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In a week brimming with historical university initiatives and industry-leading speakers in an effort to foster an entrepreneurial culture on campus, Penn State may have saved its most famous presenter for last by closing the annual IST Startup week on Friday with the CEO of the popular file-hosting service Dropbox, Drew Houston.
Houston, an MIT computer science graduate, met his future business partner while in school, and attributes much of his success to his time spent at college, not from corporate experiences. Hardly 15 years later, experts now estimate Dropbox to be worth roughly $10 billion, and Forbes estimated Houston’s net worth at $1.2 billion in 2014. Dropbox was built from Houston’s entrepreneurial spirit and startup mentality in which he wasn’t afraid to pursue a passion in an effort to solve a problem. It’s the same sort of spirit that Penn State has sought to foster through its annual IST Startup Week.
Houston’s beginnings stemmed from a love of computer gaming, and an interest in the mechanics behind them. His curiosity led him to make his own discoveries about the engineering behind computers, but more importantly created a lifelong passion for programming.
“I signed up to test a game, and started poking around under the hood,” he said in a small room in the HUB, just hours before his on-campus presentation to conclude the week’s events.
After journeying to MIT, Houston knew he wanted to study computer science as it fell right in line with his interests. He worked hard in the classroom and joined a fraternity, where he found himself learning lessons that went far beyond academics or his computer.
“I took a bunch of offices. I had no idea at the time but those were my first courses in management, trying to get 35 unpaid volunteers to do anything,” he said, recalling a struggle familiar to the officers of any student organization.
Eventually, Houston felt that the time was right to create his own company.
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