The Boldest Education Experiment in 20 Years Was Just the Beginning

September 11th, 2025 by root | Posted in Uncategorized |

Sending your kid to college is a $300,000 bet that four years of lectures will prepare them for a world that cares more about what you can build than what you can recite.

For a long time, it felt like the only option.

But it’s not.

The School of Entrepreneuring will offer graduates $200,000 to start a company instead of going to college.

When I tell people this, they say it’s crazy (or that I’m crazy).

It’s not. (And I am not)

It’s based on the most successful education experiment of the last two decades: the Thiel Fellowship.

What the Thiel Fellowship Proved

In 2011, Peter Thiel tried something radical: give teenagers $100,000 over two years to skip college and build something ambitious.

A small snapshot of the results:

Company	Founder (Fellow)	Status	Valuation / Market Cap
Figma	Dylan Field	Public	$68B
Ethereum	Vitalik Buterin	Crypto	$450B
OYO Rooms	Ritesh Agarwal	Private	$3.8B
Mercor	Brendan Foody, Adarsh Hiremath, Surya Midha	Private	$2B
Scale AI	Lucy Guo	Acquired	$29B
Source data: CB Insights

These aren’t flukes.

It’s about systematic success.

5.9% of Thiel Fellows have built billion-dollar companies.
Y Combinator’s rate is 1.9%.

The Fellowship is three times more effective at producing unicorns than Silicon Valley’s most celebrated accelerator.

This despite investing in teenagers, not companies.

Metric	Thiel Fellowship	Y Combinator
People/companies funded	185	5,842
Unicorns (>$1B)	11	112
Unicorn hit rate	5.9%	1.9%
Source data: CB Insights

The Thiel Fellowship finds diamonds

We’re building a system to forge them.

Why Waiting Is Backwards

People hear “Dylan Field” and think “once-in-a-generation genius.”

But that’s not the point.

The point is how much potential we waste.

Right now, an 18-year-old with ideas and drive is told to wait.

First, sit in classrooms listening to lectures for four more years.
Then get an “entry-level” job to gain experience.

And then one day, maybe, you’ll get to work on something important.

The most creative years of their lives are spent in artificial environments, disconnected from real problems.

We don’t have too few exceptional young people.

We just slow them down.

Why This Works at Scale

The standard objection: this only works for the top 0.1% of students.

But exceptional entrepeneurs aren’t born. They’re made.

Research shows three things consistently produce high achievement:

Great teachers
High expectations
Ambitious peers

Design for those, and you don’t just select for excellence.

You create it.

That’s the system we’re building.

Students at the School of Entrepreneuring practice spotting opportunities and solving problems until it becomes second nature.

By graduation, they’ve had 7 or 8 years of deliberate practice doing what most people never even learn during or after college.

A Two-Way Door

We also realize that most of our students will still go to college. In fact, we expect 70–80% will choose that path.

The rest will take the $200,000 and “go pro”.

For those who choose college, the difference is they’ll arrive with a portfolio of real accomplishments beyond being light years ahead academically: companies started, problems solved, networks built (and no BS non-profits).

College becomes an enhancement, not a requirement.

For those who choose entrepreneurship, it’s not a leap into the unknown.

It’s a continuation of what they’ve already been doing for years. And if it doesn’t work out, college will still be there, with better stories to tell.

From Spark to System

The Thiel Fellowship was a spark.

The School of Entrepreneuring is the fire.

We start with one question: What if we trusted young people to create value today, not someday?

School asks students to wait to matter.

We give them the tools and trust to matter now.

The Fellowship proved exceptional young people exist.

We believe that greatness is there in many more, and it is our job is to help unleash it.

The question isn’t whether they’re ready.

It’s whether you’ll give them the chance.

About Us

Forge Prep is reimagining education for grades 5-12. We equip students to be explorers, builders, and leaders. Our students learn by doing: starting, running, and even acquiring real businesses while developing critical thinking, resilience, and leadership skills. Upon graduation, they receive $100-200k in seed funding to launch their ventures and “go pro in business.” Our mission is simple: build a generation of remarkable students who solve problems and shape the future.