Ramit Sethi and Ben Casnocha discuss starting a business in college. They recommend prioritizing networking over grades, taking a minimal course load like 12 units, and accepting that your GPA will drop. The trade-off is real: you can't do everything.
Okay, somebody asked about, can you guys talk about starting a business in college and basically balancing doing stuff in college. So we were both active, we've both been doing a lot of shit while we've been in school. My thing is very simple. My answer is my priorities were number one, in college, friends, meet people, hang out. Number two, my own businesses, number three, classes. That's it. Yeah. I think my take is that there are always trade offs. So if you're in school and you want to start a business, you're not, you have to rob Peter to pay Paul. So you're either going to have to have a really shitty business because you're going to all your classes and doing really well academically or you have to do get shitty grades and start your business or you have to watch less teaching. There's no I mask every day in college I would wake up, I swear to God. Let me tell you a story. I would wake up, I have a roommate who is, who's now a PhD student in computer science at MIT. So this dude worked a lot. Okay. I wake up at like I would wake up really early But I watched ER from 10 to noon, two hours. If you write down a lot of stuff, of course there's things you can do but assuming like you're driven. I've met a ton of like people who started who are driven, like organized and stuff like that. Okay then I think that this is a basic fact for someone now is that you're not going to be able to be an A plus student high grade during your business. So be prepared to make sure I trade off of those classes. Right. I did very poorly academically, but that was an accessible trade off for me. But I think it's important to go into that situation with open eyes. Don't delude yourself that you're able to have this great business and have fun but also have 100% social life and 180 plus grades. You can't do it all. I agree. In fact the best advice I got my freshman year was take the minimum amount of classes. You can take 12 units. Because there's much more important things than taking classes. And that was my freshman first quarter. I totally agree. You will quickly see afterwards that grades become less relevant. Grades are important if you're going to grad school than when you are an automaton who's going to work in a box. If you are doing something entrepreneurial, then by definition your grades are not as important. The average GPA self made millionaires in America in college is 2.6 out of 4. No kidding.
