Paul Graham @ Cornell

Yesterday Paul Graham (Founder of YC, Cornell ’86) came to speak at Cornell University yesterday. I was a part of his larger talk to several hundred interested Cornell students and a smaller private QnA session hosted by Armada for active Armada members, project team leads, and a few other students interested in tech.

His larger talk centered around how to build a formidable startup and the reasons to stay in university while doing so. I’ll summarize his speech in the following bullet points:

• Stay in school!
  • There is no better place to harness your natural curiosity and learn anything you want with freedom than university
  • Being at university (especially as an undergrad) means 4 years of continuous, unbounded learning that is partially funded… by the university itself

So… what should you do?

• Well, stay in school, duh…
• Work on cool side projects
• Work on anything that sparks your interest
• Work with clubs doing cool things
• Learn things outside of your intended major
• #staycurious