The millionaire Boss de Soundhound founded 3 software startups even before obtaining a diploma – he says to Gen Z who wants to be their own boss `Throw Darts at random ”

And try it. As he crossed the scene of the University of Toronto to receive his baccalaureate in engineering, Mohajer already had three software companies in his name. Later, he became profitable and helped sow the Voice -Ai project that he started in his Stanford dormitory in 2004 – which evolved in Soundhound AI.

Today, the AI-Voice communication company is worth more than $ 6.5 billion and has won agreements with customers like Nvidia, Snapchat, Mercedes-Benz, etc.

For Mohajer, who is CEO, failure has never served a motivation. And, this is a lesson that generation Z wishing to launch side concerts can learn from: the desire to go out on a member and build a business from zero can seem intimidating, but it takes only a good idea to explode in a major success.

“Each attempt, you should think like the one who will succeed … because if you simply throw darts at random on the target, for each attempt, there is the one who will get the Bullseye,” said Mohajer Fortune.

From the dormitory room to the conference room

Mohajer has always grown fascinated by two things: films and robots. So, after seeing for the first time Star TrekHe has always dreamed of how to introduce computerized vocal systems in the real world. But it was only after having met his subsequent co -founders, James Hom and Majid Emami, during his doctoral program in Electric Engineering in Stanford, he realized that he could be part of the team to make it a reality.

Their first product was simple: the request by branching. Two weeks before Christmas, the team did not leave their dormitory until they could build a product that could take its database of 20,000 multimedia files and detect which song was hum. But on December 24, the code was cracked.

“It’s Christmas Eve that I finally hummed that Godfather Soundtrack, and he said to me: ‘You sing The godfather“He said to Iranian students from The Tale of A Success Series in California.

His investors’ argument has become simple: the voice fed by AI is the future. “In 20 years, we will talk to computers and they will talk to us and that will change computers.”

And even if it took years in Soundhound to get up from the ground Fortune Finding your passion, or what makes your “crush faster”, has been at the heart of its success today.

“You can do things and go through life and make boxes and check the boxes and be on average,” he says. “But I really wanted to be excellent, and I wanted to push the limits. I want to go to places that others did not go before, and that gave me the will to be an entrepreneur and to push the limits and to combine both.”

While the performance of the Soundhound market has had reflux and spectacular flows, the share price increased by more than 200% in the past year. This is partly thanks to a profit report better than expected earlier this month; The company’s revenues increased 217% in annual shift. Its market capitalization exceeds $ 6.5 billion.

Founders who made their debut in the dormitory

At a time when students question the value of a diploma, the founding history of Soundhound is another recall of innovation which often stimulates university campuses – even if it comes from the meeting of co -founders for the first time.

Companies such as Databricks, a data company of $ 62 billion, as well as Google, worth more than 2.4 billions of dollars, also planted roots in college. The two sets of founders met on the Stanford campus.

But there may not be a more famous company that has stimulated the university experience than Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg met his co-founders, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes at Harvard University and built the bases of the social platform now known as Meta (worth nearly 2 dollars).

The billionaire returned to his Alma Mater in 2017 and said that he did not expect to be such an entrepreneurial success.

“The fact is that he never even came to my mind that someone could be us,” said Zuckerberg. “We were only college students. We didn’t know anything about this. There were all these large technological companies with resources. I just thought that one of them would do it. ”

“We have all started friendships for life here, and some of us families,” he added. “This is why I am so grateful to this place. Thank you, Harvard. ”