Rhymes with Cars

My friend Hiedi, who was our awesome intern this past summer, has a great post up about the decision to stick in school versus taking the money that she spent on tuition to start a company. While Heidi was at Socialtext, we regularly had the conversation of what is more valuable for her career, having a degree or starting a company? In my opinion when I'm hiring, I'll take someone who started their own company over degree any day of the week.  I'm of the belief that real world experience outweighs classroom experience.  I believe that risk taking (starting a company) should be valued much more than the status quo.  Even if the business goes nowhere, what you learn getting it off the ground, selling, managing people, managing products, managing vendors, marketing and everything else that goes into running a company can't be learned in school. I'll be the first to admit that I didn't go this route.  I absolutely regret it.  Of course, I'm also old and when I was in school my tuition was only about $5,000 a year and in 1991, $20 or $25K wouldn't get much off the ground.  Now, Y Combinator is giving that out regularly and companies are hitting base hits with that much funding. Today, in a typical college, that probably gets you the first year or two of basic classes.  6-months of real business experience should greatly outweigh 6-months of What do you think is more valuable for someone who is thinking about going to school or starting a company?