At just 30 years old, Lucy Guo has joined the ranks of billionaire college dropouts like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, amassing a $1.25 billion net worth, according to Forbes. Guo’s meteoric rise came after her first company, Scale AI, was acquired by Meta in a deal valuing the AI data labeling firm at $29 billion, CNBC reported. Guo, now the founder of Passes, a content creator monetization platform launched in 2022, shared with ‘CNBC Make It’ that she veered from the traditional path of higher education. After studying computer science and human-computer interaction at Carnegie Mellon University, Guo left the program just two years in, with only one year and eight classes left to graduate. The decision stunned her Chinese immigrant parents.“They sacrificed everything to immigrate from China to America to give their kids a better future,” Guo told CNBC Make It. “For their kids to suddenly let go of their education when they were almost done was like a slap in the face.” “I think they [parents] viewed that as a sign that I didn’t love them, and they weren’t very happy with it, when it was just me making a bet on myself and choosing to optimize for what I thought would be a better future for myself,” she said.Instead of finishing her degree, Guo pursued the Thiel Fellowship, a program by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel that awards $200,000 to young entrepreneurs to build innovative companies. “I think [my parents] viewed that as a sign that I didn’t love them,” Guo said. “It was just me making a bet on myself and choosing to optimize for what I thought would be a better future.” Despite her unconventional path, Guo sees value in college for its networking opportunities. “One to two years in college is actually just incredibly great because you’re going to make the best friends in college, and you’re going to meet the smartest people,” she told CNBC Make It. “There’s no other scenario where there’s such a high concentration of smart people who are also looking to make friends.”Guo noted that unlike workplaces or social events, where people may already have established circles, college offers a unique environment for building lifelong connections. Her story underscores a growing trend of entrepreneurs prioritizing real-world experience over traditional education, while still recognizing the social benefits of a campus environment.
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