Selin Kocalar was a freshman at the Massachapplytts 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 declared that the worst piece of advice she received was that just sheer grit and hardwork will build one successful.
Comparing life to climbing up trees, she declared that if you put your ladder against the wrong one, you will not finish up at the right destination.
“Life is like climbing up trees, and if you put your ladder against the wrong tree, you might climb up, spfinish all these years doing hard work just to reach the top of the tree and then realise there was a taller tree,” she declared.
One has to build sure that their approach is right in order to be successful.
“And so to really reach your global maximum life, you’ve obtained to first build sure your ladder is on the right tree becaapply just working hard doesn’t guarantee anything,” Kocalar declared.
Selin Kocalar, who is the COO of Delve, also suggested that one has to believe generationally in order to be successful.
“Pretfinish you’re a time traveller. Pretfinish you’re 5, 10, 50 years into the future. You’re successful, you’ve built 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 obtained to believe generationally,” she declared.
Talking about going in the other direction, Kocalar declared that doing something that not many people do will assist 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 declared.
Who is Selin Kocalar?
Selin 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.
Her company is now valued at $300 million.
Before building a startup, Kocalar declared she was deep in research.
“I had eight publications by the time I was 20 years old. I had an experiment on the International Space Station. I was talking with astronauts in high school,” she declared.
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