🎓 Lessons for Professors and Students: How to Start a Business, Inspired by Perplexity’s CEO

At the 2025 HBS Entrepreneurship Summit, Aravind Srinivas, CEO of Perplexity AI, shared how he journeyed from academia to founding a $9B startup.

His story isn't just inspiring — it's packed with practical lessons for college students and professors dreaming of real-world impact. 🚀

Here are the key takeaways 👇

🧑‍🏫 For Professors: Create Builders, Not Just Thinkers

• Encourage hands-on experimentation: Srinivas emphasized that action produces information. It's not about perfect theories — it's about trying, testing, learning.
  
  

• Teach "small wins": Show students how to design small experiments, not just big projects. Momentum matters more than initial scale.
  
  

• Stay flexible: Srinivas’s professors supported him when he pivoted his PhD focus — adaptability leads to breakthrough ideas.
  
  

• Instill critical rigor: Perplexity’s trust model (citing sources!) is rooted in academic discipline. Good research habits can power great products.
  
  

• Promote "high-quality speed": It's not just about moving fast — it's about moving fast with excellence. Teach students how to ship and shine at the same time.
  
  

🎒 For Students: Build First, Perfect Later

• Don't overthink your first idea: Perplexity started as a weekend experiment. Start small. Iterate fast.
  
  

• Find your people: Srinivas built his team from trusted friends and collaborators — startups are powered by relationships, not résumés.
  
  

• Resilience wins: He wasn’t the "best" coder. He was the one who kept going when others gave up.
  
  

• Learn by doing: Internships at OpenAI and DeepMind weren’t just for the résumé — they taught him to think practically, move quickly, and stay humble.
  
  

🔥 Bonus Tip: Feel the Future

Srinivas realized the power of AI only after using GitHub Copilot himself.
It wasn’t a theory — it was a feeling.

Lesson for students and professors:
👉 Don’t just study innovation. Feel it. Build with it. Play with it.

Hands-on experience beats lectures when it comes to creating the future. 🛠️

🧠 Big Mindset Shifts

• From Academia: "Think deeply, plan carefully."
  
  

• To Startup Reality: "Try quickly, learn faster, stay critical."
  
  

Srinivas’s philosophy?

"It’s only over when you think it’s over. Until then, there’s always a way."

✨ Final Thought

The next great company won’t come from a perfect résumé or a polished business plan.
It will come from a messy, scrappy, brave little experiment — just like Perplexity was at the beginning.

Professors and students alike: start building now. Fail smarter. Stay curious. Party on while learning. 🎉

The future belongs to the ones who create and adapt.

#Entrepreneurship #AI #Startups #CollegeLife #Innovation #Leadership