Entrepreneurship Advice from a Top Sports Tech Leader

Find a problem, then get to work. 

That’s the message Harsh Jain ’14BUS delivered to the Columbia Engineering Graduate Class of 2025 in his Class Day address on Monday, May 19, 2025. Jain is the CEO and co-founder of Dream Sports, India's leading sports tech company and the lead sponsor of the Columbia Dream Sports AI Innovation Center.

We sat down with Jain, who is a member of Columbia Engineering’s Board of Visitors, to dig deeper into his journey and what he’d say to the next generation of engineers. 

You call yourself the Culture Enforcement Officer at Dream Sports — what does that mean?

After running the company for a decade and hiring tons of people, I realized that culture is the only thing that scales. It’s very tempting to hire someone because they have the perfect skillset to solve a problem, but if they’re not culturally aligned, they almost always leave a wake of destruction. People who are culturally aligned, even if they aren’t perfectly skilled to solve the problem, always work out. 99% of them level up their skill over time, because they give it their all. The people I hire have to be better than me in everything they do, so my most important job is to keep the culture aligned. 

How did your time at Columbia influence your leadership?

I started the company when I was 22 years old. I came back to India after getting a degree in engineering from UPenn. My cofounder and I ran it for about eight years. 

For five years we failed. Our business model did not work. Like any entrepreneur in that situation, I was demoralized, insecure, and starting to question whether I could do it. At that point, I made a decision that was hard for me at that time — to embrace the world of finance. I went to Columbia Business School from 2012 to 2014. 

At Columbia Business School, I pushed myself to learn what I needed to, become a better leader, understand balance sheets and P&L statements, and learn how to pitch to a VC and deploy that capital well. Columbia Business School really helped me become a more confident and well-rounded leader as an engineer and a businessperson.

What advice do you have for Columbia Engineering graduates who want to be entrepreneurs?

If you start a company only because you want to become an entrepreneur or a billionaire, don’t do it. You have to find a large, real-world problem that you are deeply passionate about, and set out to solve it with the utmost persistence, passion , and tenacity. I see a lot of people today chasing opportunities, saying, “Hey, I want to be an entrepreneur, and AI is really hot right now, so let me do something in AI.” It's like a hammer looking for a nail. I would predict that 99% of those entrepreneurs will fail because they’re not subject matter experts, and they’re not trying to actually solve a problem. Most of those ideas end up being like vitamins — good to have, but not essential. The best ideas are painkillers. When people need a painkiller, they can’t live without one.

What problem did you set out to solve with Dream Sports? 

I’ve been playing fantasy football since 2001, mostly while living in the U.K. and the U.S. When I came back to India, I realized there was no fantasy cricket — and that too in a nation with a billion cricket fans. I set out to solve that problem. My co-founder and I spent five years failing, pivoting from building a product that we loved to one that 1 billion Indian cricket fans would love. The fantasy model that fans in the U.S. and U.K. grew up with, where you draft players and compete with your friends for an entire season, with a free-to-play, ad-driven business model, didn’t work. What did work was a freemium salary cap model of fantasy sports, one match at a time. Our users could make their teams in just ten minutes, anytime before the next match, to make it much more exciting. 

The problem wasn't that people were looking for fantasy sports. The problem was that people were looking for a way to actively engage with the sports they love in a quick and fun way.

What’s your advice for engineers who know the problem they want to work on? 

If you do have a problem you’re extremely passionate about, then don't wait. When you graduate from college, you have the least amount of responsibilities. At that stage in life, your living and other expenses are probably very flexible, and you can hustle hard every single day. Resilience is the number one superpower for entrepreneurs. If you try something that doesn't work out, then keep experimenting and pivoting till it does.

Remember, tenacity is sticking with it even when things get tough. You have to be the last person on earth to give up on your idea. 

Masthead Caption: Harsh Jain '14BUS delivers the keynote at Graduate Class Day

Masthead Credit: Chris Taggert/Columbia Engineering