Leaving College Behind
I made the difficult decision to drop out of college during my sophomore year. I was studying business and marketing, but I felt unchallenged and unmotivated by the coursework. My real passion was technology and entrepreneurship. I started teaching myself how to code and came up with an idea for an app that I just had to pursue. When I told my parents I was dropping out, they were shocked and disappointed. But I knew in my heart this was the right path for me.
As Steve Jobs once said, “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” I needed to follow my own vision. Leaving the structure and security of college behind was scary. But entrepreneurs have to get comfortable with uncertainty and take calculated risks. This was my first real risk, and I was determined to make it pay off.
Finding My Co-Founder
To turn my app idea into reality, I needed to find a strong technical co-founder. I started going to local tech meetups and networking events to meet developers and designers. After many dead ends, I connected with John at a hackathon. We immediately clicked – he loved my idea and I was impressed with his coding abilities. We made a great team; I handled the business side while John built the MVP.
As Paul Graham says, “The most important thing to do in a startup is to avoid mistakes, and the most important thing to do in order to avoid mistakes is to really understand the problem you’re solving. And the best way to do that is to build something and see how people react to it.” Together, John and I iterated our app based on user feedback until we really honed in on a product-market fit.
Securing Our First Investment
After several months of intense development, we had an impressive MVP. But to take our startup to the next level, we needed investment capital. I started practicing my pitch deck and reaching out to every personal connection I had in the tech world. Finally, through a chance encounter at a coffee shop, I got an introduction to Sara, a venture capitalist. She loved our app concept and offered us $500,000 in seed funding.
I was thrilled when she said “yes” – it was the validation we needed to prove we were onto something big. As Jeff Bezos says, “There are two types of companies: those that work to try to charge more and those that work to charge less. We will be the second.” We had a long-term vision of how our app could disrupt this industry and make services more affordable and accessible. This resonance with Sara showed we were on the right track.
Scaling Up
The seed funding allowed us to quit our side jobs, bring on more talent, and focus 100% on growing our startup. We built out our engineering team and leveraged data to rapidly enhance our app. User numbers began to climb. To manage demand, we had to quickly scale up our talent and tech infrastructure.
There were growing pains and lessons learned. As Sheryl Sandberg says, “Leadership is not bullying and leadership is not aggression. Leadership is the expectation that you can use your voice for good. That you can make the world a better place.” I tried to lead our team in a way that was open, fair, and driving toward our larger mission. Staying focused on our core values helped guide us through the challenges of hypergrowth.
Going Public
Just five years after those uncertain early days, we took our company public. Seeing our stock start trading on the NASDAQ was surreal – we had brought my wild app idea to life. While an IPO marks a major milestone, it’s ultimately just one stop on the startup journey. Next up for us is international expansion and developing a line of new vertical-specific apps.
I believe with the right mix of passion, persistence, calculated risk-taking, and flexibility, anyone can make the entrepreneurial leap. It won’t be easy, but if you stay focused on solving real problems for real people, the rewards are limitless. As Elon Musk says, “If something is important enough, even if the odds are against you, you should still do it.” My leap of faith to leave college and pursue my startup dreams was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
