【彭博社】Thiel’s Unicorn Success Is Awkward for Colleges｜Thiel独角兽的成功让大学尴尬

Atlassian Corp. agreed last week to acquire video-messaging startup Loom for $975 million, just short of the $1 billion “unicorn” valuation that would have put its co-founder and Thiel fellow Shahed Kahn in illustrious company. Eleven of the 271 recipients of the Thiel Fellowship have founded unicorns so far, an impressive accomplishment that doesn’t even take into account the inspiring innovations of other fellows and the many exciting projects yet to mature.
上周,Atlassian公司同意以9.75亿美元的价格收购视频消息初创公司Loom,这个价格仅低于10亿美元的“独角兽”估值,如果达到这个估值,其联合创始人和蒂尔奖学金得主沙赫德·卡恩将会进入杰出的行列。到目前为止,蒂尔奖学金的271位接受者中有11人创办了独角兽公司,这是一项令人印象深刻的成就,这还不包括其他奖学金得主的鼓舞人心的创新和许多令人兴奋的尚未成熟的项目。

In 2011, Peter Thiel launched a controversial education program to pay college students $100,000 to drop out. The program was widely criticized with many noting the hypocrisy of Thiel, who holds philosophy and law degrees from Stanford University. Former Treasury Secretary and Harvard University President Larry Summers said of the fellowship: “I think the single most misdirected bit of philanthropy in this decade is Peter Thiel’s special program to bribe people to drop out of college.”
在2011年,彼得·蒂尔启动了一个颇具争议的教育项目,向大学生支付10万美元让他们辍学。这个项目受到了广泛的批评,许多人指出蒂尔的虚伪,他本人拥有斯坦福大学的哲学和法学学位。前财政部长兼哈佛大学校长拉里·萨默斯对这个奖学金项目表示:“我认为这十年来最误导人的慈善活动就是彼得·蒂尔的这个特别项目,用来贿赂人们辍学。”

Available evidence supports the opposite conclusion. Thiel fellows have achieved shocking success, enough to merit a reconsideration of our current approach to college. A recent book, Paper Belt on Fire, by one of Thiel’s colleagues, fills in the backstory of the fellowship and refines the argument against traditional higher education.
现有的证据支持相反的结论。Thiel Fellow们取得了令人震惊的成功,足以让我们重新考虑我们当前对大学的看法。Thiel的一位同事最近出版的一本书《纸带之火》揭示了奖学金的背景故事,并精炼了对传统高等教育的反驳。

The most notable Thiel fellow to date is Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of the Ethereum blockchain. As of this writing, Ethereum has a market capitalization of about $200 billion and has spawned an unprecedented ecosystem of decentralized software development. There are nearly 7,000 Ethereum-based projects, including some of the most innovative and promising ideas today.
迄今为止,最引人注目的Thiel Fellow是以太坊区块链的联合创始人Vitalik Buterin。在撰写本文时,以太坊的市值约为2000亿美元,并催生了一个前所未有的去中心化软件开发生态系统。目前有近7000个基于以太坊的项目,其中包括一些当今最具创新性和最有前景的想法。

Austin Russel, a 2013 Thiel fellow, took Luminar Technologies Inc. public in 2020, valuing the company at $8.5 billion, while Paul Gu helped Upstart go public at a $4.8 billion valuation. Both Russell and Gu were early Thiel fellows and co-founders of their respective companies. Dylan Field agreed to sell Figma Inc., the influential design company he co-founded, to Adobe Inc. last year for roughly $20 billion.
2013年的Thiel Fellow奖学金得主Austin Russel在2020年将Luminar Technologies Inc.公开上市,公司估值达85亿美元,而Paul Gu则帮助Upstart以48亿美元的估值公开上市。Russel和Gu都是早期的Thiel Fellow奖学金得主,也是他们各自公司的联合创始人。Dylan Field去年同意以大约200亿美元的价格将他共同创办的具有影响力的设计公司Figma Inc.卖给了Adobe Inc.

Other Thiel Fellowship success stories have not yet gone public. Lucy Guo co-founded Scale AI, an artificial intelligence company, with more than 350 employees and customers including Airbnb Inc., Instacart and Block Inc. It was last valued at more than $7 billion. Robert Habermeier, a 2018 fellow, launched Polkadot, a blockchain-connecting platform that has a market cap of $4.5 billion.
其他Thiel奖学金的成功故事尚未公开。Lucy Guo联合创立了Scale AI,这是一家拥有超过350名员工的人工智能公司,其客户包括Airbnb Inc.,Instacart和Block Inc。该公司最后的估值超过70亿美元。2018年的奖学金获得者Robert Habermeier创立了Polkadot,这是一个市值45亿美元的区块链连接平台。

Beyond the dollar signs, there are many other innovative companies being built or supported by Thiel fellows. Laura Deming runs a venture fund focused on aging and longevity. She’s backed maverick scientists focused on creating biological immortality, a favorite cause for Thiel. Chris Olah worked in groundbreaking AI labs, such as Google Brain and OpenAI, and founded the journal Distill, which aims to make artificial intelligence concepts easier to learn. Boyan Slat is chief executive officer of The Ocean Cleanup, a non-profit that has raised tens of millions of dollars to develop technologies to remove plastic from the oceans.
除了赚取美元标志之外,Thiel奖学金的支持下还有许多其他创新公司正在建立或得到支持。Laura Deming经营着一个专注于衰老和长寿的风险投资基金。她支持那些致力于创造生物不朽的非主流科学家,这也是Thiel的最爱。Chris Olah在一些开创性的AI实验室工作过,比如Google Brain和OpenAI,并且创立了Distill杂志,旨在使人工智能概念更易于学习。Boyan Slat是The Ocean Cleanup的首席执行官,这是一个非营利组织,已经筹集了数千万美元来开发清除海洋塑料的技术。

There are more Rhodes scholars every year than Thiel fellows and, depending on the course of study, the scholarships can easily pay well over $100,000 to keep students in school. They also offer access to larger networks of more powerful people than Thiel can arguably offer. There are many other prestigious scholarships and fellowships to identify the highest-potential students. All of them put together can’t match the kind of entrepreneurial success before age 35 of Thiel fellows. In addition, nearly every college today has entrepreneurial institutes, incubators or other programs to support student ventures while the founders continue taking classes. Again, none have achieved anything like the success of the Thiel Fellowship.
每年的罗德奖学金获得者比蒂尔奖学金的获得者要多,而且,根据学习课程的不同,奖学金可以轻松支付超过100,000美元,以保持学生在校学习。他们还提供了比蒂尔能提供的更大的人脉网络。有许多其他的声望高的奖学金和奖学金项目来识别最有潜力的学生。然而,所有这些加在一起都无法比拟蒂尔奖学金获得者在35岁之前的创业成功。此外,几乎每所大学现在都有创业研究所、孵化器或其他项目来支持学生创业,同时创始人继续上课。然而,没有一个达到过蒂尔奖学金的成功。

Over the years, Thiel has often discussed how his previously “tracked” life from the best schools to the white-shoe law firm and investment banking job at Credit Suisse Group AG was unfulfilling and had little positive impact on society. By giving people like his younger self a little money, some prestige and access to a network, he’s helped create innovative, valuable companies. The results of the Thiel Fellowship demonstrate that colleges likely block or delay the success of the most promising students.
多年来,Thiel经常讨论他以前的“有轨”生活,从最好的学校到白领律师事务所,再到瑞士信贷集团的投资银行工作,这一切都让他感到不满足,对社会的积极影响甚微。通过给像他年轻时的人一些钱,一些声望和接触网络的机会,他帮助创造了创新的、有价值的公司。Thiel奖学金的结果表明,大学可能会阻碍或延迟最有前途的学生的成功。

Thiel has argued in several talks that the problem is much bigger than a few dozen precocious teenagers. Rather, he sees the current higher education system as a perverse credentialing machine that forces students away from impactful careers in favor of ones like consulting and banking, which offer the surest path to repaying exorbitant loans.
Thiel在几次演讲中都提到,问题远大于几十个早熟的青少年。相反,他认为当前的高等教育系统是一个扭曲的认证机器,它迫使学生远离有影响力的职业,转而选择像咨询和银行这样能最快偿还高额贷款的职业。

Of course, the world needs credentialed experts who repay loans as well as innovators and entrepreneurs. Rhodes scholars and other prestigious scholarship winners have reached the highest levels of politics and professions including science, law, medicine and journalism — although the proportion of winners with home-run successes cannot compare to the Thiel fellowship. Their accomplishments tend also to come much later in life and usually represent competitive success within established systems rather than stand-alone disruptive innovation.
当然,世界需要有资质的专家来偿还贷款,同时也需要创新者和企业家。罗德学者和其他享有声望的奖学金获得者已经在政治和各种专业领域达到了最高水平,包括科学、法律、医学和新闻学——尽管与Thiel奖学金相比,取得重大成功的获奖者的比例无法相提并论。他们的成就通常在生活的后期才会显现出来,而且通常代表的是在既定系统内的竞争成功,而不是独立的颠覆性创新。

The Thiel fellows, therefore, pose a stark challenge to US colleges. Are universities suppressing or delaying the potential of some of their most innovative and energetic students? Are they subtracting money for tuition that could be much better spent in ventures than in classrooms? Why can’t their expensive attempts with incubators and venture labs produce results that match the Thiel Fellowship? Are their middle-age professors spending too much time lecturing teenagers and not enough time listening to them?
因此,Thiel奖学金的获得者对美国的大学提出了严峻的挑战。大学是否在压制或延迟他们最具创新精神和活力的学生的潜力?他们是否在为学费扣除的钱款上,本可以在创业中更好地花费,而不是在课堂上?为什么他们投入巨资的孵化器和创业实验室不能产生与Thiel奖学金相匹敌的结果?他们的中年教授是否在给青少年讲课的时间过多,而没有足够的时间去倾听他们的想法?

Thiel has not proven that college is bad for everyone, nor that post-secondary education in the US is a dismal failure. But he has demonstrated a competing idea that has been vastly more successful, if only for a few students and only for certain types of projects. At the very least, that should make anyone paying college tuition and anyone running a college think hard.
Thiel并未证明大学对每个人都是不利的,也未证明美国的高等教育是彻头彻尾的失败。但他展示了一个竞争性的观点,这个观点对于少数学生和某些类型的项目来说,取得了更大的成功。至少,这应该让任何付大学学费的人和任何经营大学的人深思。

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