The title of the talk (or article) is "future of web startups" and most of what is in it is satisfyingly accurate and perhaps marginally prescient. Except for the jump to the gushing, meritocratic tubes of the future. This much is true about startups; they are high-risk high-reward options, with the risk basically come down to around monetary opportunity cost now. Smart people definitely have a better chance at succeeding at these and college is not necessary for success at startups. Read that again. Success at startups. What most young people (I am in my mid-twenties and almost definitely going down the start-up trail so I do not speak from any graying high horse) do not understand is that priorities change as you age. And not just fuzzy notions of priority engendered by cultural forces, but those fostered by your own biology. There is literature, and longitudinally applied common sense, suggesting so. The opportunity cost of foregoing college is changing, not evaporating. Yes you can pick most of those lessons on the web, and the elitist cachet of iv(or)y league schools is losing its allure. In fact, you don't need to live in a dorm to have an immersive social experience, not that many here do anyways. The oppurtunity cost is that of being thrust into social situations with people whose interests and desires don't align with yours. It is about being part of a tribe for four or more years and finding a niche to flourish within that tribe. Most geeks don't get this anyways, and the evolutionarily obtained multiple equilibria of personalities are partitioned into the black and white of nerds and jocks. OK, not all are that extreme,but branding the gentle friction of shallow social interactions as 'fake' is rather blinkered. That is an opinion, or even a delusion, and may suit some well, but do understand that what works for some does not work for all. We can all of course go on with our sheltered lives deciding not understanding why some cultural institutions have evolved (and why their need may eventually be obviated) and it cannot be a bad life. An ignorant life is in fact a blissful one isn't it? But to distort and distill the argument into catchy trade-off: "startups leads to success; college leads to catalepsy" is not even apples and oranges. ..

One last thing: Recognize that success is a shape-shifting beast.