Reference News Network, September 10 report: The U.S. "Fortune" magazine website recently published an article titled "The Millionaire Boss of SoundHound AI Company Founded Three Software Startups Before Graduating from University, He Tells the Z-Generation Who Want to Be Their Own Boss: 'Don't Shoot in the Dark'". The author is Preston Fu. The full text is as follows:

For someone who emigrated from Iran to the United States at the age of 17, with almost no knowledge of English, becoming a tech entrepreneur might seem like an impossible dream. But Kevan Mokhber has always held this belief: without trying, nothing great can be achieved.

He did try. When Mokhber stood on the stage at the University of Toronto to receive his bachelor's degree in engineering, he already had three software companies. Each of them eventually became profitable and laid the foundation for the voice AI project he launched in 2004 in his dorm room at Stanford University, which later became SoundHound AI.

Today, this AI voice communication company is valued at over $6.5 billion and has formed partnerships with numerous clients such as NVIDIA, the photo-sharing app "Sorab", and Mercedes-Benz.

For Mokhber, who serves as CEO, failure has always been a source of motivation. Z-generation individuals eager to pursue side jobs can take this lesson: daring to take risks and starting from scratch may sound daunting; however, with just one good idea, it can lead to great success.

Mokhber told "Fortune": "Every attempt you make, you should see it as one that will surely succeed... don't shoot in the dark. Every attempt, you should use your past experience, and eventually, it will succeed."

Mokhber was fascinated by two things since childhood: movies and robots. So, after watching "Star Trek" for the first time, he dreamed of how to bring computer voice systems into reality. But it wasn't until he met his future co-founders James Houlm and Majid Emami during his Ph.D. studies in electrical engineering at Stanford University that he realized he could form a team and turn this idea into reality.

Their first product was simple: song queries through humming. Two weeks before Christmas, the team stayed in their dormitory until they developed a product that could detect songs being hummed from a database containing 20,000 media files. On December 24th, the code was finally cracked.

He said at a lecture series called "Success Stories of Iranian Students in California": "On Christmas Eve, I hummed the song from 'The Godfather', and it finally told me, 'You're singing 'The Godfather'.'"

His pitch to investors became simple: AI voice is the future. "In 20 years, we will be talking to computers, and computers will talk back to us, which will change computing."

Although SoundHound AI took years to get off the ground, he told "Fortune" magazine that finding what he was passionate about, or what made him "excited," was the key to his current success.

"You can do something and live a normal life, go through the motions, achieve some goals, and become an ordinary person," he said, "but I yearn for excellence, yearn to break boundaries. I want to go where others have never gone, which gives me the motivation to be an entrepreneur, pushing my limits and combining both."

In an era where students are beginning to question the value of degrees, the entrepreneurial story of SoundHound AI reminds us again that innovation often emerges on university campuses, even if this innovation comes merely from the initial meeting of co-founders.

Companies like the data software company "Data Brick" valued at $62 billion and Google, which is worth over $2.4 trillion, also took root in universities. The founders of both companies met at Stanford University. (Translated by Zhao Feifei)

Original: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7548406046709121599/

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