Dropping out of college to build a startup has become almost part of startup mythology. You get an idea, decide school is slowing you down, leave, and go all in. Som Mohapatra’s story is interesting because that path actually worked for him, but his advice to student founders is much more cautious than you might expect.
Som came to UVA already thinking about entrepreneurship. He even wrote in his college application that he would probably start a fintech startup and drop out. During his first semester, he started a prediction-market company, years before companies like Kalshi and Polymarket became prominent, but ultimately shut it down. His second company was different. During his second year, Som started taking startups more seriously, switched some of his classes to pass/fail so he could spend more time building, and within a few months he and his team had raised roughly $500,000 for a fintech startup. That company eventually became Quantbase.
Start With a Gap Semester, Not a Permanent Decision
Even after raising money, Som did not immediately drop out. He took a gap semester. That gap semester became a gap year, and the company kept earning more of his time. Quantbase eventually grew to roughly 30,000 clients, got into Y Combinator, raised several million dollars, and was later sold for a mid-seven-figure amount.
That progression is probably the most important part of his story. Som’s advice is not that student founders should leave school the moment something feels promising. In fact, he is pretty strongly against dropping out after your first semester just because you are excited about an idea. He told me he was glad he had his first two years at UVA, built close friendships, and actually had the experience of being in school.
For founders who are further along and starting to see real traction, his recommendation is much simpler: take a gap semester. His reasoning is that, in many cases, it is relatively low risk. If the company does not work, you can come back. If it does work, you have given yourself several months to see whether it deserves even more of your time.
Let the Company Earn More of Your Time
Som did not really think of himself as having dropped out until after the company had gotten into YC and raised several million dollars. Until then, he kept extending the amount of time he gave the company as the evidence got stronger.
That creates a much better framework than asking, “Should I drop out?” A better question is, “Has this startup actually earned the right to take more of my time?”
At the beginning, maybe it deserves your evenings. Then maybe your summer. Then maybe a semester. If customers are paying, the company is growing, investors are committing capital, or the opportunity is becoming genuinely difficult to pursue while staying in school full-time, then maybe it deserves more. The commitment should grow with the evidence.
That is what makes a gap semester so useful. It turns what feels like a huge, permanent decision into a smaller experiment. You are not deciding whether to abandon school forever. You are deciding whether the company has earned a few months of full-time attention.
What Counts as a Real Signal?
Later in our conversation, I asked Som how you know whether you are actually building something real, rather than people just helping because they like you. His answer was one word: money.
People saying they like your idea is easy. People agreeing to test something is useful, but still imperfect. For Som, one of the clearest signals is whether someone is willing to sign a contract or actually pay for the product.
That matters even more for student founders because students often have access to professors, mentors, alumni, friends, and entrepreneurship programs that genuinely want to encourage them. That support can be incredibly valuable, but encouragement is not the same thing as market validation.
Before making a major life decision around a startup, you want signals that are harder to fake. Customers paying. Users sticking around. Revenue growing. Investors committing. The company becoming something that genuinely needs more of your time.
None of those guarantees success, but they give you a much stronger reason to make a bigger commitment than simply believing the idea is good.
Dropping Out Should Be the Result, Not the Strategy
Som eventually finished his degree in an unusual way. He only had two classes left and completed a couple of exams, largely because his parents wanted him to finish. But by then, the company had already pulled him away from campus.
That is why “dropping out” is almost the wrong framing. It should not be the strategy. The strategy is to build the company, collect evidence, and keep giving it more of your time only when the evidence justifies it.
If that eventually means leaving school, fine. But ideally, by the time you make that decision, it does not feel like a blind leap. It feels like the logical next step because the company has already given you enough reasons to believe that staying in school full-time is now the bigger constraint.
The Biggest Takeaway
Som’s story is not really a story about dropping out. It is a story about increasing your commitment only as the company gives you more evidence.
He did not leave school just because he liked the idea of being a founder. He took a gap semester, watched the company grow, kept extending that time as the opportunity became more real, and only fully moved on from school after the company had reached a very different level.
For student founders, that is probably the better model. You do not need to make a permanent decision early. Start with the smallest reversible step, build, see if people will pay, and keep asking whether the company has genuinely earned more of your time.
If, eventually, staying in school becomes the thing holding back a real opportunity, then the decision may become much clearer.