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Life is not a bed of roses. It is what we make of it. It is taking opportunities as they come. It is making sure you are ready to take the opportunity when it comes like David Potter does.
Raised in a single-parent household, Potter’s life growing up was defined by instability. From having to move from place to place as his mother had to make ends meet, to been put in foster care in the fifth grade, to staying with an uncle and aunt after middle school.
His time here marked a change in his attotude towards education. “I liked to put an extreme amount of focus on one thing and guaranteeing that one thing succeeds,” he told becauseofthemwecan.
With the renewed interest, his grades shot up, and he took this attitude into his senior year. His determination, seriousness and drive made him eligible to apply for the Bill Gates Millennium Scholarship. In 2014, and now a Gates scholar with a full ride scholarship, Potter entered the University of Maryland, College Park, with every intention to graduate with a finance degree and where he met Abb Kapoor, his roommate and future business partner.
Their inability to get off-campus housing during their sophomore year birthed their business idea Curu. The young men were denied due to their poor credit ratings. Curu, according to the app’s website, “The beta version of Curu helps millennials build credit by matching them with the best-prequalified credit cards to confidently start building credit with. The app also takes basic information like a user’s income and monthly expenses and gives simple actions that can build a person’s credit score.”
However, plans changed when he decided to drop out of college during his junior year to pursue his entrepreneurial dreams full-time.
Seeing the possibilities and deciding to take the business serious, Potter, in his junior year, had to drop out of school and forgo his scholarship.
Being confined and fearful before, allows me now not be fearful, because I know how it’s been on the other side of that. I know what it’s like to be at the bottom, have everything against you, be homeless, be scared, and I’m not afraid of that anymore… So when it comes to taking a risk like leaving school… I’m not afraid to fail, I’m not afraid to hit the bottom because of that mix of life experiences.”
Before dropping out, the duo opted for taking hybrid course and attending only mandatory classes. Earlier this year, Potter and Kapoor took home first place in the University of Maryland’s largest business competition, Pitch Dingman Competition, where they earned more than $15,000.
Upon dropping out, they headed North Carolina where joined an accelerator program for financial-technology startups, Queen City Tech to develop their app.
“Take your disadvantages and make them advantages… whatever struggles that you face, those are stepping stones on helping you succeed,” he had vises ylung entrepreneurs.
