Name: The College Mistake That Turned a Student Into a Silicon Valley CEO
Uploaded: 2026-07-22T05:59:36.000Z
Description: Our innovator today is Zain Zaidi, who started his business, TransCrypts, at the age of 21 with a dream to revolutionize the way personal records are managed.

Steve is an investigative reporter based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Steve Ispas

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Steve Ispas is an investigative journalist with The Epoch Times and the host of Epoch TV’s “Bay Area Innovators” program. Steve grew up in Eastern Europe, and lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for 35 years. He worked in the tech industry for 15 years at LSI Logic and Rambus, and has been with The Epoch Times in various positions since 2003. His recent coverage includes an in-depth exclusive investigation of the secret Chinese biolab discovered in Reedley, Calif., in 2022.

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When San Jose State University lost the transcripts Zain needed to send to Harvard for graduate school, he came up with an idea to solve the problem, which eventually led him to start a successful company with millions in revenue.

Our innovator today is Zain Zaidi, who started his business, TransCrypts, at the age of 21 with a dream to revolutionize the way personal records are managed.

“It’s extremely difficult. You know, I was a college student. I didn’t know anything about building a company or doing enterprise sales,” said Zain. “You might make mistakes, which is OK, but the next opportunity you get, can you fix that mistake and do a little better?”

With the spirit of never giving up, Zain managed to convince investors like Mark Cuban and secure millions in funding.

“I would have told you I was very happy after I got the investment, but I realized there was a huge responsibility placed upon me,” said Zain. “I felt a lot of trust had been placed in me, and I didn’t want to disappoint those who believed in a 21-year-old, 22-year-old with millions of dollars.”

Zain believes that having good ideas is not enough. What makes his startup successful lies in the philosophy he practiced in building and managing his team.

“It’s not just about you. … It’s very easy nowadays to just focus on ourselves, but really, 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,” said Zain.

Today, let’s hear Zain’s journey from a college student to a CEO in Silicon Valley and why he believes his innovation will even change how credit records are managed.

<em>Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the views of  NTD.</em>

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