Latest news with #DoNotPay
CNBC
2 days ago
- Business
- CNBC
CEO: I've invested in over 100 startup founders under age 25—the No. 1 ‘biggest thing' that predicts their success
Josh Browder says the most successful entrepreneurs under age 25 all share a single common trait. Browder, 28, is an entrepreneur in his own right: He's the founder of online legal services company DoNotPay, which was most recently valued at $210 million in 2021, according to Bloomberg. He's also a startup investor with his own investment firm, Browder Capital, who says he's financially backed "over 100 entrepreneurs below the age of 25 who are, by virtue of [their] company, millionaires." The "biggest thing" that correlates to success among those founders is a "deep connection" to the problem that their startup is working to solve, says Browder. When examining potential investing opportunities, Browder says he looks for founders with enough inherent passion for the area they're working on to withstand the rigors and inevitable setbacks of building a successful startup. "A lot of being an entrepreneur is like eating glass," he says, adding: "If they don't have a true connection to the problem, they're going to give up. So I look for signals that they really care about what they're building." The philosophy is relatively common logic for early-stage startup investors, who often make bets with limited data on whether companies will grow and investment firm raised $30 million in May from investors including Sequoia Capital to invest in young tech founders, Bloomberg reported at the time. Entrepreneurs under age 30 are more likely to be intensely passionate about the problem they're looking to solve, Browder says. They're "much more energetic [and] ambitious," he says. "The world is changing so quickly that these young entrepreneurs are passionate about ideas and if they don't pursue it today, they'll never get a chance to pursue it." He points to a couple of startups in his investment portfolio as examples. One of them, called Coder, makes open-source tools for software developers, and has reportedly raised at least $80 million in total funding. Its founders met in high school, made money together building plug-ins and servers for Minecraft players, and founded their company to build the sorts of developer tools they wished they'd had as teens, TechCrunch reported in June 2024. Another, — which reached a $1 billion valuation in May by building business software for restaurant owners and other small businesses — was inspired by co-founder Adam Guild's experience watching his mother struggle to grow her own dog-grooming business, Browder notes. Browder invested in in 2018, struck by Guild's conviction and personal connection to the business, he says: "He instantly struck me as one of the top 0.1% people. I thought, 'This is just such a powerful story. I have to find some way to invest in him.'" Ultimately, Browder avoids investing in founders who don't seem to be committed to their business for the long haul, he says. "A lot of people are just building companies to get it on their resume and things like that ... Just having them care deeply about the problem puts them in the top 20% [of potential investments]," says Browder. Browder's comments echo those of billionaire entrepreneur and startup investor Mark Cuban, who's long been adamant that founders should be extremely passionate about their businesses from the very beginning — rather than thinking about how much money they could eventually make by selling their stake. "Don't start a company unless it's an obsession and something you love," Cuban wrote in a 2012 column for Entrepreneur, adding: "If you have an exit strategy, it's not an obsession."
Bloomberg
14-05-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Solo VC Effort Offers Individual Touch to Early Startup Founders
Welcome to Tech In Depth, our daily newsletter with reporting and analysis about the business of tech from Bloomberg's journalists around the world. Today, Ed Ludlow talks with Josh Browder, founder and chief executive officer of DoNotPay, about running a venture capital firm as the only partner. AI chip deals: Nvidia, the leading maker of AI processors, and rival Advanced Micro Devices announced deals to supply chips to Saudi Arabia for massive data centers for artificial intelligence work. Meanwhile, the Trump administration may let the UAE buy more than a million of Nvidia's advanced AI chips, which would far exceed Biden-era limits.
Forbes
15-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Educating Entrepreneurs: Practical Lessons Learned From Thiel Fellows
The education journeys of Thiel Fellows Joshua Browder and John Andrew Entwistle show the benefits ... More of moving outside of traditional academic structures. In today's innovation-driven economy, traditional education often stifles entrepreneurial talent. Conventional school structures prioritize uniformity and passive learning—qualities at odds with the creativity and risk-taking that entrepreneurship demands. The Thiel Fellowship provides a bold alternative, empowering young innovators like John Andrew Entwistle and Joshua Browder to build groundbreaking startups by bypassing college. Their stories highlight the challenges of educating entrepreneurs within traditional frameworks and reveal why transforming learning environments to foster practical problem-solving and intrinsic motivation is essential for nurturing the next generation of innovators. Joshua Browder, the founder of DoNotPay, a company using AI to help citizens and consumers overcome bureaucratic challenges by automating solutions for issues like parking tickets, provides a striking example of the gap between educational requirements and practical learning. In his final year at Stanford, several years into the development of his company, Browder faced a dilemma: attend a mandatory dance class or resolve a server crash affecting thousands of DoNotPay customers. This decision prompted him to leave Stanford—just months before graduation—to become a Thiel Fellow. Founded by Peter Thiel in 2011, the Thiel Fellowship is a two-year program that provides financial support, mentorship, and a supportive peer network to young innovators who want to bypass or leave college and pursue entrepreneurial ventures, scientific research, or social movements. John Andrew Entwistle, the founder of and Wander, escaped the confines of conventional schooling and its restrictive structures at an early age. He launched his first company at 13 and transitioned to online high school to focus on his startups. By 20, having opted out of college, he joined the Thiel Fellowship, which he credits for offering essential peer support: 'Where else could a 20-year-old leading senior engineers find peers with similar experiences to connect with?' Entrepreneurs like Entwistle and Browder embody a producer mindset, actively creating solutions and learning through real-world challenges—contrasting with the passive consumption of textbook knowledge in traditional classrooms. This intrinsic drive to innovate often clashes with standard educational expectations. Entwistle's choice to transition to an online high school stemmed from his dedication to entrepreneurship. Likewise, Browder chose to leave Stanford rather than endure irrelevant coursework simply to obtain a degree. However, traditional education holds merit. Both entrepreneurs recognize the value of providing foundational skills when clearly aligned with individualized objectives. Yet, entrepreneurship often struggles in traditional classrooms, flourishing instead in environments that emphasize active, hands-on problem-solving. Case studies may illustrate past solutions, but genuine learning occurs best when addressing one's own daily challenges. Thus, effective educational approaches, whether conventional or alternative, must be tailored to individual student goals, readiness, and personal motivations. Both Browder and Entwistle emphasize the importance of high pain tolerance for entrepreneurs. Browder employs the familiar simile of entrepreneurship being akin to 'eating glass,' underscoring the resilience and problem-solving it requires. Entwistle concurs: 'It's tough. Most founders are optimists with high pain tolerance. Building companies young taught me humility—I assume every idea might be wrong until tested.' He views success as context-driven: 'It's not about being a 'great entrepreneur' but being the right person for a specific idea at the right time. I might not have thrived in the 1800s or with every idea today.' Therefore, educational institutions must cultivate resilience and adaptability, creating environments where students rigorously test ideas and learn constructively from failures. A significant hurdle in traditional educational contexts is fostering intrinsic motivation, particularly when students perceive assignments as irrelevant or uninteresting. For instance, students often struggle to understand why they should prioritize writing essays on obscure historical figures over engaging in more immediately gratifying activities like gaming. In entrepreneurial contexts, however, intrinsic motivation emerges naturally through personally meaningful and practically relevant tasks. Browder and Entwistle were intrinsically driven to solve real-world problems, resulting in sustained engagement that far exceeds traditional classroom expectations. This is the challenge that educational institutions face: how to incorporate real-world, personally meaningful projects into curricula to enhance intrinsic motivation and promote deeper learning when the range of activities available to most students is comparatively narrow? While entrepreneurship illustrates what can be achieved, it does not readily serve as a model for achieving enhanced relevance in drier, more academic subjects. The experiences of Thiel Fellows John Andrew Entwistle and Joshua Browder highlight the urgent challenge that traditional educational institutions face in remaining relevant and effective. As these examples clearly illustrate, entrepreneurial innovation relies on iterative experimentation, practical problem-solving, and intrinsic motivation—conditions that are often absent from conventional classrooms. To adequately prepare entrepreneurs—and indeed all learners—for a rapidly changing world, educational institutions must adopt flexible, innovation-driven models that promote personal relevance, active learning, and adaptability. Yet educating entrepreneurs serves as just one example of how the traditional educational model can fail to meet the diverse needs of individual learners. This broader transformation will require educational leaders and policymakers to consider how all curricula—not just entrepreneurial—can be made more intrinsically engaging and personally meaningful while also recognizing how formal structures like standards can contradict this goal. The entrepreneurial journeys of innovators such as Entwistle and Browder provide compelling evidence that fostering intrinsic motivation and active learning can unlock exceptional potential. The challenge lies in identifying authentic, real-world applications that offer pathways resonating with each student's interests and aspirations while still enabling the development of essential skills so that their future selves are not constrained by the goals and aspirations of their teenage years.
