From college dropout to the youngest self-made billionaire: Lucy Guo, co-founder of Scale AI, reveals her unconventional journey

Lucy Guo, Scale AI, co-founder (Image courtesy: LinkedIn)

Lucy Guo, recently named Forbes’ youngest self-made woman billionaire at 30, has shared insights into her unconventional path to success. With a net worth of $1.3 billion (around Rs 10,800 crore), Guo co-founded Scale AI, an artificial intelligence data-labeling company later acquired by Meta for $25 billion. She is now the founder of Passes, a content monetisation platform launched in 2022, and runs her own venture capital firm, Backend Ventures, which she started in 2019 to support early-stage tech companies, according to CNBC.

Born and raised in Fremont, California, by Chinese immigrant parents, Guo described her upbringing as disciplined and frugal, with constant lessons on the value of money. “They threw me into Abacus competitions,” she told CNBC Make It, adding that she was “definitely forced to have good academics.”

Her parents’ emphasis on education led her to study computer science and human-computer interaction at Carnegie Mellon University. Despite excelling academically, Guo left after two years, just a year short of completing her degree. “They sacrificed everything to immigrate from China to America to give their kids a better future,” she explained. “For their kids to suddenly let go of their education when they were almost done was like a slap in the face.”

Instead of finishing her degree, Guo pursued the Thiel Fellowship, a competitive programme providing $200,000 to young people to build innovative companies. “I think they [parents] viewed that as a sign that I didn’t love them,” she admitted. “When it was just me making a bet on myself and choosing to optimise for what I thought would be a better future for myself.”

According to CNBC, Guo’s early life was defined by constant hustling, influenced by parents who lived frugally but emphasised financial independence. From a young age, she sought ways to earn money. “I would find ways to make money on the playground,” she recalled, selling Pokémon cards, coloured pencils, and “anything I could find.” When her parents confiscated her earnings, she outsmarted them by opening a PayPal account and obtaining a Home Depot debit card while still in second grade.

Guo quickly moved her ventures online. A fan of the game Neopets, she began selling rare pets and in-game currency for cash. She soon discovered coding and created bots to gain advantages in games. “I then started finding other ways to make money on the internet from making websites using Google AdSense, then creating internet marketing tools... it just snowballed from there,” she said.

Her story underscores the tension between traditional expectations and the risk-taking mindset common among Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. Despite her parents’ initial disappointment, Guo’s decision to drop out of Carnegie Mellon and back herself has paid off, establishing her as one of the youngest billionaires in the world.