{"id":145214,"date":"2025-09-15T15:18:17","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T15:18:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/145214\/"},"modified":"2025-09-15T15:18:17","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T15:18:17","slug":"yc-co-founder-who-backed-airbnb-dropbox-and-reddit-says-high-school-isnt-the-time-to-launch-a-startup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/145214\/","title":{"rendered":"YC co-founder who backed Airbnb, Dropbox, and Reddit says high school isn\u2019t the time to launch a startup"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sorry, high schoolers, your dreams of pitching that dream start-up on Shark Tank <\/a>will have to wait. Paul Graham, the co-founder of Y Combinator\u2014the start-up accelerator behind Silicon Valley giants like Airbnb<\/a>, Stripe<\/a>, Dropbox<\/a> and Reddit advises not to rush into entrepreneurship before graduation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re in high school and you want to start a startup one day, you might think the best thing to do now is to start startups. But it probably isn\u2019t,\u201d Graham wrote on X.<\/a><\/p>\n

Instead, Graham highlighted the importance that Gen Zers should focus on learning and skill-building while they\u2019re young. \u201cStartups are rarely the optimal way to do this,\u201d he continued, adding that startups can get in the way of learning because of the pressure to succeed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe point of a startup is to make something people want, not to learn,\u201d he added. \u201cYou will learn things in a startup, of course. But the way to learn the fastest is to work on whatever you\u2019re most curious about, and you don\u2019t have that luxury in a startup. In a startup, you have to work on whatever users want most.\u201d<\/p>\n

But don\u2019t worry, you don\u2019t have to wait too long after high school to start the founder path: Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI was funded by Y Combinator at just 19, and Graham previously wrote that, \u201cwhen he was 19, he seemed like he had a 40-year-old inside him.\u201d<\/p>\n

How to test if you\u2019re old enough to start a startup<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not the first time the \u201cFounder Mode<\/a>\u201d startup guru has warned against prematurely becoming a self-starter. In a separate essay in 2007<\/a>, he even outlined how he looks for maturity in founders.<\/p>\n

In it, Graham writes that the lower age limit for being founder-ready may be as young as 16, though Y Combinator typically does not look at anyone younger than 18 who can\u2019t legally enter into contracts. And although Altman, was the youngest and most succesful founder Graham backed, he wrote \u201cthere are other 19 year olds who are 12 inside.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

So if you\u2019re an ambitious student who thinks they\u2019ve cracked the code for a new product or idea, he shared exactly how to test if you\u2019ve passed his maturity threshold.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One example is making excuses of being \u201cjust a kid\u201d and relying on your youth to escape complex situations. Adults typically could allow you off the hook, but Graham emphasizes the importance not to rely on this \u201ckid flake reflex\u201d when things get too hard if you want to be taken seriously as a founder.<\/p>\n

Another way to measure if you\u2019re ready is by taking note of how you react to criticism. When people pose challenges to an idea. Instead of walking away from your idea when given critiques, or rebelling, Graham says the adult reaction would be to ask \u201cReally? Why do you think so?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat you don\u2019t often find are kids who react to challenges like adults. When you do, you\u2019ve found an adult, whatever their age,\u201d he wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sorry, high schoolers, your dreams of pitching that dream start-up on Shark Tank will have to wait. Paul…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":145215,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[40680,64,63,99,5447,13255,98457,98458,1874,198,1876,21503,7747,6668,187,5044,2579,13961,98459,26024,98460,5327,22386,1996,42505],"class_list":{"0":"post-145214","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entrepreneurship","8":"tag-airbnb","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-business","12":"tag-chief-executive-officer-ceo","13":"tag-colleges-and-universities","14":"tag-doordash","15":"tag-dropbox","16":"tag-entrepreneurs","17":"tag-entrepreneurship","18":"tag-founders","19":"tag-future","20":"tag-gen-z","21":"tag-high-school","22":"tag-money","23":"tag-openai","24":"tag-reddit","25":"tag-sam-altman","26":"tag-start-a-business","27":"tag-start-up","28":"tag-stripe","29":"tag-students","30":"tag-success","31":"tag-tech","32":"tag-young-adults"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145214\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}