Tom Szaky Highlight

Tom Szaky

Co-Founder,

Terracycle

The challenging part is in the beginning; it's a leap of faith.

About Tom

His parents immigrated to Canada from Hungary and they always placed a huge emphasis on his education.
When he went to Princeton University, he encountered a problem: while in Canada, he could drink alcohol at 18, the legal age limit in the U.S. is 21.
To solve that problem, he and his friends took a weekend road trip up to Montreal.
While there, they hung out with some friends who were using worm poop (rather than chemical fertilizer) to grow plants in their basement.
He realized that you can get paid to take someone's garbage, and then, using the worms, you could turn that into a fertilizer you could sell.
After he returned to Princeton, he was obsessed by the idea; he drew out a business plan in his dorm room and decided to drop out to pursue it.
His parents had a hard time accepting that he was going to drop out of this amazing university, but his passion for the project reassured them.
Today, TerraCycle is a multi-million-dollar green company, and in 2006, Tom was named "#1 CEO Under 30."