Ask HN: How does one persist when there are a lot of naysayers around?
Building any product/company is hard. For various reasons. Sometimes founders/makers/creators are flowing against the tide. They have a vision that no one else either understands or refuse to accept due to some personal/political agenda. In such environment how does one persist and continue to follow the dream? BTW, not all dreams start with the idea of building a unicorn. Lot of them start because someone in the world has a vision for a better tomorrow.
2 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 21.7 ms ] threadThank you!
> Also this doesn't work for all things but try to find a way to make it profitable.
I want to make it a non-profit. But I do have a self-sustainability model for this project.
> From what I briefly read it looks similar to Lambda School.
This is not like Lambda School(LS). The model LS is implementing is what one professor described as "job training centers". Education is more than that. I want students to learn whatever they want without the fear of loans. And I want the education sector to be a magnet for the best talent.
The whole point of this project is to make loans obsolete so that students are not hesitant to take education. But students should also be made, whenever able, to help sustain the education system so that the society as a whole benefits. And the staff of education institutions also should be compensated well enough to help attract the best talent.
With the present system neither the students, the education staff nor the government benefits. And the education institutions fail to find innovative ways to help sustain themselves without the infusion of government cash via student loans.
The core of my proposal is to divert the flow of funds directly to the education institutions rather than channeling it via the students in the name of loans. That way the education institutions are directly in the loop with the funding process. But the students afterwards should be made to repay for the education they received so that the cycle of funding continues with transperancy and the government can then slowly reduce its funding load. Otherwise the students in future will anyway have to pay more in the form of increased taxes if the government fails to recover the funds it has spent on education. So why not ask the students to start making contributions immediately once they start generating income, even if they are not given loans per se.
In short, students are paying back because they received a service(i.e. education) that helps them pay back and not because they have a loan. Everyone who has benefited from education has to make their fair share of contribution to help improve and sustain the system. So it is really simple, if you get a service(i.e. education) you pay for that service if the outcome is as expected(i.e. you are able to generate income); and because the education system is for the greater good of the society, the government intervenes(by giving grants and loans to education insitutions) whenever required, similar to the way it does now.
So the proposal is not that radical, it is just a little bit of tweaking to the direction of the flow of funds. But the positive impact will be enormous.