3 founders who dropped out of college share the moment they knew it was time

Steven Wang planned to start a business after graduating from Harvard.

But eight months into college life, in June 2021, he dropped out to pursue his entrepreneurial ambitions, inspired by the boom in meme stocks and crypto.

Investing was one of his long-term interests, and Wang wanted to take advantage of that year’s retail investor craze, and his company, Dub, was born.

The platform allows retail investors to automatically copy the trades of more experienced investors. In an interview published in February 2025, Wang told Business Insider that Dub had a team of around 25 people and had raised $17 million, including from Uber’s CEO and Robinhood’s founding chief operating officer.

The journey has come with trade-offs, he told Business Insider. Wang has sometimes felt jealous of friends who’ve been able to ride out the college experience, and he has fantasized about returning to study philosophy.

If the investor craze never happened, Wang said he would have probably finished his degree, but when he saw the opportunity presented by the growing investor movement, he couldn’t let it go, he said. As someone with a deep love for building products, he believes he made the right choice.