The Right Traits at the Right Time

What advice would you give to the Stanford students that are wrestling with whether or not they should drop out of Stanford or pursue something entrepreneurial? How do they know if it's the right decision or the wrong decision?

That's a good question. And the reality is that there is no single right decision or single wrong decision for everything. And I think it's the same thing that even Peter Thiel said when he was first convincing me or some of the other Thiel fellows that he joined with and in dropping out is that if you know that timing is important in terms of pursuing a journey or an idea or a concept or something that you have, It's not going to wait for you. It's not going to. Sometimes you just really have to capitalize on opportunities that are there. Then the reality is that if I had waited until, for example, like in this specific case, like graduated, let's say, I probably would have had. Well, I probably would have a Ph.D. probably right around now, too, in terms of what we're building, graduate from this field, and it would be way too late to try and pursue anything in this field. Like, it would already be completely dominated by a host of other players. So sometimes timing is very important. The other part is just I think you have to be able to succeed in a few different dimensions and a few different personality traits. And I think there's three very specific things that have to intersect at the same time, and that's curiosity, drive, and passion. All three of those things have to come together at the same time. You're missing any one of those things. You can't be successful as an entrepreneur. So I think that. But when that does come together, and it's something that you really believe in, and frankly is, like I said, other people believe in and your customers believe in too, or will believe in for that matter, then there's really no reason why you can be successful, independent, like you can be at school, you cannot be at school. That's all good. But I think on balance, I will say that Stanford is, you know, one of the, realistically, the, you know, foremost at probably being at the forefront of all this and encouraging the entrepreneurship and the right kind of environment to be able to foster exactly that. So I think, like, probably any academic environment that is, like, generally good for fostering that kind of thinking and mentality, like, it's certainly here.