I wonder to what extent this is a statistical artifact
rather than a genuine improvement. For example, if you
measure performance as the mean time to serve each kilobyte,
then the proposed scheduler does not increase performance.
It's not so clear to me that a PhD is much use at a start-up
in general; you'd probably learn more relevant technical
skills at a regular programming job, and the mental habits
you're likely to learn in graduate school will actively hurt
you at a start-up. Unless you are lucky or careful about who
you work with and on what.