akrish

Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson (courtesy of CalvinandHobbes.com)

I stumbled on this comic just now looking for a different Calvin and Hobbes strip that unfortunately I wasn’t able to find. But this comic reminded me of the good ol’ summers that I used to have when I was a kid when I would by dying of boredom and excited to go back to school (yes I was a nerd even then). The summers where I would sit around in the heat all day reading, watching tv, sweating. Where my friends and I would have water fights, go swimming, play sports and on the whole be spontaneous.

We used to have this tradition in elementary and middle school where after the last day of school my friends, my brother’s friends, my brother and I would all come to our house and have an intense water fight. We’d just run around my house with super soakers (which by the way seem to have changed a lot since I last had one), hoses and water balloons and we’d all be dripping and shivering after a couple of hours.

Since none of us could drive, during the days when our parents worked we weren’t able to hang out with each other so everyone got bored, but it was the best boredom one could imagine. There were no cares, no deadlines, no internships, no summer school, no applications and it was truly amazing.

I already wrote about what I’m doing this summer so I won’t really talk about here (you can read about it here though). But since high school, summer was about getting ahead in school, getting into college, and learning how to be an adult (i.e. working). In high school, I took classes, tutored, taught clarinet, tried to get a job, studied for SATs, worked on college applications and even though there was a lot more free time than during the school year, it wasn’t the same as the summers of elementary and middle school. And now in college, I’ve spent both my summers working full time for pretty much the entire summer because I’m supposed to get ready for adult life.

It’s not like I don’t enjoy these summers where I am doing things. In fact I think if I were given a couple of weeks with nothing to do, I’d probably spend most of it programming anyway. It’s just that I think I would like a couple of weeks with nothing to do, and then I’d have the ability to spend that time however I want (programming…) and it would be really relaxing. I also think the not being able to drive around would be interesting, because I’d get a lot more time to myself which I need every now and then (especially when I’m trying to relax).

So things have certainly changed, but I wouldn’t say for the worse. Now I’m able to take care of myself, I’m rarely ever bored during these summers, and I still have some time to play sports and hang out with my friends. It also really makes me enjoy the weekends.

On a random note. I used to read Calvin and Hobbes pretty religiously. I have a lot of the comic books at home and really like Watterson’s creativity. Calvin’s imagination is amazing and I really enjoy a lot of the adventures that he has. Also I find his philosophies and social commentaries pretty interesting. If you haven’t read much of this comic I highly recommend it.

A lot of people seem to have hopes of starting their own company. What could be better than being your own boss, doing exactly what you want, and all while you still have the opportunity to get rich really quickly? It’s really common for engineers to want to start their own companies because they’re really smart and innovative, and because their fields usually allow for a lot of new ideas to proliferate. Maybe I’m just going along with the majority here, but recently I’ve thought a lot about starting something on my own hoping it’ll take off.

In my free time I’ve been reading a lot of blogs and articles about entrepreneurship and I like to think that I’ve learnt a bit about starting my own company. One thing that’s repeatedly discussed is the issue of dropping out of college to start a company. I don’t have any experience on the issue; I haven’t tried to start a company, and I haven’t even gone through much of college. Yet I feel pretty strongly that most kids shouldn’t quit school to start a company. Rather, they should take the time to work on their own projects, prepare themselves for their company, and meet people (some who may become co-founders, angels, or just really good friends).

So what if you have a really cool idea that no one has thought of and time is of the essence? You’re probably the type of person who’ll have other great ideas too, so there’s really no need to build a company around this one. There will always be ideas floating around; it’s no big deal if you don’t graduate in time to build this one. To top it off, Paul Graham, a former entrepreneur and now Venture Capitalist, points out that your idea doesn’t matter much at all (See 7: No idea). Most start-ups change their ideas anyway, so you probably won’t even execute this really cool idea.

One way that a lot of students decide to start their own company is when one of their side projects turns out to be really cool, so they decide they can build a company around it. Say you’ve designed some product, and have a pretty devoted user-base. It’s seems logical to turn it into a full scale company, right? Maybe you can (it depends a lot on the product), but do you actually have so much to do that you (and maybe a few other people) can work on the product for 40 (or more) hours a week? In my experience, I could build any of my college projects in less than a week if I worked full time. This may not be the case for you, but I feel like most college projects can’t be scaled well enough to become a company.

What about experience? It’ll be really hard to start-up a company if you have no experience building production quality stuff. Paul Graham claims that one of the biggest problems with young founders is that “they build stuff that looks like class projects” ( See Minus). Young entrepreneurs have little or no idea what separates robust products from the stuff they’ve built for school ( not to insult anyone, but it takes some experience to figure it out). But there is a solution here: get some experience. Get internship positions early on and see what having a real job is like. They’re not really the same as career-jobs, but it’s close, and you’ll start to understand what it takes to build production-level stuff. Without at least some experience under the belt, it’ll probably be hard to start your on company.

I realize that this article is really negative, but I do feel that kids shouldn’t give up their education without having some idea about what they’re getting into. Just having a college degree makes it so much easier to get a job, so you really need to decide if starting a company is that important to you? And there definitely are a kids out there who do make it big and never end up needing their college degree (Bill Gates for example), but I’m sure there are at least as many kids whose companies don’t make it.

I’m not really trying to be discouraging, but I’ve picked up most of what I wrote from blogs and articles that I’ve read (Paul Graham’s site is a great one) and I’ve added some of my own thoughts. And there are plenty of reasons to start a company when you’re young (for example, you don’t need to support anyone, you can work really long hours, and you can live really cheaply). If you still want to try it, you should, and I wish you all the best.