CM 010: Thiel Fellow Jihad Kawas on Young Entrepreneurs
28:08 Share

Jihad Kawas started his company, Saily, when he was 16 years old growing up in Lebanon. Now, two years later, after a recent public launch, his app has over 140,000 U.S. users and is gaining over 1,000 new users daily. Jihad is a 2015 Thiel Fellow who never attended college. Along the way, he was awarded a Forbes 30 Under 30 Scholarship, took first place at an MIT Social Innovation Camp, and has been a TEDx Talk speaker.

This week, in a special edition of Curious Minds, I share interviews with four young people, ages 18-22, each of whom decided either to drop out or never attend college, in order to pursue work that mattered. Each is either a current or past recipient of a Thiel Fellowship, a program founded in 2011 by Peter Thiel to encourage young people to sidestep college and a traditional life path, in order to chart their own course as entrepreneurs.

In this episode you will learn:

	how building things as a young person led him to where he is today
	why parents need to let their children build real, meaningful things
	his beliefs regarding the impact of parents, families, and schools on young people 
	ways even cutting-edge schools have rules and policies that constrain
	how he viewed school as something to get through in order to pursue his passion
	the power of having to develop a pitch to persuade and convince
	the funny way he found out about the Thiel Fellows program
	what it is like to be an 18-year-old Thiel Fellow and company founder
	how the success and accomplishments of his peers spur him on
	how he spends his time
	about the constant battle he faces with uncertainty and doubt
	about his advice for young people
	what he is curious about today

Episode Links

Project-based Learning

Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC)

TEDx Talk by Jihad Kawas

Silicon Valley TV show

If you enjoyed the podcast, please rate and review it on iTunes. For automatic delivery of new episodes, be sure to subscribe. Thanks for listening!