Sebastian Tan

I grew up with entrepreneurs as my heroes.

I read The Everything Store in fifth grade, and I've wanted to be a founder ever since. Like Jeff Bezos, my mother raised me alone. I learned self-reliance from attending Montesorri School. I spent the summer heat running the family store. He worked at a McDonald's growing up. For me, it was Wendy's.

In middle school, it was Steve Jobs. I spent these years blowing off school and building a lot of computers. I almost burned the house down mining Bitcoin in the basement. I nearly blew the house up soldering batteries in the garage. After fuck-ups like those, I watched his speech on YouTube. It has almost 50M views.

In high school, it was Peter Thiel and Elon Musk. Both built things because they believed America was worth fighting for. After high school, I deferred Stanford to work at Palantir. My high school class threw a fit, but I went anyway. My family came to this country with nothing, and it gave us a chance. We hang flags in the office to remind us of this.

Now, I admire the new generation. Michael Truell. Patrick Collison. Henrique Dubugras. They all started very young. Being young is intimidating, but for every experienced person who thinks you're stupid, there's one who respects your willingness to try. It's a reminder that you don't have to wait to do something meaningful.

In the future, I dream of being like the people on this list. I've started three companies. The first helped thousands of people with criminal records find work. The second was acquired the summer after high school. And the third one, I'm building now. I don't consider any of them to be successful yet, but in time, I think one will.