Two ventures were taken up recently and both got a lot of attention. They were very fascinating to me because of the results they brought about and the underlying implications. They were similar in some ways and starkly contrasting in others.The first venture was the one undertaken by Joel Spolsky, founder of a startup in the form of Project Aardvark . He recruited a bunch of college interns, gave them a business idea and left them to create a complete software product from scratch. The other venture was the Summer Founders Program by Paul Graham, startup founder and popular essayist. His company, YCombinator invited business proposals from college grads and provided seed-funding to jumpstart their businesses. Joel and Paul announced the results of their ventures recently and both were huge successes. They had both proven that college kids, when given enough focus and support could produce industry-strength products.But there was a lot of difference between their ventures. Joel recruited kids with good grades from great schools. He gave them a detailed specification of what was required and hosted them in his company's office. The project was promoted thru Joel's blog. The interns got paid a good stipend and one of them joined Fog Creek fulltime. Compared to this, the Summer Founders Program was completely different. The applicants were nothing like interns. Anyone could apply, all they had to do was to come up with a business idea and convince an investor that it would work. If selected, they were given some money and advice but nothing else. They had to find their own office space and figure out their strategies. Their stakes were much higher because the product they built was for their business, not for some company someone else owned.I think this is the significant difference. Working for oneself is the biggest motivator and an intern can never feel that way. Though loosening of control can actually produce good products (like in Project Aardvark), there is limited success to be achieved within companies. Joel's interns are either back at school or working in his company whereas Paul's founders are receiving venture capital or recruiting employees for themselves. For the interns, it must be a feeling of a job well done but for the founders, the work is only starting.The other end sees the difference too. Joel might feel good about the completed product, but will find it difficult to repeat the magic with another business idea. Even office space cannot scale each summer. Paul has already launched the winter founder's program and is planning the next one too. Paul's multiple investments cover the risk of failed projects, has better promises in terms of startup equity while he would have spent lesser in seed capital than Joel did in intern stipend. No wonder Joel is jealous :-)It seems to be that Paul's hypothesis on hiring is true after all. Who would want to work for a company when they can start one? And it doesn't seem like you need a lot of money to start a company. Maybe this is the next big thing - nifty startups founded by bored employees.