Erik is joined on this episode by Danielle Strachman (@DStrachman) and Mike Gibson (@William_Blake), co-founders and general partners at 1517 Fund. They also both worked extensively on the Thiel Fellowship. They discuss: - The story of the genesis of the Thiel Fellowship. - The lessons learned from running the Fellowship. - Their idiosyncratic paths to running a venture capital fund. - The signals they relied on to find the right applicants. - How to change how higher ed works in the US. - The lessons that the US can learn from other countries when it comes to college. - How students can have a conversation with their parents about not going to college. - Whether something like the Thiel Fellowship can scale. - The lessons that homeschooling has for other forms of education. Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal. Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Grace Chen is our audio engineer and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.