Dumb Girl- Run-D.M.C.

oh, that’s where you go to school?…

Recently, I’ve been getting out in the startup community and meeting great people with amazing advice and connections. A lot of people I meet come from or go to prestigious universities. Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, and a lot of amazing schools with amazing students.  Most everyone has been great, but there’s a very select minority who have given me a weird vibe after I told them where I go to college. It’s the “oh, that’s where you go to school…(pause)” vibe.

I go to the University of San Francisco, which is a nice little school, but has hardly the reputation of the ones listed above. Eric, the co-founder of WEUTT, goes to a school everyone mistakes for UT Austin when it’s really the University of Texas at Dallas. When first meeting people, our college resumes don’t sound very wowing for two guys starting a company.

For instance, I was talking to some alums of a prestigious university recently working for a well known tech company. One of the guys asked “so where are you going to school?”. I responded with the University of San Francisco in the city.

“oh….that’s.. nice..”. He said it like there was a dark cloud now hovering over my head.  I could feel the smarties reserving their conversational energy for when they met someone worthy of talking to. I’m not a brainy person, but I can definitely tell when someone starts interacting with me differently just because I’m not from their likes.

This kind of stuff happens rarely, but it still happens. It makes me think, “wow, you are an incredibly intelligent person, but your people skills would get crushed by a four year old”.  Would they like me to instead try and excuse Eric and I’s universities by saying we should of gone to schools with better reputations? I’d rather not. Because when those few “I’m the shit” brainiacs see that even dumbasses like Eric and I can build and start a little something something, it’s going to make them really confused and think really hard to how that happened.