Recently, Hurun Research Institute released the “2023 Global Unicorn List,” which lists the world’s non-listed companies founded after 2000 with a market value of more than $1 billion. These companies are known to have unlimited potential and are difficult to replicate, and have always attracted the attention of the investment community.
The most high-profile isScale AI founded by Chinese-American Alexandr Wang, whichranks 101with 50.5 billion yuan.
The company, founded in 2016, has grown into one of the largest AI companies in Silicon Valley in just a few years. Its founder, Alexandr Wang, has also become a billionaire, and the 26-year-old has been dubbed the “next Musk.”
Alexandr Wang is very young, born in 1997. He was originally a student at MIT, but dropped out of school shortly after entering school to start his own business. When the company was founded, he was just 19 years old, and it was his freshman summer vacation.
Alexandr Wang’s parents are physicists, and they certainly don’t support dropping out of school.However, seeing Alexandr’s passion for his work, as well as his efforts in research and management, they finally chose to let go and respect their children’s choice of life.
Similarly, Alexandr Wang met Lucy Guo, who also dropped out of school, in the early days of his business.Lucy is also a Chinese American and a Theil Fellowship recipient. This scholarship encourages students to leave school and start a business, and will provide help in terms of funds, contacts, resources and so on.
It was the meeting and joining forces of two young people that led to one of the fastest-growing companies in history.
This also made some people start to think:When children are struggling between traditional education and innovation and entrepreneurship, what should parents do to really help their children?
01
19-year-old Chinese boy dropped out of school to start a business,some ideas can't wait
Alexandr Wang grew up in New Mexico, United States of America, and his success was inextricably linked to his family.
His parents, both physicists at the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Lab in America, naturally valued his education.Alexandr’s worldview was influenced by his parents, and his ideal was to change the world.
Alexandr Wang is very good at math. He participated in the national math competition in the sixth grade of primary school. He probably inherited a talent for science from his parents.He came into contact with the computer early, and showed a very high enthusiasm, after his parents saw, asked people to teach him programming and computer technology.
After high school, he was admitted to the top MIT school with honors, majoring in mathematics and computer science– the majors he excels at.
In his freshman year, Alexandr wanted to work as a programmer at a big company.Instead of learning in a classroom, he had always wanted to do something, and the school curriculum had failed to fulfill his dream.
In fact, long before college, Alexandr interned in many companies. At the age of 17, he went to Silicon Valley alone to work on the famous online question-and-answer site “Quora.” He struggled so much with his on-campus education and working early that the CEO of Quora told him that four years of college might be overrated. Alexandr was deeply touched.
Also in the “Quora” internship, Alexandr met the same Chinese girl Lucy Guo. Lucy is also out of school after the business alone, two young people always collision out a lot of new ideas.
During the summer vacation, Alexandr went to Silicon Valley again. This time he is not simply an intern, but a serious business. It was 2016, and he founded the company Scale AI with Lucy Guo, and got investment from a venture capital firm.
Alexandr’s parents were worried it would interfere with his studies, and Alexandr simply replied that it was just something he wanted to do over the summer. But in fact, as the company got bigger and bigger, it became clear that he couldn’t go back to school.
He has seen the vast world in Silicon Valley, and met young people like himself who are entrepreneurs. This makes him feel that the diploma may not be so important, but the important thing is how to plan for the future.
02
A 20-year-old girl on a Tell scholarship,
solo Silicon Valley OpportunityAlexandr’s entrepreneurial partner, Lucy Guo, also has an extraordinary life.
In 1994, Lucy was born in Miami, Florida, to Chinese parents who worked as electricians in America. She came into contact with computer technology relatively early; shebegan to learn programming in the second grade of elementary school and was able to create websites by herself in the sixth grade.
In high school, Lucy began experimenting with networking marketing and made a five-figure income. She was one of the creators of the first Twitter bots and has also participated in hackathons. She often works part-time as a freelance developer and has created numerous consumer web and mobile apps.
What she loves most is applying what she has learned to life.She felt that she could get more out of practice, than she could learn from sitting in a classroom.
After high school, Lucy attended Carnegie Mellon University, where she studied computer science and human-computer interaction. She did so well in her studies that after three years there she was awarded a $100 thousand Thiel Fellowship. It was 2014, and Lucy was just 20.
The Thiel Scholarship is also a “different” among many scholarships. Instead of supporting students to complete their studies, the organizers invited them to start a business in Silicon Valley. The Thiel Fellowship selects more than 20 young people from around the world each year to provide business mentors, contacts and funding to get them into social entrepreneurship early.
The scholarship’s founder, Peter Thiel, has invested in a number of high-profile companies, most notably Facebook – he took a 10.2% stake in the company in 2004, donating $500 thousand to Zuckerberg. Now that Lucy has the same opportunity, she is not willing to give up.
Lucy’s parents didn’t support her. For one thing, dropping out of school means giving up the prestige of a prestigious school, and for another, it’s just too hard for women to succeed in science and technology.
But instead of listening to her family, Lucy dropped out of college after her junior year and headed for Silicon Valley. She didn’t give up at all, just felt excited and cool, because many of the big names in the tech industry dropped out of school to start their own businesses.
In Silicon Valley, Lucy interned at Facebook, then at Quora, and became Snapchat’s first female designer.
She said in an interview:”Thank you to Thiel Fellow for giving me the opportunity to pursue my dreams earlier. Plus, this place is amazing. There are a group of young founders who understand you, push you to the limit and help you become a smarter, more mature person.”
A year later, she met Alexandr Wang, two young Chinese decided to joint venture.
03
After 90 Chinese joined forces,
both were famous for 5 years.
When the data tagging company ScaleAI was founded in 2016, Alexandr Wang was only 19 years old and Lucy Guo was 21. Their idea is very simple, they can write code, but also interested in the field of artificial intelligence, so it must be able to create a world.
It wasn’t easy at first, recruiting was hard because the company looked like a joke. The first reaction of the applicant is: “Why should I work here, why should I entrust my career to such two young people?”
Fortunately, Dan Levine, a partner at Accel, a venture-capital firm, saw their potential when he put up $4.5 million in seed money and loaned them his basement.
The development has been going well since then, when the two young people discovered that they could annotate data while training machine learning models so they could work with companies at the forefront of AI, such as self-driving car companies. The idea was quickly realized, and they quickly established partnerships with more than 300 automotive companies around the world.
The company expanded rapidly, growing from an initial two-person team to 300 people, plus tens of thousands of contract workers around the country.In 2018, Alexandr and Lucy were both named to Forbes’ “30 Under 30 Tech Elite” list.
In 2018, Lucy left Scale, neither she nor Alexandr explained much, but she kept her equity. Even if they go their separate ways, both of them shine in different areas.
Scale AI has attracted more and more investment. In 2019, Peter Thiel’s founder’s fund invested $100 million to turn Scale AI into a Silicon Valley unicorn.The market value of Scale AI soared to $7.3 billion in 2021 after several rounds of financing!
The founder, Alexandr Wang, has also risen in value and is now sitting on a $1 billion super-rich. In 2022, he made the Forbes list, becoming the world’s youngest self-made billionaire.
After leaving, Lucy founded the investment company Backend Capital, and then founded the technology start-up Moment, and life was full and colorful.
Today, Lucy owns a $6.7 million condo in Florida and lives next door to soccer star David Beckham.
Lucy is worth $440 million and is listed by Forbes as one of the richest self-made women under the age of 40.
04
Give children the best education,
is to cultivate a strong heart
Most parents can’t accept their children dropping out of school, especially from prestigious schools. Whether Alexandr Wang, or Lucy Guo, their parents were clearly opposed when they learned that their children wanted to quit school and start a business. In fact, even after the child’s success, parents will still be upset.
Parents’ feelings are easy to understand.However, there is no denying that at a certain stage of children’s growth, parental control will actually become weaker and weaker.
And what parents can do, perhaps, is to cultivate their strong hearts from an early age, so that they can have something they really love, and they can take responsibility for their choices, and at the same time, there are some small hobbies that can ease their mood.
Both Alexandr Wang and Lucy Guo are very ego-oriented people. In addition to being obsessed with computers and programming, Alexander also enjoys reading and writing. He has studied the violin and enjoys hiking.These hobbies enable him to have a clear perception and judgment of life and to adjust his mood in time even under heavy pressure to take control of his life.
As one of the most successful female programmers, Lucy Guo has a strong spiritual world. She loves skydiving, scuba diving, motorcycling and other extreme sports. She has multiple professional licenses and is preparing to get her glider license.
She always had the appearance of being fearless,With the courage and courage of a young man. It is also such a strong, can support her firmly out of their own way.
Dropouts succeed, but fail more often. In the face of major choices in life, how to choose in the end, Alexandr Wang believes that Jobs’s words are very reasonable:
Life will inevitably be confused, and children always have to make choices. Instead of arguing about right and wrong with their growing up, it is better to teach him to have a strong heart from an early age, not only to resist the external wind and rain, but also to clarify his own heart. That way, no matter what choice they make, they can live their lives.
