In 2020, a lost transcript inspired college student Zain Zaidi to start the Silicon Valley data company TransCrypts.

The now 24-year-old entrepreneur discussed his journey co-founding the multi-million-dollar firm and what it’s like being an entrepreneur, in a recent episode of EpochTV’s “Bay Area Innovators” program.

While applying to Harvard University graduate school, Zaidi had his undergraduate school, San Jose State University, send in his official transcript. However, Harvard never received it.

“It got me thinking,” he said. “After spending four years and tens of thousands of dollars in tuition getting an electrical engineering degree, why am I reliant on my school to prove that I actually graduated?”

This mishap inspired him and his business partner, Ali Zaheer, to start TransCrypts, a system that allows individuals to own their verified data history.

Upon realizing that the academic record market was too large to start with, they pivoted to the HR space, automating the process of HR verification by creating verified blockchain records, allowing employees to own and send their data.

TransCrypts currently serves 250 enterprises, where employees have their employment and income documents ready when they apply for a loan, new job, etc.

After raising angel money, TransCrypts was accepted into Techstars, a venture capital firm and startup accelerator.

Zaidi said TransCrypts was fortunate to learn from Techstars as it helped guide and accelerate the new company’s development.

“I was a college student. I didn’t know anything about how to build a company. I didn’t know anything about how to do enterprise sales,” he said. “I was lucky enough to have some great mentors and advisors along the way to kind of help me with that … but it was incredibly difficult.”

Following its involvement with Techstars, the data company started working with world-class investors, such as Mark Cuban.

Zaidi first emailed Cuban when TransCrypts was just six months old with an early version of the product, to which Cuban replied that they weren’t at the stage to receive an investment.

When Zaidi emailed Cuban a year later with the product built, he agreed to invest.

“There’s almost no one in this world who can tell you marketing better than Mark Cuban,” Zaidi said. “He’s been very responsive and receptive to our questions and concerns.”

Despite bringing in revenue, Zaidi didn’t take a salary for the first three years of the business.

“I had believed I owed a responsibility to our investors to first prove out the business model, to reduce the amount of money that we were spending by as much as possible, so that when I do decide to take a salary, it’s not off of their money; it’s off the revenue that we’re bringing in,” he said.

Many TransCrypts employees are from Canada and have come to the Bay Area, leaving behind their families, which Zaidi called “a tremendous leap of faith in the organization and in our ability to lead.”

Understanding the sacrifice his employees are making and the trust they put in him, Zaidi recognizes he has a tremendous responsibility to them.

“At the end of the day, our employees and our customers are the two things that matter the most to us. If our employees are happy and our customers are happy, the organization will succeed,” he said.

Zaidi emphasized the ethos of “give first” and the importance of making sacrifices as an entrepreneur and a leader.

“With leadership, you can’t think about yourself. You have to think about everyone else, because if you take care of everyone else, then naturally you’ll succeed as well,” he said.

Reflecting on his leadership journey, Zaidi said not firing fast enough was probably his biggest mistake thus far, as he’s had bad performers on the team and kept them longer than he probably should have.

“While firing is tough, it’s a very important part of running a successful organization,” he said. “We pride ourselves at TransCrypts in creating an organization where we view everyone as an A-plus player.”

Zaidi believes TransCrypts can become a multi-faceted, multi-product organization that empowers users with data. His goal is to build a modern-day credit bureau where you own your own data.

“I’ve talked to thousands of people about it. No one’s ever had a great experience dealing with any of the three credit bureaus,” Zaidi said. “[We want to] remove that power from them and give it back to the people.”