Dear business student interested in tech — listen up!
We have a pretty amazing job here at Horizons. We get to speak with some of the brightest and best college minds from across the world. We get to learn about their dreams, ambitions, their fears and their concerns.
One of the most prominent archetypes we’ve encountered is the “business student interested in technology.” If you come from a more traditional business/finance/economics background and want to jump into the world of technology as an engineer, product manager, venture investor, or entrepreneur…welcome! You’re reading the right blog post.
We gave a presentation at some of the nation’s best undergraduate business programs recently. We started with this slide. Can you guys guess who these strapping young lads are?
These are 6 of the most successful businessmen people on the planet.
Scratch that.
These were 6 of most successful businessmen people on the planet. This is the old guard. The version 1.0 entrepreneur. No offense to them, of course. These men have created billions of dollars of value and employed millions of people across the world.
Our point is that there is a new breed of entrepreneur. Version 2.0 if you will.
Yes, these people. They probably look more familiar to you. Mark Zuckerburg, Evan Spiegel, the Collison brothers, Elizabeth Holmes and more. They are more diverse, more colorful, and (at the risk of stating the glaringly obvious), younger.
Technology entrepreneurship. It’s the new paradigm. The billion dollar companies that are being started today are not the same ones that were started a few decades ago.
The times are changing.
Enter the Unicorn Club.
This is a (slightly outdated) list of private billion dollar technology companies. Yes, a few of these are public now. Note — these are all technology or technology-enabled companies. Every single one! Not oil & gas companies, not metals and mining companies, not industrial conglomerates. Technology companies.
As millennials, we’re witnessing an elemental shift in the types of businesses that are being created today.
Not convinced yet? Don’t worry, we have some more mind-blowing facts and figures for you.
The chart above re-iterates our theme on unicorns, but adds the timeline layer. The overwhelming majority of billion dollar technology companies became “unicorns” in the past 2 years. Look at the unbelievable concentration from Jan 2014 — July 2015. Yes, some will fail, but many more will succeed. This is both the power and the cost of innovation and what makes Silicon Valley truly unique.
Takeaway #1: People are building billion dollar technology companies at an increasing rate.
Naturally, you might ask why this is happening. How did this rapid acceleration in technology innovation come about?
We’ll use a quick well-known examples to illustrate.
In 2009, two friends named Travis and Garrett, brought together by their hatred of taxi cabs, started a simple service named UberCab. Their idea was simple — waiting for a cab sucks. Why not have an on-demand ride service that allowed users to order cabs with a single push on a mobile phone? Sounds easy, right? Sounds like an idea that should have already existed, right?
Right. But UberCab (later to be renamed Uber if you haven’t guessed by now), couldn’t have existed a few years ago.
The technology required to coordinate millions of rides and millions of cars simultaneously simply was not mature enough before 2009.
The proliferation of the iPhone, the maturity of cloud hosting (Amazon Web Services), the App Store, the widespread use of Google Maps and services like Twilio, Sendgrid, & Braintree all came together for a perfect storm. Uber benefited from all of the above and is today at >$70 billion company that has revolutionized ride-sharing globally. And they did it all in 7 years.
At Horizons, we call this the power of enabling technologies. There are two classes of innovation in technology: the building of new technologies and the leveraging of existing technologies. As powerful new technologies like Machine Learning, Big Data Processing, Digital Payments, and Cloud Computing become increasingly more accessible and affordable, there will continue to be a growing number of entrepreneurs succeed because they creatively leverage these tools. It no longer takes a PhD in computer science or even a 4-year undergraduate CS degree to build out your own idea or identify interesting new opportunities. This wasn’t the case 10 years ago, but the times are changing!
Snapchat built at $16bn company with <300 employees because they were able to leverage Google Cloud. 10 years ago, solving that same problem at the scale and speed they have done it, may not have been possible. Google focuses on building the core technology (cloud hosting) and the scale while Evan Spiegel (the Snapchat founder) builds addicting products people love on top of Google’s tech stack.
Takeaway #2: Enabling technologies make building technology companies more accessible than ever before.
“Ok, fine, I’m convinced that tech matters. So what?
We figured you’d ask that. Remember this photo?
Guess how many of the founders of these companies were non-technical (did not know computer science)? We’ve had some good guesses from past lectures. Half? 30? All of them?
Two.
That’s right. Two. Only 2 of these companies had non-technical co-founders. Furthermore 90% had founders that worked in technology companies. And if you are thinking it, the answer is yes. These are not the jobs your peers are looking at today. (Source: Techcrunch 2015)
Ok, so now the punchline.
As a “business” person interested in technology entrepreneurship, you must be technical.
You need to be able to build the MVP version of your product. You need to be literate in code and understand how software works. You must be able to both talk the talk and walk the walk. Even if you do not plan on becoming the CTO of your company, you need to know how to code. How else can you judge the merits of engineers joining your team? How else can you truly understand the problems that exist and how to use technology to solve them?
Instacart — can we deliver the groceries fast and cheap enough? Uber — people should be able to use an app to call cars? Facebook—there should be a way to meet other kids in my college online? Snapchat — what if I could send text messages that I didn’t have to save on my phone?
See a theme here? The genius isn’t in the idea. Anyone can say “this should exist”. The entrepreneurs are uniquely able to realize when and how something compelling and scalable can actually be built. They then have enough skills to make progress and convince others to join them.
Takeaway #3: Learn to code. Building a business is way more about the “when” and “how” to build something than the “what” to build.
Yes, you can be completely non-technical and start a company. But your chances of success will likely be lower (in our humble opinion). Sam Altman, the founder of Y Combinator, urges non-technical founders “looking for the elusive technical co-founder” to learn to code.
To be candid, we’re astonished by the number of folks we speak with who don’t fully understand this. So we’ll repeat it. As a “business” person interested in technology entrepreneurship, you must be technical.
Ok, fine. I like tech and I should probably learn how to code. But what do I do now?
Once again, perfect question and perfect timing.
During the school year, you’re probably quite busy with classes, clubs/extracurriculars and more, so we’ll focus on how you can most effectively leverage your summers for a successful career in technology.
- Follow skills not brands
- Short-term pay is irrelevant
1. Follow skills not brands
We’ve been taught to follow brands our entire lives. In high school, it’s all about getting into the best college. In college, we continue down this path blindly. “Business student” = consulting and investment banking. The mantra is simple and repeated: “Get into a top-tier consulting or investment banking firm. The experience will keep doors open and allow you to go do other things later…because of the brand.”
Right?
Not so much. Especially not in the world of tech.
The era we live in today is different. The VC funding your new startup idea doesn’t care that you worked at a Goldman Sachs’ top group. Neither does that cool startup you want to work at after a couple years. They care about your operational experience. They care about your ability to build and scale products, your ability to acquire distribution channels and customers. They care about your [relevant] skills and your hustle. And these are not the things you learn at a traditional consulting or banking gig.
So what do you do instead? Seek out amazing learning experiences. Do you already have basic technical chops? Go find an early-stage startup that will take you on as a software engineering or product management intern. Go learn how products are built and scaled from the ground up.
Here is an amazing list of some of the fastest growing tech companies out there. Here is another.
What if you don’t know how to code yet?
Go learn. Our classes are an obvious choice. In 3 months during the summer (or 4 months if you do our semester program), learn how to build web and mobile products. Become more than just literate. Become highly proficient.
But even if you can’t take our class for whatever reason, go tackle code on your own. Go to hackathons. Do a few online tutorials. Pick an idea from your bucket list and start hacking away at it. It’ll be ugly. It’ll break. But that’s fine for now. You need to get your feet wet before you learn how to do the butterfly.
2. Short-term pay is irrelevant
We see many students struggle with this topic. Prospective Horizonites, for example, ask us all the time how they can rationalize spending $10,000 on a summer program like Horizons instead of getting paid to intern.
Part of what makes a traditional internship seemingly attractive is the pay. Over the course of a summer, you can make $5,000-$10,000. Not shabby for a college student!
While that amount of cash may seem like a big deal, for most, it’s not life changing. It’s important to understand the difference between sh0rt-term and long-term pay. If you’re reading this blog post, you’re a smart, ambitious student who will likely do very well in your career. You’ll make the overwhelming majority of your income in your late twenties and thirties. Not during a summer internship. So the difference between $1,000, $5,000, and $10,000 is negligible. Importantly, how you spend your summer and the things you learn will impact your future income significantly more.
Our thesis — as bold and crazy as it may sound is this:
In the long run, a sub-optimal learning opportunity that pays you $10,000 is worth less than one that does not pay you or even requires you to pay $10,000.
Your college years are a time to invest in yourself. Don’t think about your earnings potential in the next 6 months or 1 year.
Think about the next 3–5 years. Think about the next decade.
A couple of our founders at Horizons come from more traditional business/finance backgrounds. We were in your shoes just a few years ago.
As students graduating from some of the top business undergraduate programs in the world, you have an unparalleled opportunity in front of you. You have the opportunity to build world-changing businesses over the coming years. You have the opportunity to start the next generation of Ubers, Snapchats, and Airbnbs. You simply need to learn the right skills and to put yourself on the right path.
The world is yours. Embrace it.
Thank you for reading.
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Horizons is a technology school that finds the most promising young people around the world and gives them all the advantages they need to launch their successful careers in tech.
