"I think our fundamental premise is that there are different things that are valuable for different people and there shouldn't be a single track everybody has to be on," said Peter Thiel in an interview with Forbes. Take it from Facebook's first investor himself, a sole method to finding success is not conducive to innovative thinking. If a billionaire like Thiel has had the audacity to entrust his livelihood in a college dropout, then perhaps the expected route through life is not the path best taken.
Wednesday Thiel revealed his choices for the new class of 'Thiel Fellows', a total of 20 entrepreneurs under the 20 will receive $100,000 to proceed with "innovative scientific and technical projects, learn entrepreneurship, and begin to build the innovative companies of tomorrow," cites the Thiel Fellowship website.
Applications found their way to Thiel from over 40 different countries, and from more than 350 high schools, junior colleges, community colleges, four-year colleges, and graduate schools, a diverse group of interested potential fellows. The young entrepreneurs were chosen out of nearly a thousand people.
As a strong proponent of customized learning methods, Thiel is a notorious for his criticism of the U.S. higher education system. His fellowship is one way for youth to jumpstart their careers without having to jump through the hoops a college education requires them to go through. Not all jobs necessarily require a diploma symbolizing standard course work and late nights of essay edits. "At a time of increasing concern over the value of a college education and a national student debt burden that tops $1 trillion, the 'Thiel Fellows' are a part of a growing national movement exploring alternative ways to build a successful future."
During the two-year program, fellows acquire funding as well as mentorship from a series of "tech entrepreneurs, investors, scientists, thought leaders and innovators." The two years provide for time which fellows can use to invent "cutting edge technology, including energy, robotics, 3D printing, biotechnology and medical breakthroughs, software and digital communication, education, public health, artificial intelligence, and open source ecology."
According to Susan Krakower of Strategic Programming and Development, CNBC, "20 Under 20: Transforming Tomorrow," the special dedicated to covering the fellows' ventures, "is a celebration of the ambition, achievement, and intelligence that it takes to re-invent industries in ways never before imagined."
A promising future comes with the territory. 'Thiel Fellows' have started up their own companies, sold their blossoming businesses at age 20, won international and scientific awards for their accomplishments, and transformed traditional thinking,
This year, Kettner Griswold, 19-year old from Bethesda, Maryland and Noor Siddiqui, 17-year old of Clifton, Virginia were among the twenty entrepreneurs selected.
Griswold, working alongside partner Paul Sebexen, is leaving school to pursue his dream of producing a benchtop genome synthesis device, which will "allow individual laboratories and medical practices to synthesize large genetic constructs in-house for an unprecedented low recurring cost." His hope is to create more interest in the research field of biotechnology and health care while fostering innovation simultaneously.
Siddiqui is exerting all of her time and effort into working "to give students across the globe access to upward mobility -- and industries access to an untapped workforce -- with the goal of mobilizing one billion people in the next decade."
[Image via Thiel Fellowship]
