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Meet The VC Who Invests In High Schoolers
Michael Gibson shares insights on identifying extraordinary talent in young people from investing in them early via his VC fund 1517.
He explains how classic predictors like test scores fail to capture entrepreneurial gifts like courage, initiative, and "insider-outsider" status. Homeschoolers often excel as they're self-driven. Malcolm notes EA types who use funds practically tend to thrive.
They discuss why cities lack on-ramps for talent, risks of attaching to "smart" identity, and how youth's fluid intelligence enables conceptual leaps elders miss. Overall Michael concludes talent ID is tough, but development is key - we must cultivate qualities like grit young.
Simone Collins: [00:00:00] Michael Gibson. He is the co founder of the VC fund, the 1517 fund, which invest in young people typically before they've gone to college,
Malcolm Collins: how do you judge the competence of somebody who's young,
Michael Gibson: yeah, we learned a lot. Well, when we started the fellowship, we had an application a lot like colleges. We asked for test scores, GPA, what school you went to. And that was good at, certainly signaling cognitive ability, but we quickly learned it was not a strong predictor of success out in the wild. And so we had to start looking for other things . There were even negative correlations that were surprising.
Would you like to know more?
Simone Collins: Hello. Today we are joined by Michael Gibson. He is the co founder of the VC fund, the 1517 fund, which is game changer in terms of venture capital investment, because they invest in young people typically before they've gone to college, sometimes during but he also wrote a book that I've enjoyed very much called paper belt on fire, which I really encourage you to.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Check out, but we're not going to be [00:01:00] talking so much about the book today. We really want to get into Michael's work with the 1517 fund with how he spots young talent with things he's learned from his investments and the people he's worked with and the people he's found through this fund, because I mean, Oh my gosh, the talent you're meeting, it's, it's insane.
Simone Collins: So we're really excited to dive into this and thank you so much for joining
Michael Gibson: us. Yeah. Thanks for having me.
Simone Collins: So the biggest thing that I'm really curious about, cause it's been a while now, you know, you're like, you've been, you've been doing this for years at this point. And you've done a lot of hustling.
Simone Collins: I mean, like sleeping on couches, staying up all night, going to these crazy young person parties. I couldn't do this, you know, like young people stay up late and I'm like, my bedtime's at eight 30. you're doing these. I
Malcolm Collins: went, I, sorry, I got to take a little detour here. So I went on this trip to, I don't know, somewhere in Central America.
Malcolm Collins: With a bunch of Peter Thiel fellowship kids and they like they went out like I, I hadn't gone to a party, like a club in years, but I was like, maybe it's gotten better. Maybe it's not as bad as I remember. And I get there and I'm [00:02:00] stuck there until 1 30 in the morning and it's loud and it's sweaty and it's gross.
Malcolm Collins: And it was just as pointless as it always was. And you have to deal with this stuff. I think professionally. It's all about how you. Get these young geniuses interested in working with what you guys are doing. How do you sell yourself to them?
Michael Gibson: Man, well, that is certainly part of it. Yeah, it's funny is it's such a slippery, tough craft that we're constantly reexamining the foundations of what we do.
Published on 2 years, 2 months ago