Paul Graham: “How should universities prepare students to start startups? Y Combinator is in the perfect position to answer this question, because we get them next. We’re like grad school. And because YC has had 20 years to refine its model of what a promising founder looks like, you probably won’t find a better target. What do the YC partners look for? It’s surprisingly simple. They want people who are good at building things and have a habit of doing it. The hard part of startups is product: knowing what to build, and being able to build it. And that kind of knowledge comes from studying computer science or mechanical engineering or molecular biology, not management or finance. So the way to prepare undergraduates to become successful founders is not to give them some new curriculum focused on “entrepreneurship”. It’s to do what universities already do best — to teach them computer science and mechanical engineering and molecular biology.”
Mint: “The case for a single source of live, organized and searchable digital legislative truth is obvious. To create such a repository, we must encode all Indian legislation in a common digital markup language. Other countries are doing it. So should we.”
Cass Sunstein: “This, then, is the key difference between the two great theorists of freedom. Mill placed a spotlight on choosers – on what they know, what they could be, what they need, what they deserve. Hayek placed a spotlight on planners – on what they do not know.”
Debashis Basu: “India needs almost $100 billion in net foreign direct investment (FDI), mostly in manufacturing, which will bring in technology, create skills and jobs, and convert India’s domestic scale into internationally competitive production lines. We are not making much of a serious attempt in this direction. If India does get $100 billion a year in FDI, it would be a game-changer in every possible way. FPIs would come rushing back, AI or no AI.”
