For decades, Silicon Valley has valorized the college dropout. Founders like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg left school early to build companies and they became billionaires.
That ethos was later institutionalized through initiatives like the Thiel Fellowship, which famously pays promising students $200,000 to leave college and start companies.
For many years, the famed accelerator Y Combinator also quietly reinforced that culture. While it never explicitly required students to drop out, many of its most successful alumni, including Dropbox’s Drew Houston, Reddit’s Steve Huffman, and Stripe’s John and Patrick Collison, joined the program young and left school behind to build their companies.
Now YC is changing that narrative.
The accelerator has introduced a new application track called Early Decision, designed for students who want to start companies but don’t want to drop out. The program allows them to apply while still in school, get accepted and funded immediately, and defer their participation in YC until after they graduate.
