Top 10 Mistakes Made by Entrepreneurs

Steve Gleitsmann · Top Commenter · President at Get It Mobile
One of my mentors told me once that "college buys you an interview at a decent company, the rest you have to figure out yourself." He was right.

Oliver T J Greenberg · Londra Ekonomi Okulu
I second that. The best colleges buy you more interviews.

Jonathan Jorge · Subscribe
This gold pot at the end of rainbow seems like an awesome way to keep fueling the ponzi scheme colleges are becoming IMO

Anoop Madhusudanan · Bangalore, India
Oh, that's why college drop outs ended up founding huge companies, and the rest of us ended up working for them. Colleges just bought us an interview :P

John Green · Top Commenter
I love these types of post because they make no sense.

1. I don't know what school you went to do, but my school taught me the principles and fundaments of Computer Science, Data Structures and Algothrims. Using theses principles and practice is how I learned how to program. It pretty the same for every department. Majoring in art won't teach you hot to draw, or going for music won't teach you how to program.

I wish I could go on and make a comment to every one of your points, but it'll be a waste of time. Congrats dude you went to college and did all the wrong things.

James Altucher · Subscribe · Top Commenter · Carnegie Mellon University · 214 subscribers
Isn't college supposed to teach me how to do the right things? I studied everything I could but...alas...came away with less than I paid for. And that was 20 years ago. now with student loan debt higher than ever, it's just not worth it.

Farhod 'Rockwell' Shahrezay · Subscribe · Top Commenter · Irvine, California
He went to the same school I went to, Cornell University. While he graduated awhile ago, I graduated a year and a half ago, and I can state pretty confidently that the issues he brings up are still relevant even now.

The most valuable things I learned in college came outside of the classroom, which is a bit sad considering how much tuition is.

Michael Weinberg · Works at Weinberg Consulting LTD
Agree with John Green..

James - you mix a bunch of unrelated topics and say why didn't they teach me this at school.. It just doesn't make sense. You forget what the main purpose of a University Computer Science program is - to teach you computer SCIENCE which is very different from just programming. They give you fundamental tools and concepts so you can understand and do science/innovation in the field. All the advances you see today rely on the science part of CS - algorithms, networking, computer vision, artificial intelligence - all of these were discovered and researched by CS folks, not programmers who take a 2 month crush course - those would never understand what they are coding.

Rob Phillips · Subscribe · Top Commenter · Founder at Brevidy
Honestly, the only thing I learned in college was how to teach myself difficult subjects since 2/3rds of my professors didn't want to be there, or had no clue how to teach, or had such thick accents that I couldn't understand them anyways.

The other issue with college is everything is theoretical and impractical (i.e. how do I apply formula X to situation Y). Give people individual and team projects that mimic the real world on their first day of school and continue that trend throughout the entire 4 years... seriously, throw out all exams and make grades based on project results. The one thing it will teach people is that you're going to fail and that failure is not this terrible thing that exams make it out to be. Okay, so your project didn't work as planned, now go and iterate on it and figure out a way to make it work.

I guarantee that will teach people a lot more, subject them to uncomfortable experiences that they need to overcome anyways, and refocus academia on real world applications not just some outlier examples found in most text books.

I'm sorry, but I have to agree with James on this one... if college was a stock, it would be extremely overvalued in my eyes.

Dahlia Falco Stocker
I totally agree with you Rob!! Well said!!!

Diesel Laws · Subscribe · Top Commenter · CEO & Co-Founder at Barkles
Rob, brilliant reply. I hope places like Codecademy can do exactly what you described. It would take an incredible amount of time for the mainstream to adopt this sensibility but we can all but hope.

Jay Whiting · Web-developer at Mainpeak
Rob, you've just listed all the reasons I decided to drop out of University. Even when tasks are set to "mimic the real world", I found they had far too many limitations on them. I'm an autodidact myself and simply don't understand why so much weight is put on learning theory. Theory is interesting, but not practical.

"I guarantee that will teach people a lot more, subject them to uncomfortable experiences that they need to overcome anyways"

This ties in well with James' comment on failure. Sure you may experience failure in college/university, but you aren't really taught what to do when failure arises.


Andrew Molina · Stanford
I think the biggest lesson you missed was the ability to learn lessons. School, like many things in life, is a framework. You can either treat the framework as jail bars (as it seems you did) and follow it step by step because they "tell you to," or you can use it as a scaffold to build upon. You don't need to join a sorority to learn about politics and networking and betrayal. To think so is using a framework as jail bars. You can find a million ways to learn those lesson, many of them in college through the opportunities it provides you, but you have to build on what college gives you, you can't expect it handed to you. There's no playbook for life. You have to build it. If college isn't your framework, fine. There are plenty others. But I think it's kind of unfair to blame "college" for your failure to leverage its framework ...See More

Jenn Molina · Colorado
Brilliant...

James Altucher · Subscribe · Top Commenter · Carnegie Mellon University · 214 subscribers
you say: "the ablity to learn lessons".

I'll tell you an anecdote: a friend of mine who went to Brown said, "in college they teach you how to think".



Max Song · Subscribe · Chicago, Illinois
Brilliant Post Andrew. I think a lot of the gripe people have with college is the resentment that they still needed to figure out things after this premium "education." But that's not what you pay 200000 for. You pay 200,000 to be surrounded by intelligent peers in an environment conducive to learning. Your professors may not be the best lecturers, but they certainly are doing amazing things. It's not so much what college failed to teach me, as what skills I should have developed more in college.

James, you learned everything afterwards. College is only four years, and a lot of it is wasted in parties and debauchery. If you consider your classes to be to be hoops you must jump through- and a lot of people do this, then you will be unhappy. In that case, triage mercilessly, and drop out if you need to.

But then you surrender the high quality density of resources and opportunities that college has to offer.


Patrick Lewis · Bakersfield, California
"Formal education will make you a living. Self education will make you a fortune." -J. Rohn
College is what you make it and I mean no offense to you or your experience, but for me, it has been a blast thus far and will hopefully continue to have a positive impact on my life. For the last three semesters, I volunteered to teach a class about networking, sales, and money management. I'm in a fraternity, so I get the whole networking/politics experience as well. Business classes are great, but you're correct as they don't adequately prepare you to be out on your own in the real world. However, I'd estimate that 90% of what I've learned in college was through my experience as an entrepreneur which when paired with a formal education, can be a highly effective combination. Best of luck to you and everybody else.

Nathan Latka · Subscribe · Top Commenter · Founder and CEO at Lujure · 167 subscribers
I couldn't agree more with this. I dropped out of college but stayed in the community because its great for finding cheap labor that you can mold and teach to become phenomenal business/support/or sales people.


Jason Burack · Subscribe · Co-founder at Wall Street for Main Street- Work towards Financial Freedom, Independence!
Just 10? LOL. Unless you are learning from teachers who started a business and built it up successfully and then wanted to give back, you are better off doing what you are doing now man! By the way, how are things?


Paige Dalton-Reitz · A nanny/babysitter at College Nannies
Interesting article....but the author needs to learn his psych terms. =P DSM is only up to DSM-IV-TR (text revision) at this time. There is no V, let alone VI.


James Altucher · Subscribe · Top Commenter · Carnegie Mellon University · 214 subscribers
Paige Dalton-Reitz i was being sarcastic with those. In part, because the people who make the DSM think people are so eagerly waitng the next and next and next versions because everyone these days is so eager to over-diagnose themselves.


Max Woolf · Subscribe · Top Commenter · Carnegie Mellon University · 292 subscribers
At Carnegie Mellon University, the undergrad BA program, at the least, addresses these issues. Students are required to take a programming class their freshman year (kicking and screaming, usually) and a writing class. The program also offers dinner parties/networking opportunities with employers/professors, and classes on corporate politics, sales, and negotiation are required as a part of the curriculum. And you'll learn failure too, because CMU classes are *hard*. :P

I think business programs at colleges are adapting to changing needs in the workplace. The realm of business and computer science have changed dramatically in the past couple decades.

Doug Crets · Subscribe · Top Commenter · Self Employed at Dbc media · 1,519 subscribers
Still, let's try to make school more like real life. Why is it that school feels like a secluded arboreal pastiche, and nothing like what happens when you wake up every day, have an idea, and try to make it work to eat?

Shanmuga Subramanian · Subscribe · Top Commenter · Chennai (Madras), India
I don't believe in any formal learning! To learn all those stuff above you need to do simulations!! And that you would get all you want :)

Ahsan Shafiq Ch · Lahore University of Management Sciences
true, but how many such universities exist? and how much of population do they cater? Anyhow, where's the fun when you got it all in a plate :D ?

Kort Pleco
So yet another example of why CS!= programming? There is no course (or degree program) that will ever replace on the job experience. I learned more in the first 3 months when I learned to program at work than I have learned in over 2 years now at my current degree program. If you want a CS degree then get a CS degree, but if you want to learn to program then either teach yourself or get a good internship.

Frantzdy Samael Romain · Subscribe · Top Commenter · Software Architect at KartVU
youtube tutorials? lol irc chats forums its all there for free

Michael Olenick · Subscribe · Hamline University
Programming is like playing an instrument; some people are born great at it, and they'll always be that way. Others are lousy, and they'll always be that way. Others are in between.

I learned to program on PLATO as a HS student. I could only log-on at night in an experimental program and had cranky grad students, but I loved it and it's what I've done my whole life.

As a coincidence Josh Bell was learning to play violin as a young kid, in the same program as my sisters in the building next door. During recitals the kids would get up and it looked like they were trying to saw their violins in half w/ their bow where Josh was a natural from the time he was four feet tall.
...See More

Frantzdy Samael Romain · Subscribe · Top Commenter · Software Architect at KartVU
Michael Olenick Why Eclipse? no netbeans. come on lol eclipse gets so slow for me sometimes. maybe its the compiler

Muhammad Huzaifa · Subscribe · Top Commenter · Chief executive officer at IKnowl
There are two primary choices in life; to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them.
Reply · 5 · Like · Follow Post · Saturday at 10:41pm

Melvin Ng · University of Waterloo
I have to really disagree with this post because the college I go to actually teach you all of the above. Our program setups intermship program with industry partners every 4 months so that we can actually apply everything that we learn in class. Once we graduate we have 6 prior job experience + know what we like and dislike.

It also helps use with networking, surviving in the real world and politics.

Added bonus: 1 term only cost around $6k+ so we graduate practically debt free. I love my Computer Engineering program here in the University of Waterloo, it's tough applying for jobs every 4 months but it's an intense version of the real world.

Karl Swanson · Port Hadlock, Washington
Good article, however, until you get industry out of the mindset that a college degree is what qualifies you for a good job things will never change. I have been told by many companies that I am am not qualified to do a job because I don't have the right degree - despite the fact that not only have I done the job, but have done it while under fire (in the military.) Many companies recognize professional experience in lieu of education - but not nearly enough. The first thing that gets your resume tossed out of the pile is your education (or lack thereof.)

Boban Dedovic · Subscribe · Works at Ultius
2 years ago I would have nodded my head and laughed at this article, but after also leaving school and joining the 'real world' like Nathan below I found these to be all too true.

Siegfried Bilstein · Seattle, Washington
For a pretty successful guy, you are comically bitter about your university. Most of those things are available at university if you seek them out. I learned CS in classes, but I learned how to program at on campus jobs, working on projects with other students, etc. I learned how to write when I was involved in extra curriculars that forced me to apply for grants. I learned how to sell when convincing other students to follow my ideas, or when convincing older people to lend their support to student initiatives. I learned how to network when I realized I didn't have any friends my first day of my freshman year and that I had to make an effort to have a social life or any other kind of help or support. I learned how to be happy when I realized that going back to the way things where when I was a kid was impossible and I just learned to deal with college and then eventually the real world. Also their are plenty of politics if you keep your ear to the ground in your department or whatever part of the university you belong to, even as an undergrad. Lastly, if you didn't learn to fail and bounce back in college, you weren't having enough fun.

Kervin Pierre · Top Commenter · FIT
You don't get a MSc in Computer Science to learn to program. You don't even get a BSc in CS to learn to program.

My experience earning my MSc in Computer Science taught me how to look at the core issues beneath the simple problems we face in the business IT world. A PHd should have even *deeper* knowledge of certain aspects of the field.

How you went through an entire degree and not figure that out is beyond me.

James Altucher · Subscribe · Top Commenter · Carnegie Mellon University · 214 subscribers
Well, I did go through an entire degree, plus some grad school, and loved computer science but I guess is what you are saying worth $100-200k? I could easily learn that on my own and get a head start on everyone else.

Maurice Walshe · SEO Engineer at Reed Business Information
James Altucher did you not do any placements in industry during all that time? all the students I worked with at BT on their year out could code ok (scarily good in some cases).

Kris Stubbs · Subscribe · Tampa, Florida
James,

I understand your frustration with the college structure and its seemingly useless borage of courses in which you sit there thinking to yourself, "why am I here again?" I also agree with many of your 10 points as well. I would like to ease some of your frustration so please continue reading. What college (and life for that matter) provides you is a continuous cycle of KNOWLEDGE and EXPERIENCE. You and I both agree, college gives you tons of knowledge, but it doesn't give you the experience, right? Could you also agree with me that there would be no way you would have known you needed these "real world" skills until you actually experienced them in the real world? There's no way you can learn about dinner parties in the real world at a dinner with college students at the school's cafeteria, right? Ask any person this question, "What are 10 things college didn't teach you about the real world?" and I guarantee you that every person's list will be different. Why will they be different? It's because no two people in this world have grown up being taught the same thing or have experienced life the same way. Your own personal knowledge and experience are the only things people will pay you for in the real world and every person needs to learn how to use it to their advantage.

Johannes Suriya Bhakdi · Subscribe · Founding Partner at Sophotec
Thanks James. Great article. College, and secondary education in general, has become a big, fat, $1t scam. It teaches useless stuff, charges out-of-control fees, and completely fails to deliver.

The future are universities that don't teach ubiquitous information, but the skills for the creative and knowledge industries. Where people make things, and become reality hackers. Y-combinator, only in big, and for all things. If this happens, our students would finally start to get useful education. Oh, and they wouldn't have to pay for that. We could even pay THEM for hacking, and get equity in return.

Anthony Pisano · Boonton, New Jersey
Jim, I also worked at AT&T in Basking Ridge and Bedminster and you first part had me howling. Spot on description of the places and the surprise craft fair and lack of strategically placed bathrooms.

Barb Smith · Subscribe · Operating Manager at Atlas Branding Agencies
Couldn't agree more! But, I still think many people need college as a time to mature (some of us more than others! - I was on the 5 year plan myself! ;)

Ben Kellie · Top Commenter · Columbus, Ohio
Too many people are sitting patiently in a classroom, biding their time until they graduate and the perfect job falls in their lap. The problem is that most other college students are doing the same thing. Just like anything you will ever do in your life, you have to make the most of the opportunity. If you really believe that reading a textbook and nodding excitedly during lecture will put you ahead, then you are going to be quite sad.

This from someone finishing up a Master's and who still has a lot more real world learning to do /rant.

Sam Catt · Kodiak High School
True that hommes


John Lawrence Scanlin · 25 years old
Education is amazing, but it needs to be modified to meet the needs of current employers, and places of education have yet to shift their thinking. This comes from a psychology major (criminal justice minor) with no experience in either field(o wait, twice I walked around a prison), who is working in a warehouse. However, businesses need to take a proactive approach as well. Employers need to understand that the education has a pleathora of students with 4 year degrees who don't have exp. In this economy they could gobble up very smart and dedicated young employee's and cross train them in a new field, and possibly have diverse, unique employees for an entire life. Employers used to train people, they have grown lazy and complacent, and just try to keep status quo rather than innovate. There is a place and time for expierence, don'

John Lawrence Scanlin · 25 years old
I just realized the author of this, he's written alot of very good articles. A no bullshit approach to any topic he tackles. Thanks for posting

Ronald Angsiy · Indiana University
Your college sucked. I gained strong experience with 7 of the 10 things listed here during my college tenure. Bitter much because you never took the right classes, overpaid for your education, and never branched out to all the non-curriculum resources colleges offer? College bashing is ridiculous.

Csak Simán Gömbi
I think you should learn real programming on your own or you need to pick up knowledge quickly when you get your first job. Most average universities teach only the basics IMO. People should acquire writing skills in grammar school, at least it goes like that in Europe. LEARN to be happy in college? You're kidding me. The ability to feel happy derives from the family, from the first friendships in kindergarten, from the first experience of being part of human society. This is also true for learning how to fail. A big part of life is failure. You fail in everything on every try until you get it right and achieve success. This is life.

Sorry but this whole article seems to me as your personal tragedy.

Deon van Bergiestad
Really stupid article. Just an attempt to advertise his latest crap.

Gumuruh Ssp Jayadilaga · Freelancer;Translator;Software Developer&Graphic Editor at Guum.us
He is brave enough to post the tragedy.
But, I could say, let's use the braveness to the positiveness.
I know life is always ugly to the people who get tired of loosing.
But to the people who get fun with challenges, no doubt, life is just like a play.
:D

Larry Chiang · Subscribe · Top Commenter · CEO at Duck9
I want to rename this article "Things They Teach in that ENGR 145 Class".

If you want a preview of over half the above mentioned topics, go to http://youtube.com/larrychiang.
If you want to learn these things, find an ENGR145 kids that took my class, pay them $$500-30,000 and they will teach it to you. And there are advanced teachings under pre-preneur guacamole recipes.

Sankar McMoonlander · Subscribe · Perth, Western Australia
I don't know what Altucher has gone through, but based on my little experience, it seems like he's vastly trivialized some points and exaggerated other points.

Altucher, are you actually saying that you graduated from Carnegie Mellon (or Cornell for that matter) and then went to your first grad job, and did not know how to write a single line of code back then? If you don't mind sending me a message, I'd really really like to know the exact details of what happened there, just for case study.

College may not teach the other things you mentioned, but that's because wisdom can't be taught from a class. Enterprise level architecture, good business process and QA needs to be experienced in the real world.

James Altucher · Subscribe · Top Commenter · Carnegie Mellon University · 214 subscribers
No, I did not say that. Please re-read.

Daniel M. Clark · Subscribe · Top Commenter
What I got from the article was that the programming learned in school was not wholly applicable to the programming required of him in the Real World. It's something I can attest to, though I didn't attend a four-year school, but a trade school for the same thing. The programming learned in school was not enough - and if you think the school is going to cop to that, think again. They're charging an exorbitant fee and they're going to make you think that everything they teach is everything you need to know.

Sankar McMoonlander · Subscribe · Perth, Western Australia
Daniel M. Clark I agree with what you said. At College, we were writing boilerplate code and learning about "industry standards" such as EJBs, while the real world was light years ahead of that. But what Altucher said in his article is:
" I couldn’t program. I won’t get into the details. But I had no clue. I couldn’t even turn on a computer. "

I have trouble believing that he absolutely no clue when he went in the industry. College is extremely expensive and you don't learn 100k worth of relevant knowledge. But the way he expressed it in the article just made it seem like college education was obselete when coming to the real world. I disagree as I think that knowledge makes for a good foundation.


Jeffry Proctor
I'm not going to read the article. I assume that everyone in college is also in life and therefor responsible for learning while not earning a.k.a. "the college years". I struggle with putting my life experience into focus for a resume and it always comes up looking like a push, perhaps I'm not the best writer and a bit too critical. Just today at one of my clients, where I'm a contractor, someone's new postition was posted in the corporate email; it is simple, clear, and speaks volumns about the new promotion when it is followed by "Granduated from...with a degree in..." Sure there are a hundred others with degrees who did not get the job, but there are thousands of well suited (notice I didn't use qualified) folks for the job who are not even in the running because of not having a four year related degreee.

Scott Mansfield · Subscribe · Gainesville, Florida
first I was going to post a comment about how much of an idiot you are for not knowing how to program after all of that schooling, then I remembered CS moves fast and the world we look at today is drastically different from the world you looked at 20 years ago right out of college. I do feel like that much school should have prepared you better, however.

that said, I feeet some of your points are a bit off. Many things are learned by trial and error. Teaching them in college would make no sense. Parents have already said it by then, but it takes a slap in the face by reality to learn them. No school will be successful in teaching things like "how to deal with betrayal." That is internal.

Tiffany Tj Wey · Tempe, Arizona
How is it that we all ran across this article? XD