But what about great people with a really bad idea that they are committed to?
Seems to me that that would be a bad investment.
Also:
Be careful about your metric of great. The metric of great must be "this person is a genius with lots of energy and creativity," not "this person graduated from the right school, knows the right people, comes from the right part of the country, lives in the right zip code, etc." It must be first-hand meritocratic, not based on second-hand derivative indicators.
DropBox's founder went to MIT, but that's not what made him great. MIT is just a good school. The guy may well have been just as great if he'd gone to Ohio State or some other less-prestigious school.
I strongly agree with both of your points, at least in theory, but I will also observe that trivially and concretely verifiable derivative indicators (graduated from a "named" school) can be more practically useful than hard/impossible to quickly or concretely verify primary measures ("genuis with lots of creativity"). YC, Sequoia and other VCs are in the business of efficiently finding founders/companies to back; they are not and do not have to be in the business of increasing overall fairness in the world.
There's also the "ambitious and gets shit done" angle. IMO, like it or not, getting into and graduating from a "named" school is one indicator of precisely those two qualities.
There was a study recently that found there was a higher correlation between life outcome and where one APPLIED to college than there was to where one WENT to college. The takeaway for me was that people ambitious enough (and presumably confident enough) to apply to MIT would get similar results in aggregate to those who actually attended. I googled for a few minutes to try to find the study, but failed, so I apologize if I've mis-remembered or mis-stated the conclusions.
Disclaimer: 1993 MIT grad here, but while I greatly value my experience there, I give basically zero "extra credit" for MIT on a candidate's resume over any other school and I'd take "built dropbox" over any schooling, 8 days a week.
"There was a study recently that found there was a higher correlation between life outcome and where one APPLIED to college than there was to where one WENT to college."
Excerpt: "Once the two economists added these new variables, the earnings difference disappeared. In fact, it went away merely by including the colleges that students had applied to - and not taking into account whether they were accepted. A student with a 1,400 SAT score who went to Penn State but applied to Penn earned as much, on average, as a student with a 1,400 who went to Penn.
“Even applying to a school, even if you get rejected, says a lot about you,""
Seems to me that that would be a bad investment.
Also:
Be careful about your metric of great. The metric of great must be "this person is a genius with lots of energy and creativity," not "this person graduated from the right school, knows the right people, comes from the right part of the country, lives in the right zip code, etc." It must be first-hand meritocratic, not based on second-hand derivative indicators.
DropBox's founder went to MIT, but that's not what made him great. MIT is just a good school. The guy may well have been just as great if he'd gone to Ohio State or some other less-prestigious school.