The return of college football (and Michigan’s first non-embarrassing debut in recent memory) has me inspired: it’s back-to-school season!

I am excited to start talking to students again; last year, I made a number of class visits back in my native Midwest to talk about entrepreneurship, venture capital, and “risky” careers. In those talks, one question would invariably arise:

What can students do to prepare for startup life?

The great news for students is that Silicon Valley closely resembles a university. It’s a cultural melting pot full of shared purpose, learning, and experimentation. It’s a place for ephemeral, but hopefully meaningful, connection. (And it’s exorbitantly expensive.) People go there for a tour of duty, learn a ton, and leave with a stamp of approval that they carry with them for life.

As a result, a university is a perfect place to build the skills you need to be a great entrepreneur. Here’s my advice for any student Outsiders (and for the students at heart).

🎉 Have fun!

Advice to students should always have this preface: just enjoy yourself! You don’t need to optimize every second in furious preparation for the real world — there’s plenty of time for buckling down in the beginning of your career.

When you look back at your college experience (and inevitably wish you had more of it), you’ll miss the spontaneity, connection, and troublemaking. You’ll miss the late nights with friends, the tailgates, and sleeping in until noon. And you’ll miss the freedom of having near-complete control over your schedule.

So, don’t stress out so much. Just enjoy being a college kid.

This advice is contrary to Silicon Valley lore — what, with the Thiel Fellowship and the general disdain for traditionalism — but kids should be kids. And all of those things I mentioned above, particularly spontaneity and connection, can have real benefits for your future startup career.

After all, great startup ideas often start off looking more like play than work.

🚀 Build stuff

While playing around, prioritize building things above leading things.

Most new college students think that they should be pursuing leadership positions, like I did as the Head of Finance for my fraternity and the President of my a cappella group. There’s nothing wrong with such positions — I really loved those experiences — but they won’t help you build the execution skills you’ll need to succeed as an entrepreneur. (Ironically, “entrepreneurship” clubs can be some of the worst offenders here!)

Maximize for productivity, not position, in your extracurriculars.

As a hiring manager at a startup, I have seen many, many resumes of undergraduate students with fancy titles but no real results to back them up. In contrast, I’ve also seen resumes of folks that started (and sold!) their own companies in undergrad; the latter are way, way more impressive.

💻 Learn hard skills

If I could go back to undergrad, I would choose a major that taught me hard skills. (“Hard” skills are IQ skills like programming; “soft” skills are EQ skills like persuasion.)

Taking technical courses in college is one of the few things you can do as an 18-year-old that deserves a spot on your resume for the rest of your life. (Alongside being an Eagle Scout or an elite athlete… are there others?)

I came to this realization too slowly at Michigan. I started off majoring in psychology, but realized that it was too fluffy near the end of my freshman year. I added economics, a more “serious” major, in my sophomore year, but still found that it wasn’t teaching me anything practical. I threw a Hail Mary, adding applied statistics near the end of my junior year, but by then, I was too deep in the liberal arts world to transfer to the engineering school.

Being “technical” is critically important for a successful career in Silicon Valley. You can succeed without being an engineer, but you won’t succeed unless you’re technically-literate. So, please: just major in Electrical Engineering or Computer Science and thank me later.

🤓 Find your people

Throughout my early career, I never quite felt like I was on the same wavelength as the people around me. (Much of this was undoubtedly due to my own stubbornness and lack of self-understanding.) But once I got to Silicon Valley, I found what I had been looking for: motivated people ready to work incredibly hard to accomplish things that mattered for the world.

College is also a place to find your people. Maybe you’ll fit in with other entrepreneurs — but maybe you won’t!

At most major schools, you’ll have tons of resources to choose from, far too many to explore in one run through campus. The goal should still be, however, to connect at first broadly, then deeply — with lots of people with lots of different goals, traits, and backgrounds, then to dive in deep once you find folks that you gel with.

Take the time in college to learn about yourself. What motivates you? How hard do you want to work? What are your goals? These are all questions that have no right answer, and I’ve found that they’re best explored with others — it’s hard to know what you want for yourself, but it’s easy to see those kinds of traits/mindsets in others, and to gravitate towards folks that you want to emulate.

I didn’t know about startups (or business, or anything else in the real world) when I was in college. So the fact that you’re already reading this newsletter is a huge leg up! If you find that, by reading my writing, you think about the world the same way that I do, maybe startups are for you.

That’s about it for this week! If you’re a student and want to connect, reach out to me on Twitter and I’d be happy to answer any of your questions about life in Silicon Valley.

Thanks for reading Silicon Valley Outsider! Here are a few past editions that you might like if you enjoyed this one:

• 🚀 Pessimism is easy, but that doesn’t make it right

• 🧠 Self-doubt vs. conviction

• 😱 Don’t be afraid of working at a startup

If you want to join 480 folks in getting an email from me each Monday, I’ll help you understand Silicon Valley using normal-human words.