So I pull up in my Accord and open the trunk, and next I'm dragging all my computer stuff and all these wires into our little cottage. But I really wanted to keep working on my poker bot. In the middle of all this, my mom and dad wanted all of us to come up to New Hampshire to spend a family weekend together. It was like a switch went on - suddenly I was a machine.
I would think about it in the middle of the night. A poker bot means you can have your computer lose all your money for you.īut it was a fascinating challenge. For those of you who don't know what a poker bot is, what happens when you play poker online is first, you sit for hours and click buttons, and then you lose all your money. Of course, if you're in course 6, sometimes "taking a break" means writing a poker bot. Starting a company had been my dream, and, well, maybe I didn't have what it takes after all. I felt like I had to paddle harder and harder to make progress, and at some point I just snapped and couldn't deal with any more math questions about parallel lines or the train leaving Memphis at 3:45. I wasn't planning to get my MBA on the roof of Phi Delta Theta, but that's what happened.Ī couple years later, things started going downhill. I had this green nylon folding chair that I'd drag up there along with armfuls of business books I bought off Amazon and I'd spend every weekend reading about marketing, sales, management and all these other things I knew nothing about. I lived in my fraternity house every summer, and up on the fifth floor there's a ladder that goes up to the roof. The next order of business was to hand them out at conferences, and tell girls "why yes, I do have a company." It was awesome.īut the best part was learning all kinds of new things. Clearly, the most important order of business was to Photoshop a logo and print out some business cards that said "Founder" on them. I stopped at Staples on the way home to pick up some card stock. Well, actually, we called it "The Accolade Group, LLC" which we thought sounded a lot more impressive. We called it Accolade, an SAT vocab word meaning an award of distinction. Most kids back then were still using these old-school 800-page books, and the other online prep courses weren't very good. Over onion strings we decided that our company was going to make a new kind of online course for the SAT. It was a little anti-climactic, but we were in business.
It turns out you can just go online and fill out a form and be done in about two minutes. We were wondering if you needed to wear a suit to City Hall, or if you needed to make a company seal for stamping important documents. My cofounder, Andrew Crick, and I had never done this before. I started my first company in a Chili's when I was 21. I know this doesn't make any sense right now, but bear with me. There would be a tennis ball, a circle, and the number 30,000. If you were to look at my cheat sheet, there wouldn't be a lot on it. So what I want to do is give you a little cheat sheet, the one I would have loved to have had on my graduation day. But nobody tells you that after today, the recipe for success changes. What got you here was basically being smart and working hard. I've thought about what I would do if I had to start all over again. I've thought a lot about what's different about the life you're beginning today.
In fact, I've never really had a grand plan - and what I realize now is that it's probably impossible to have one after graduation, if ever. I had no idea.īeing up here in robes and speaking to all of you today wasn't exactly part of my plan seven years ago. Or who knows? Maybe things will go horribly wrong. Maybe you'll start a company, or cure cancer, or write the great American novel. The hard thing about planning your life is you have no idea where you're going, but you want to get there as soon as possible. Get into this prestigious institution so you can get into the next prestigious institution. There are a lot of reasons why this is a special day, but the reason I'm so excited for all of you is that today is the first day of your life where you no longer need to check boxes.įor your first couple decades, success in life has meant jumping through one hoop after another: get these test scores, get into this college. I still wear my Brass Rat, and turning this ring around on graduation day is still one of the proudest moments of my life. I'm so happy to be back at MIT, and it's an honor to be here with you today. Thank you Chairman Reed, and congratulations to all of you in the class of 2013. Below is the prepared text of the Commencement address by Drew Houston '05, the CEO of Dropbox, for MIT's 147th Commencement held June 7, 2013.