habit of doing it.

The hard part of startups is product: knowing what to build, and being able to build it. And that kind of knowledge comes from studying computer science or mechanical engineering or molecular biology, not management or finance. [1]

So the way to prepare undergraduates to become successful founders is not to give them some new curriculum focused on "entrepreneurship". It's to do what universities already do best — to teach them computer science and mechanical engineering and molecular biology. [2]

Indeed, preparing students to start startups is closer to the ideal of liberal education than preparing them for almost any other kind of career. Startups succeed or fail based on how much customers like the product. Customers don't care what the founders studied in college. So founders are free to study whatever they want, as long as they get good at building things...