Kevin Hartz tends to be first by 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 possibly can 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 increase. 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 instantly 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 verify to Aaru, an AI-powered prediction engine with one founder who was too younger to get his driver’s license on the time. Hartz will not 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 turning into an ordinary life-style alternative for a sure sort of formidable child.
Contemplate 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 12 months. Immediately he runs Z Fellows, a one-week accelerator that fingers technical founders — even excessive schoolers — $10,000 grants. When Levy dropped out a decade in the past, the Thiel Fellowship was a radical new concept. Now, the “neighborhood of dropouts is at an all-time excessive,” he advised Enterprise Insider final spring. “At an enormous group dinner of 15 or 20 folks, we’ll look across the desk, and nobody has a school diploma.”
It’s turning 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 firms 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, recognized 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 be taught 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 firms, but it surely actually looks 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 youngsters 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 be taught, 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 not likely uncommon.
How does Z Fellows examine 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 an enormous fan of Peter’s — however as a nonprofit, you’re possibly not on the market hustling as exhausting. Cory [has] simply [been] on the market constructing Z Fellows over the previous few years, and it’s a very 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 setting 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 firms?
They provide a really small verify — $10,000. Then there’s a fund the place they again folks afterward down the road. However it’s largely 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 youngsters not with 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 speculated to occur in ’26 or ’27 the place there might be extra 1099s than W-2s. That simply implies that 30 years in the past, folks labored for giant companies 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 nearly like the US goes into entrepreneurial hyperdrive.
I believe it’s as a result of folks need to begin firms, however I additionally suppose that, more and more, folks have to start out firms as they get elbowed out of their roles owing to efficiencies gleaned although AI and in any other case.
Paul Graham mentioned one thing years in the past that has all the time caught with me, that it’s each good and dangerous 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’re feeling about funding a 15-year-old, figuring out his firm may do rather well and this individual 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 the whole lot. And it’s level. [Seventeen,] that’s the age of Marines they ship into battle as a result of they’re fearless. Possibly there’s one thing about that age the place individuals are very hard-driving. However I ponder if it’s simply too quickly to grasp the implications, given the recency of this phenomenon.
We’re simply firstly of what I’d name a brilliant cycle of expansiveness in tech, with AI and the whole lot else — particularly AI. We’re in very early innings. You might 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 might 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 wish to see them go to varsity? How would you’re feeling in the event that they mentioned, “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 faculty expertise. She needs that taste of life. She by no means actually questioned it. I attempted to offer her as many probabilities as I may to think about options, and I’ll do the identical with our 13-year-old who might be up subsequent.
Of the bets you’ve made over the past 12 months, what number of would you say contain youngsters?
Shut to twenty%.
And two years in the past you’d have mentioned what?
About 5%.
