Foody is one of the trio of 22-year-olds from the Bay area who went from debate teammates to self-made billionaires on the back of a huge funding round for their AI recruiting startup, Mercor.
After dropping out of college at Georgetown to go all in on Mercor—Foody’s days aren’t packed with coffee chats and luxury downtime. Even with a packed calendar full of meetings (which he says on a long week could feel like 40 hours), Foody said his love for his business keeps the entrepreneur and former Thiel Fellow afloat.
“I like when I don’t have too many meetings,” Foody told Fortune. With all the investment into his business, and little free time—a good day for Foody now consists of writing documents or curating ideas.
“We work a lot, I’ve worked every day for the last three years,” he said.
“People generally burn out, not just from working hard, but from working hard on something that they don’t feel as fulfilling and compounding.”
That philosophy only came to fruition after Foody left school. Before dropping out, he thought work was something he had been disciplined to do.
“It was oftentimes things I didn’t enjoy doing,” he said. “Versus when I started Mercor, it really became this feeling of obsession that I can’t stop thinking about, even if I’m getting dinner with my parents or whatever, it’s going through the back of my head.”
“I think always making sure that I see the impact of what I do, the ROI of putting in a huge amount of time is most important,” he added.
“I can’t really take a day off, because I just have this impulsive drive to go back to it. So I think that people finding the thing that they’re obsessed with and can really pour their lives into, is one of the most important things.”
