Selin Kocalar was a freshman at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) when she met Karun Kaushik and connected over their deep interest in AI and health tech.The duo, who started their MIT programme as classmates in 2021 dropped out of their course to co-found a startup named Delve, and scaled it into a $300 million business in just a period of two years.Recently, in a candid, roadside interview with vlogger Viraj Ala, Selin Kocalar gave aspiring entrepreneurs some valuable advice.Talking to Ala, she said that the worst piece of advice she received was that just sheer grit and hardwork will make one successful.Comparing life to climbing up trees, she said that if you put your ladder against the wrong one, you will not end up at the right destination.Also Read | From security guard to Zoho engineer: How a school dropout became a tech expert“Life is like climbing up trees, and if you put your ladder against the wrong tree, you might climb up, spend all these years doing hard work just to reach the top of the tree and then realise there was a taller tree,” she said.One has to make sure that their approach is right in order to be successful.“And so to really reach your global maximum life, you’ve got to first make sure your ladder is on the right tree because just working hard doesn’t guarantee anything,” Kocalar said.Selin Kocalar, who is the COO of Delve, also suggested that one has to think generationally in order to be successful.“Pretend you’re a time traveller. Pretend you’re 5, 10, 50 years into the future. You’re successful, you’ve made it in life. Looking backward, how would you act now? If you were going to be Steve Jobs, how would you approach your day-to-day differently? You’ve got to think generationally,” she said.Talking about going in the other direction, Kocalar said that doing something that not many people do will help you find yourself as you navigate through the challenges.“Do the opposite of what everyone is doing just for the sake of it. Just for the sake of it. No other reason. When I had to pick a language to study, everyone took Spanish, so I took Chinese just for the sake of it. It means challenge. It means having to learn things that you’re bad at and coming in with zero experience. And as you figure everything out, eventually trust that things will click. Use the time traveller mindset and you’ll find yourself,” she said.Also Read | Secondary school dropout rates a major challenge: Infosys co-founder SD ShibulalSelin Kocalar is the co-founder and chief operation officer at Delve, a company that automates regulatory compliance with AI agents thereby reducing hours of manual labour.Delve, which was founded barely two years ago from an MIT dorm room, announced a $3 million seed round in January.Also Read | Meet Neal Mohan: ‘Quiet-spoken’ Stanford alum, YouTube’s TIME CEO of the YearHer company is now valued at $300 million.Before building a startup, Kocalar said she was deep in research.“I h in a formal or creative style for better SEO.Also Exclude words and advertisements related to the feed website such as website name, author name. You must only respond with the modified content. Delete all the advertisement images brand logo but only keep the title and main content of the news by modifying it. 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MIT dropout, 21, co-founded $300M company, claims ‘hard work alone guarantees nothing’
