In this keynote Zach Yadegari recounts his three‑year entrepreneurial sprint that began at age 14. Dissatisfied with the traditional school‑to‑college‑to‑job pipeline he publicly declared a $1 million goal on YouTube, built an unblocked‑games site called TotallyScience that grew to 5 million users and sold for $100 k at 16. He then launched Cal AI, an AI‑powered calorie‑tracking app that reached roughly $30 million annual run‑rate, attracted a million users, and after a series of college rejections and a brief stint at the University of Miami, negotiated its acquisition by MyFitnessPal. Throughout, he emphasizes the feeling of being on a “conveyor belt” set by society, the importance of stepping off that path, and his decision to drop out of college while urging the audience to pursue self‑directed goals.
Chapters
I'm 19 years old, and in the last 3 years, I've sold 2 companies and generated over $50 million in revenue. But 5 years ago, I was just a normal 14-year-old. I was attending school and trying to get good grades. The greatest achievement that I thought I could reach was getting into an Ivy League school. Getting an 80 on a test was equivalent to failure in my eyes. And there was one night in particular where I was trying to study for a social studies test. I was laying on the ground tearing my hair out trying to memorize these flashcards, trying to memorize when these Spanish explorers came to the Americas, the exact dates. I just kept thinking, "Why am I trying to memorize these flashcards?" How is this going to help me make money? I realized that there was a clear path. You're supposed to go to school to get good grades so that you could get into a good college so that you could get a good job so that you can make money. I felt like I was on a conveyor belt. I felt like my destiny was just completely out of my control, and I hated it. I wanted to step off the conveyor belt, and that's when I had the first revolution— revelation in my entrepreneurial journey. I didn't know where I wanted to be, but I knew where I did not want to be. I did not want to be on that conveyor belt, and I did not want my destiny in someone else's hands where society just tells you to go. And so with that, I started the 5-year journey that would feel like 2 decades. Play the video, please. I'm going to make $1 million before graduating high school, and this YouTube channel is going to document the whole process. That was me at 14 years old, making a public declaration on YouTube for what would represent true freedom to me. $1 million, an amount that would make me completely free from stressing about grades or getting a job. And I wasn't sure how I was going to get there yet, but I decided to start by building a project that combined my passions of gaming and coding. I built an unblocked games website that lets students play games in school, bypassing the internet blocking protocols. I called it totallyscience.co. The site quickly grew to 5 million users, more users than I could have ever imagined. And so the site just kept crashing. I mean, I was 14, I didn't know what I was doing. And so I would run out of my classes to the school cafeteria and spend the rest of the day, many days a week, just coding, trying to get the site back up. I sat at a table that was supposed to be for 10 kids completely by myself, just coding. And I could feel the glances from other kids just walking by and looking at me. I became known as Totally Science in my school. I felt the pressure around me from being on a different path, but I had my mission and I just stayed, I kept my head down, I kept going. And 2 years later, I sold that website at 16 years old for $100,000. I was ecstatic. I was very far from my mission of a million dollars, that end goal that would represent freedom. I was a tenth of the way there. But for the first time ever, it felt like it was in reach. It felt like it was possible, and that emboldened me. And so I started my next project shortly after, Cal AI, an app where you could track your calories just by taking a picture of your food. And while my classmates spent their summers at camp, I, a 17-year-old kid, was interviewing 30-year-old men for developer positions. A few months in, we had reached our first million users, and my classmates were applying to college. I still hadn't hit my goal, and so I wasn't off the conveyor belt completely yet, and my parents also put a ton of pressure on me, so I applied to college. I went down the list. It was the best or nothing for me. I picked out the top 20 schools: Harvard, Yale, MIT, and applied one by one. And my grades were still good at this point because I still, I didn't wanna throw away everything. I didn't know if I would hit my goal, and so I maintained a 4.0 GPA and had a 34 out of 36 on my ACT. 6 months went by, and CalAI was doing better than I would've ever imagined. We had reached $30 million in annual run rate. I wasn't liquid yet. We were investing everything back into the growth of the company, But it was very clear that I was going to hit my goal, marking freedom. And my college results came in. I opened them up one by one. Harvard, rejected. Stanford, rejected. Yale, rejected. I was rejected from 15 out of the 18 schools that I applied to. I was shocked. I thought at least I would get into one of the Ivy Leagues. But no, I took a breath and calmed myself. Shh. I realized if anything, this was God or the universe just reaffirming that I wasn't supposed to be on the conveyor belt. I realized and recognized that I didn't need to go to college anymore for the typical reasons of trying to get a good job. But I did recognize that there could be value in the social life aspect. So I decided to commit to actually U Miami with one of my high school best friends to spend some time in the Sunshine State of Florida. And with college around the corner, I realized that it might hurt my productivity. And so I started looking into selling Cal AI. I made a list of the top 10 potential acquirers that I thought might be interested and had a mutual friend connect us. After hours of meetings and sending papers back and forth, Nobody really was interested except one. We got our first offer that came in. Valuations for companies like Cal AI, a consumer app, an AI consumer app, are typically 1 to 5x revenue. So I was expecting anything from $30 million to $150 million. I read the offer. $10 million. $10 million. That was a third of the revenue we were going to make that year. Obviously, $10 million is a ton of money, but it would just make way more sense to keep the company. And so I started to lose hope that we were ever going to sell. It seemed like we were just going to hold on to it and cash flow it until it slowly died. And so that led us to start to work on making the company long— longer-term sustainable. We started to diversify our marketing channels and we started to build on top of infrastructure that we thought would help us last longer as a company. Another 6 months went by and we kept growing steadily. Went from 12th in the charts to 8th to 6th to 4th. We had passed our biggest competitor, MyFitnessPal. A couple weeks later, I connected on a call with their CEO. They were interested in acquiring us. I didn't think much of it because of the last experience, but I still jumped through the hoops half-heartedly. They made their offer. Now legally I can't say what the offer was, but after months of negotiations and due diligence, we finally and officially sold Cal AI to MyFitnessPal. It was crazy. And if my 14-year-old self had ignored the feeling that I was not where I was supposed to be, then I would be in a college classroom right now instead of speaking at Forbes 30 Under 30. I want everyone in this audience to to think about something in your life where you just feel like you're on a conveyor belt that someone else put you on, heading towards a direction, a goal that someone else set for you. Where do you actually want to be? And it's very scary to fully step off the conveyor belt. I'm not asking you to do that. I didn't do that. I still maintain my grades in school. But at least take one foot off and start moving towards the goal that you actually want to achieve. And to you, Miami, I had a great time, and I think it's better than any Ivy, and anyone would be honored to go there. It's an amazing school. But please take this as my resignation. I'm dropping out. Thank you, Forbes.
