# I dropped out of college and built a $3.6B company from scratch

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/my-first-million-438184/i-dropped-out-of-college-and-built-a-3-6b-company-from-scratch
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/my-first-million-438184/i-dropped-out-of-college-and-built-a-3-6b-company-from-scratch.md
Podcast: [My First Million](https://stenobird.com/podcast/my-first-million-438184)
Published: 2026-07-02T10:01:00+00:00
Episode link: https://pdst.fm/e/traffic.megaphone.fm/HS3055537431.mp3
Audio file: https://pdst.fm/e/traffic.megaphone.fm/HS3055537431.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/my-first-million-438184/episodes/i-dropped-out-of-college-and-built-a-3-6b-company-from-scratch
Duration seconds: 3505

## Resource

Get Sam and Shaan's hard-won CEO lessons in one guide: https://clickhubspot.com/ktng Episode 838: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) talk to Aaron Levie ( https://x.com/levie ) talk about building Box, getting rich slowly, why AI might make us work harder. — Show Notes: (0:00) Story of Box (06:30) Enterprise Over Consumer (10:00) Turning Down Huge Acquisition Offers (17:05) Angel Investing, Missed Bets, and Investing in Your P&L (23:00) Aaron’s Contrarian AI Takes: More Jobs, More Work (30:00) Founder Anxiety, Therapy, and Surviving the CEO Grind (38:45) The Business Strategy Books Aaron Swears By (48:00) AI Tools, Software Stocks, and Why SaaS Isn’t Dead — Links: • Box - https://www.box.com/ — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton (joinhampton.com): My community for founders. Average member does $25m/year. Many of the guests are members. Get after it...apply: http://joinhampton.com/mfm — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Shaan's weekly email - https://www.shaanpuri.com • Visit https://www.somewhere.com/mfm to hire worldwide talent like Shaan and get $500 off for being an MFM listener. Hire developers, assistants, marketing pros, sales teams and more for 80% less than US equivalents. • Mercury - Shaan uses Mercury for banking across all of his companies. you can too: http://mercury.com/ Mercury is a fintech company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column, N.A., and Evolve Bank & Trust, Members FDIC • I run all my newsletters on Beehiiv and you should too + we're giving away $10k to our favorite newsletter, check it out: beehiiv.com/mfm-challenge My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by HubSpot Media // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Tru…

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