Do people who make bombs make better entrepreneurs?

Peter Thiel, Rapleaf’s biggest investor, made an interesting remark to me the other day that 4 of the 6 founders of PayPal had built bombs while in high school (and Peter was not one of them).

that is an amazing stat.

at the Founders Brunch yesterday i polled some of the top entrepreneurs and found that quite a few of them had also built bombs while in high school.

which concerned me because i was never adventurous to build a bomb (my only street cred is playing Dungeon and Dragons) …

5 thoughts on “Do people who make bombs make better entrepreneurs?

  1. Chris Yeh

    Do homemade rockets count? The goal was a contained explosion.
    Interestingly enough, rocket building is a family tradition for me. My dad actually suffered some minor injuries from the explosion of one of his homemade gunpowder rockets when he was a boy.

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  2. Peter Caputa

    Dungeons and Dragons?
    Street Cred?
    That’s more like Geek cred.
    I didn’t even know how to use a computer until my sophomore year. I don’t think what we did then has a whole lotta bearing on what we are doing now. Unless we let it.

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  3. Peter Caputa

    I read that one. It’s kinda sad. Chemistry class is what made me want to study chemical engineering. Chemical engineering got me a job I hated surrounded by a lot of old white men. Which made me want to plan ski trips so i could meet women. Which got me into marketing events for a living. If I didn’t have that chemistry set, who knows where I’d be.
    In all seriousness, though. I did read that article. It is very sad. Without chemistry, we wouldn’t have an internet or any other manufactured product. It’s sad our children don’t get to explore this field.

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  4. Hasan

    One counter-example to mr Hoffman’s conjecture:
    Shehrzad Tanweer: born and raised in Beeston, Yorkshire. Made bombs outside the mosque as a lad. Went to Leeds University, earning a BSc in sports psychology. Where’s he today? Well, last July, he got on a train at Luton, went to London. He then got on a bus and exploded himself in Tavistock Square. By comparison, his brother, who went to grade school with my cousin, is successfully employed at Nokia in Greece.

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