March 2024
(This is a talk I gave to 14 and 15 year olds about what to do now if they might want to start a startup later. Lots of schools think they should tell students something about startups. This is what I think they should tell them.)
The Myth of the Traditional Job
Most of you probably think that when you're released into the so-called real world you'll eventually have to get some kind of job. That's not true, and today I'm going to talk about a trick you can use to avoid ever having to get a job.
The Secret to Avoiding a Traditional Job
The trick is to start your own company. This isn’t about avoiding work; starting your own company often means you'll work harder than you would in a regular job. However, you’ll escape many of the frustrations that come with having a boss telling you what to do.
The Excitement and Potential of Entrepreneurship
Working on your own project is often more exciting than working on someone else’s. Plus, it’s a common way to get really rich. If you check the lists of the wealthiest people, you'll see that most of them became wealthy by starting their own companies.
From Barber Shops to Tech Giants: The Range of Startups
Starting your own company can be anything from opening a barber shop to creating a company like Google. Today, I’m going to focus on the extreme end of this spectrum—how to start something like Google.
Insights from Y Combinator: A Startup Factory
The companies at the Google end of the spectrum are called startups when they're young. My wife Jessica and I started something called Y Combinator, a startup factory that has funded over 4000 startups since 2005.
The Reality of Starting a Google-Scale Startup
You might have thought I was joking about starting Google. But that's exactly what Larry Page and Sergey Brin were contemplating before they built Google. If you had told them their company would one day be worth over a trillion dollars, they probably wouldn’t have believed it.
