Indian-origin co-founder of $300 million startup reveals the worst advice she got: ‘Hard work…’

selin Kocalar, who met co-founder Karun Kaushik at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2021, dropped out after a year to build Delve. (Image credit: LinkedIn)

By the time she was 20, Selin Kocalar had eight publications to her credit. She also had an experiment on the International Space Station and had chatted with astronauts when she was in high school. At 21, the Indian-origin woman is an MIT dropout and the co-founder and CEO of a $300 million AI-led compliance startup, Delve.

Speaking about her success at a recent roadside interview with vlogger Viraj Ala, the entrepreneur said effort alone is not enough if one is “climbing the wrong tree”. She said the worst career advice she ever received was that sheer grit and hard work guarantee success.

“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,” Kocalar said. “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, who met co-founder Karun Kaushik at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2021, dropped out after a year to build Delve. The company, founded from an MIT dorm room, raised a $3 million seed round in January and has since expanded rapidly on the back of its AI tools that automate regulatory compliance, Mint reported.

‘Think like a time traveller’

Kocalar also encouraged young founders to adopt a long-term mindset, urging them to imagine themselves decades into the future and act in ways consistent with that vision.

“Pretend you’re 5, 10, 50 years into the future… If you were going to be Steve Jobs, how would you approach your day-to-day differently?” She advised doing the opposite of the crowd “just for the sake of it,” recalling how she chose to study Chinese when most classmates picked Spanish. Challenging oneself, she said, forces growth.