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№ 2013.007 — Massachusetts Institute of Technology — Commencement address
Drew Houston
Co-founder and CEO, Dropbox
Dropbox CEO Drew Houston, an MIT alumnus, addresses graduates by encouraging them to embrace risk and failure as part of real-world success. He urges them to find their passion—what he calls their 'tennis ball'—a problem they can't resist pursuing, and reassures them that setbacks don't define their future. The address is part of MIT's 2013 Commencement, which also featured remarks from President L. Rafael Reif and student leaders.
Key moments
- 01 Encouraging graduates to find a new 'fire hose' after MIT, referencing his Dropbox experience
- 02 Reframing failure: 'No one has a 5.0 in real life' and 'You only have to be right once'
- 03 Comparing passion for work to a dog chasing a tennis ball
- 04 Urging graduates to find the thing that pulls them rather than pushing themselves
Visual speech map
Drew Houston at MIT, 2013
A commencement address about the fire hose after MIT, Dropbox, failure, risk, passion, the tennis ball test, and being right once in real life.
- 01 MIT alum
- 02 Dropbox
- 03 Fire hose
- 04 No 5.0
- 05 Right once
- 06 Risk
- 07 Tennis ball
- 08 Pull
Return
An MIT founder speaks from the other side
Houston returns as a recent alumnus whose Dropbox story gives the address an entrepreneurial frame: the real world is less graded and more open-ended.
The advice comes from someone close enough to remember the Institute clearly.
A startup path becomes evidence that useful ideas can begin as personal frustration.
Leaving MIT means finding a new source of intensity and learning.
Failure
No one has a 5.0 in real life
The speech reframes failure as normal information rather than a permanent label, lowering the fear that can keep talented people cautious.
Real life does not preserve a perfect transcript.
Mistakes become data when they are used instead of hidden.
A less graded world creates room for experimentation.
Risk
You only have to be right once
Houston urges graduates to accept asymmetric risk: many attempts can fail, but one deeply right choice can define a direction.
The path is not optimized by avoiding every miss.
Starting before certainty is part of creating opportunity.
Graduates can choose problems worth repeated attempts.
Passion
Find the tennis ball that pulls you
The closing image asks graduates to find the problem they cannot stop chasing, the work that pulls harder than discipline alone can push.
Passion is visible in sustained attention.
The right problem makes effort feel self-renewing.
A career can be organized around what keeps calling you back.
Transcript
The full transcript is hosted by the original publisher. Commencement Archive links to the source rather than republishing copyrighted text.
Read the full transcript at source →Provenance
Verified from official archive; cross-referenced with NPR commencement archive; cross-referenced with Open Commencement DB
NPR archive last updated in 2015; destination availability has not been exhaustively rechecked | Open Commencement DB transcript; not independently verified against the original recording