Kevin Hartz tends to be first via the door. In 2001, he co-founded Xoom, again when sending cash throughout borders meant standing in line at Western Union. In 2013, it went public, and in 2015, PayPal paid $1.1 billion for it. 4 years after launching Xoom, he co-founded Eventbrite, which went public in 2018 and turned shopping for occasion tickets into one thing you could possibly do with out desirous to throw your laptop computer within the ocean.
After a stint at Founders Fund, Hartz co-founded his personal enterprise agency, A* Capital (a nod to a pc science algorithm), then in 2020, he noticed one other pattern earlier than the lots: the SPAC growth. His blank-check firm, “one,” swallowed up 3D printing outfit Markforged in a $2.1 billion reverse merger in 2021, proper as each different financier in Silicon Valley abruptly determined SPACs have been the longer term.
Now Hartz is onto his subsequent factor — teenage founders, not as a social experiment however as an unplanned funding thesis. His agency not too long ago minimize a test to Aaru, an AI-powered prediction engine with one founder who was too younger to get his driver’s license on the time. Hartz shouldn’t be alone on this by any stretch. The dropout-and-build motion, made most well-known by founders like Steve Jobs, Invoice Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg, is changing into a normal life-style selection for a sure form of bold child.
Think about Cory Levy, who was interning at Founders Fund, Union Sq. Ventures, and Techstars whereas nonetheless in highschool, then bailed on the College of Illinois after freshman yr. At present he runs Z Fellows, a one-week accelerator that palms technical founders — even excessive schoolers — $10,000 grants. When Levy dropped out a decade in the past, the Thiel Fellowship was a radical new thought. Now, the “group of dropouts is at an all-time excessive,” he informed Enterprise Insider final spring. “At a giant group dinner of 15 or 20 folks, we’ll look across the desk, and nobody has a university diploma.”
It’s changing into sufficient of a “factor” that the accelerator Y Combinator, which has quietly bolstered drop-out tradition since its outset, not too long ago rolled out a program that’s designed for college kids who need to begin corporations however don’t need to drop out. This system permits them to use whereas nonetheless in class, get accepted and funded instantly, and defer their participation in YC till after they graduate. (For YC, identified for being countercultural, the transfer may be very on model.)
Naturally, TechCrunch has been overlaying the pattern: see right here and right here and right here. However to study extra, I’ll be sitting down with Hartz on the StrictlyVC occasion inside TechCrunch’s rollicking Disrupt present, kicking off in San Francisco on Monday, October 27. (Hartz is speaking on Tuesday, October 28.)
Within the meantime, listed here are excerpts from a chat we had on Friday, the place we began to discover the subject:
Techcrunch occasion
San Francisco
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October 27-29, 2025
TC: We’ve all the time seen youngsters beginning corporations, but it surely definitely feels like we’re seeing extra of it than ever earlier than, and also you’re telling me that is the case behind the scenes. Why do you suppose that’s?
Kevin Hartz: You discover these actually shiny children who’re simply very bored in class. I see courses of Stanford freshmen or sophomores who fall into this class — they have been utterly bored, some ended up homeschooling, and simply excelled. Even in prime universities, they nonetheless go and drop out with a thirst to construct, to study, to push the envelope. We had one firm the place the founders have been 18, 18, and 15. I believe the CTO might be 16 now, however he was 15 on the time we backed them. However that’s probably not uncommon.
How does Z Fellows evaluate to the Thiel Fellowship, launched years in the past by Peter Thiel?
It’s extremely comparable. The distinction is the Thiel Fellowship is a nonprofit, and — I’m a giant fan of Peter’s — however as a nonprofit, you’re perhaps not on the market hustling as onerous. Cory [has] simply [been] on the market constructing Z Fellows over the previous few years, and it’s a extremely nice program. It’s this factor once more of Peter being forward of the curve, seeing the worth within the irony of providing cash to drop out. That phenomenon has been rising and constructing, and who is aware of how far it’s going to proceed, particularly with the price of universities and what lots of people see as a poisonous surroundings in universities with poor administration. All this traces as much as drive youngsters to ask, ‘Why don’t I simply drop out and construct?’
Does Z Fellows take fairness within the corporations?
They provide a really small test — $10,000. Then there’s a fund the place they again folks in a while down the road. Nevertheless it’s principally a no-obligation $10,000 preliminary piece. I believe Cory selects a pair folks to place in $100K into pre-seed [rounds], too.
What do you make of the statistics we’re seeing, associated to children not having the ability to get jobs out of college? I’ve to suppose a few of that is pushed by the belief that even if you happen to graduate, there is probably not a job ready for you.
There’s this different phenomenon occurring — this flipping that’s presupposed to occur in ’26 or ’27 the place there might be extra 1099s than W-2s. That simply signifies that 30 years in the past, folks labored for giant firms like Nestlé or McKinsey or IBM. Now they’re working for themselves. They’re buying and selling crypto or constructing their very own companies. That factors to American individualism. It’s virtually like the US goes into entrepreneurial hyperdrive.
I believe it’s as a result of folks need to begin corporations, however I additionally suppose that, more and more, folks have to begin corporations as they get elbowed out of their roles owing to efficiencies gleaned although AI and in any other case.
Paul Graham stated one thing years in the past that has all the time caught with me, that it’s each good and unhealthy for a younger founder when their startup takes off, as a result of it takes over their life. You have been a younger entrepreneur. How do you are feeling about funding a 15-year-old, figuring out his firm would possibly do rather well and this particular person might by no means have the power to expertise what most 15-, 16-, 17-year-olds get to expertise?
I discovered it to be an exhilarating expertise, but it surely was punctuated with painful challenges. It accentuates all the pieces. And it’s a great level. [Seventeen,] that’s the age of Marines they ship into battle as a result of they’re fearless. Perhaps there’s one thing about that age the place persons are very hard-driving. However I’m wondering if it’s simply too quickly to grasp the implications, given the recency of this phenomenon.
We’re simply at the start of what I’d name a brilliant cycle of expansiveness in tech, with AI and all the pieces else — particularly AI. We’re in very early innings. You may have OpenAI and Anthropic rising extremely quick within the foundational mannequin a part of it. Now we’re all beginning to work on the appliance layers. You may have the coding co-pilots like Cognition, after which you might have Decagon and Sierra within the AI CRM house. However there are such a lot of different classes nonetheless to be disrupted. Even Sierra and Decagon are very, very early of their missions.
You’ve bought daughters. Would you prefer to see them go to varsity? How would you are feeling in the event that they stated, “Dad, I need to begin one thing now and never go to varsity”?
Our 17-year-old is making use of to high schools now. She does need the school expertise. She needs that taste of life. She by no means actually questioned it. I attempted to present her as many probabilities as I may to contemplate options, and I’ll do the identical with our 13-year-old who might be up subsequent.
Of the bets you’ve made during the last yr, what number of would you say contain youngsters?
Shut to twenty%.
And two years in the past you’ll have stated what?
About 5%.
