Measurements

I had forgotten I'd even applied to Stanford. Thank goodness I never clear out my gmail inbox and could find these old emails.

Something you should know about me: I walk away to a fault, an extreme fault. Rather than lose the game, I reject the game and its premises for winning entirely. I don't like being told what to do, including what I cannot do, and have a patterned tendency to just... leave. Depending on the situation, this can be good or bad.

Most big name start-up founders dating back to like, I dunno, the 1930s went to Stanford or an Ivy League college before joining a high-growth start-up and finally creating their own company, but before applying (and getting rejected) from Stanford and Harvard three years ago, I was a baseball player and trying to go D1 and had been focused on sports for the entirety of my childhood. Most big league ball players go through a similar standard path through Perfect Game rankings and other popular measurements of athletic ability.

Likewise in getting rejected from these popular colleges, I never was where I wanted to be by these baseball measurements either. In turn, I rejected these metrics as a basis for my level of skill and persisted with an inner dialog that I'd achieve want I wanted anyways. Turns out their measurements are pretty good and going D1 out of high-school didn't happen.

Recently while reading Paul Graham's, How to Start Google, he talks about an interesting idea regarding founders and selective universities.

"Strangely enough this is particularly true in countries like the US where undergraduate admissions are done badly. US admissions departments make applicants jump through a lot of arbitrary hoops that have little to do with their intellectual ability. But the more arbitrary a test, the more it becomes a test of mere determination and resourcefulness. And those are the two most important qualities in startup founders. So US admissions departments are better at selecting founders than they would be if they were better at selecting students."

Apparently this measurement is pretty good too. I've been telling myself the same story I did when I played baseball – believing that these colleges are dumb and a waste of money and that by going my own way I'd show them and win in the end. This narrative was so ingrained that I had forgotten I'd even applied to Stanford as an undergrad and been rejected; it was that irrelevant to me.

Having graduated from my local state college, I'm realizing how hard it is going to be to get a job at a high-growth startup. Like Stanford, they want the best, and my confidence is being tested to say the least. I guess it is about time I started giving common measurements more credit.

This is really scary because when something external is the marker for validation, we might not get there. And perhaps, like sports, we have limits that only become apparent after years and years of effort.

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(On the other hand, is there really anything we can do besides believe in ourselves despite rejection? What is the other option? Quit? Simultaneously caring about measurements and not caring when they aren't in our favor is pretty tough.)