Admissions Officers And Leaders Are Looking For The Same Thing: A Startup Mentality
By Joash Lee, Forbes Councils Member.
As Published on Forbes: Jul 23, 2026, 10:15am EDT
Joash Lee is the Founder and CEO of Sedifly, a global EdTech firm democratizing access to education.
Ask a venture capitalist what they look for in a founder, and you'll likely hear some version of: scrappy, fast to iterate, unfazed by rejection and able to tell a story that makes you lean in. Ask an admissions officer at a top university what separates the students they admit from the thousands they don’t, strip out the jargon and the answer is likely nearly identical.
That convergence is no accident. With Ivy League acceptance rates down, perfect grades and test scores have become table stakes. What I've observed working with students across Asia and the U.S. is that the ones who break through rarely win on academics alone. They win because they think like startup founders. They demonstrate traits such as resourcefulness, a bias toward experimentation, resilience and storytelling.
These are the same traits employers often want in new graduates, but they can be difficult to identify. I'm seeing admissions officers increasingly look beyond traditional credentials to find them, and employers have an opportunity to do the same.
Why Thinking Like A Founder Is A Differentiator
1. Resourcefulness beats resources.
The old admissions playbook rewarded resources: expensive summer programs, padded activity lists, consultants charging six or seven figures. But today, I'm seeing that a student who launches a tutoring collective with zero budget or builds a community project using free tools often stands out more than one who attended a prestigious (and paid-for) program.
Founders often call this "doing more with less." Admissions officers often call it "initiative." Either way, the signal is identical: This person doesn't wait for permission or capital to create value.
The January 2025 Job Outlook survey (download required) by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) found that 88% of employers said they look for evidence of problem-solving on a candidate's resume, and initiative ranked among the attributes sought by more than 70% of respondents—ahead of some technical qualifications. NACE's data also shows more employers are shifting toward skills-based hiring, asking candidates for concrete examples of times they solved real problems rather than relying on pedigree (registration required for full report).
2. Experimentation is proof of judgment.
High-achieving students are often trained to avoid failure at all costs. Founders are trained to fail fast and cheap. The students I see succeed treat their high school years like a startup runway. They launch small ventures, clubs, research projects or content channels; kill what doesn't work; and double down on what does.
This iteration produces something a transcript can't: evidence of judgment. A student who can articulate why their first project failed and what they changed demonstrates maturity.
3. Resilience is the real credential.
Startups are rejection machines by customers, investors and the market. The same is true for the admissions process and the modern job market. Students who have already built something, faced indifference and kept going often arrive at university and the workplace with a calibrated relationship to failure.
Employers feel this gap acutely. Some new hires with flawless academic records may struggle the first time a project stalls or feedback stings. Those with founder-like experiences, even small ones, are likely to treat setbacks as data, not verdicts.
4. Storytelling is a transferable asset.
Founders live or die by their ability to articulate a vision to investors, customers and early hires. The college essay is, in effect, a pitch deck in prose — why that student, why now, what's the through line. Students who learn to find and narrate their own story early gain a skill that compounds for decades: in interviews, fundraising, sales, leadership and personal branding.
What This Means For Business Leaders
Entrepreneurial thinking can be cultivated early, deliberately and affordably. It doesn't require privilege, but it does require structure and mentorship.
1. Rethink screening signals. A GPA tells you someone can execute within a defined system. A shipped project tells you they can operate without one. Weight portfolios, ventures and side projects accordingly.
2. Build pipelines earlier. Companies that engage students at the high school and early-university stage—through micro-internships, challenges or mentorship—can get first access to founder-minded talent before competitors do.
3. Design roles for experimentation. Founder-minded hires disengage in rigid environments. Give early-career employees small bets to own, and you could find you're retaining the exact people the market is fighting over.
4. Invest in the ecosystem. Supporting entrepreneurial education isn't charity; it's a long-term talent strategy.
I believe the credential arms race is producing diminishing returns for students, universities and employers alike. The differentiator now is a mindset: scrappy, iterative, resilient and articulate. The next generation of standout talent won't be defined by what they were admitted into, but by what they built to get there. The leaders who recognize this earliest, in admissions offices and boardrooms alike, will be in a better position to win the next decade of talent.
View the article on Forbes here.
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