I dropped out of Harvard after 8 months to pursue entrepreneurship. I’ve never been happier, but I did miss out on the college experience.
- After eight months at Harvard, Steven Wang dropped out to focus on Dub, his investing business.
- Though he says it was the right move, he’s sad to have missed out on the college experience.
- Wang says he doesn’t regret trading his personal life to go all in on his entrepreneurial passions.
My parents immigrated to the US from China before I was born. Watching them build new lives and careers inspired me to try new things.
I’ve always loved creating, which has manifested into different entrepreneurial projects throughout my life, from selling origami cranes in first grade to leaving high school for around two years to launch a VR education company.
I eventually completed high school and went to Harvard for college. Eight months into my freshman year, when a new product idea came my way, I dropped out of full-time education again to work on a copy-trading platform called Dub.
Dropping out of college was the right decision. Throughout my life, I’ve traded my social life to pursue ideas I believe in. Even though I’ve missed out on some things, like the college experience, I don’t regret it.
I’d already taken time away from education before college
The VR wave took off in the mid-2010s when I was in high school. I started working on Realism, a VR education company, with two friends, and we got into an accelerator program at MIT.
We raised money, which convinced me to drop out of high school at 16. My friends and I moved to Boston from Michigan and lived together in a one-bedroom apartment for a year on stipends from the money we raised.
Realism was acquired in 2020. This experience showed me you have to work hard and give up everything to pursue what you want.
I worked at Apple during this time as well
In 2019, I also got a full-time engineering project manager job at Apple. As a kid, I was a Steve Jobs fanboy and wanted to learn how Apple built teams and managed people. I remember making mock-up designs for new versions of the Apple Watch and bringing them to the interview.
I was lucky to get an offer despite little prior employment experience. At 17, I was the youngest person I met while working there.
During my break from school working on Realism and at Apple, I lived in Boston and California with roommates and mentors. After about eight months at Apple, I decided to return to high school and complete my senior year at age 18.
I’d missed out on a lot of the social development that school offers, so I viewed going back as a personal challenge. COVID-19 hit around that time and ruined the second half of my senior year, but before that, I enjoyed building new relationships from the ground up.
Despite my time away from high school, I got into Harvard
During high school, I took some philosophy classes that opened my eyes to different ways of viewing the world. There was a whole new world of academia that I wanted to explore in more depth.
I applied to a few colleges and was lucky enough to get into Harvard. I was drawn there because of its strength in humanities, but I knew I wanted to return to entrepreneurship after earning my degree. I worked part-time as a product manager for a friend in Silicon Valley who needed help with a project during my studies.
My time at Harvard coincided with an exciting stock market period, during which meme stocks and crypto took off. This experience got me back into investing, which I’d been interested in from a very early age.
I dropped out of Harvard to focus on a new business
I wanted to build a product around the big retail investor movement I witnessed in college, so I started working on a project in my second semester as part of a business class. The product lets retail investors copy the trades of other investors automatically.
There was a demo day at the end of the semester where you pitched your product in front of mentors and venture capitalists. I invited some of Realism’s investors to watch. They told me they were keen to back whatever I did next.
In June 2021, I left Harvard to focus on the product. I’d been studying for eight months.
I didn’t tell my mom I’d dropped out at first. She was very against me leaving high school, but she saw the same spirit in me that moved her and my dad to come to the US. I think her immigrant mindset helped her accept it. This time, she only knew I left school after I’d relocated to New York in July.
Leaving college was the right choice
I’ve been focused on building Dub ever since. We have a team of around 25 and have raised over $17 million, including from Uber’s CEO and Robinhood’s founding chief operating officer. I had three cofounders at one point, but we’ve since parted ways, and I’ve been a solo founder for the past 2 years.
Think of Dub as a brokerage where you can trade, but instead of trading single stocks, you pick other investors you can copy-trade. When the person you copy makes a trade, the platform automatically mirrors that for you. We want users to be able to invest in the ideas and people they believe in.
Dropping out of Harvard was the right choice for me. I’ve never been happier. My company’s growth means there are so many things to do, which exhilarates me. I feel blessed to spend every waking minute on it.
I missed out in some ways, but I don’t regret it
I saw my friends finish college and sometimes felt jealous of their experience. I fantasize about going back to study philosophy, but for now, I’ve traded my personal life to pursue something I believe in.
If the investor craze hadn’t happened, I’d probably have finished my degree and entered the workforce. Building great products gives me the most joy in life, and when I saw the opportunity to do that, I couldn’t let it go.
Credit: Charissa Cheong, Business Insider Africa
