Selin Kocalar was a freshman at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) when she met Karun Kaushik, bonding over a shared interest in artificial intelligence and health technology. The two began their MIT programme together in 2021 but soon made an unconventional decision — dropping out to build a startup of their own.
That startup, Delve, was born in an MIT dorm room and has since scaled rapidly to reach a valuation of $300 million in just two years. Delve focuses on automating regulatory compliance using AI agents to reduce hours of manual work. Kocalar now serves as the company’s co-founder and chief operating officer.
‘Hard work alone doesn’t guarantee success’
In a recent roadside interview with vlogger Viraj Ala, Kocalar reflected on the advice that shaped — and misled — her early thinking as an aspiring entrepreneur. She described what she considers the worst advice she ever received: the belief that grit and hard work alone ensure success.
“Life is like climbing up trees, and if you put your ladder against the wrong tree, you might climb up, spend all these years doing hard work just to reach the top of the tree and then realise there was a taller tree,” she said.
Kocalar stressed that effort without direction can lead to years of misplaced energy.
“And so to really reach your global maximum life, you’ve got to first make sure your ladder is on the right tree because just working hard doesn’t guarantee anything,” she added.
Thinking generationally and choosing the hard path
According to Kocalar, long-term thinking is critical for meaningful success. She urged young founders to imagine themselves far into the future and make decisions accordingly.
“Pretend you’re a time traveller. Pretend you’re 5, 10, 50 years into the future. You’re successful, you’ve made it in life. Looking backward, how would you act now? If you were going to be Steve Jobs, how would you approach your day-to-day differently? You’ve got to think generationally,” she said.
She also spoke about deliberately choosing difficult paths to build resilience and perspective.
“Do the opposite of what everyone is doing just for the sake of it… When I had to pick a language to study, everyone took Spanish, so I took Chinese just for the sake of it,” Kocalar said.
Before launching Delve, Kocalar had an extensive research background, including eight publications by the age of 20 and an experiment conducted on the International Space Station. Delve announced a $3 million seed round in January and continues to expand its AI-driven compliance platform.