I'm a former Thiel fellow who dropped out of college. I now run a $1.3 billion logistics company.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Sean Henry, the founder of the commerce enablement platform, Stord. It's been edited for length and clarity.

When I look back on my life now, at 28, I can easily see that I was always an entrepreneur.

The dots usually connect in hindsight. But in the moment, being an entrepreneur often feels a bit like you're in a perpetual existential crisis. You're always wondering what you're supposed to do next.

I grew up on a farm in Woodstock, Georgia. My dad grew up in a trailer park in Columbia, South Carolina. He was a field engineer at BellSouth, a telecommunications company, and stayed there for almost 40 years.

You might think someone like that would be pretty risk-averse. But the best thing both my parents gave me is the belief that I can do anything. You can see it in my siblings, too — there's an actress, a nurse, a lawyer, and a high school English teacher among us.

My founder story began back in elementary school. When I was 7, I was selling items on eBay and Craigslist. I'd post signs around local neighborhoods that said things like, "We'll buy junk electronics" or "I can fix phones and computers." I bought everything from broken phones and computers to used-but-working devices, then cleaned them up, repaired them, or broke them down for parts — batteries, chargers, chips — and resold them.

By middle school, I started selling phone cases, too. By high school, I had entered into automotive parts, in part, because I could afford my own car by then. I remember my teachers being mad at me because I was always on my phone in class responding to emails and customer service messages.

I tried re-investing the $30,000 in savings I had racked up into other endeavors. I attempted to build an app that lets spectators in sports arenas message people in sections from the opposing team. That didn't really take off. I was trading stocks with my dad on the side. At one point, I even tried my hand at being a YouTuber by making videos about e-commerce.

How I ended up in logistics

Somehow, I kept coming back to the customer shipping experience.

The summer before I entered college at Georgia Tech in 2015, I interned at HUEHOCO, the German metal processing giant. I worked at several of their factories over time, five of which were abroad in Germany, Mexico, and Canada.

I noticed that this massive global company with 14 factories worldwide was overspending on every shipment.

I launched Stord the year I started college to improve the shipping experience for brands and consumers. I wanted to level the e-commerce playing field so that it wasn't only controlled by Amazon, Walmart, and Target.

You, as a consumer, probably see Stord more than you realize. When you see that delivery promise, the shipping insurance offering, or when you get that post-purchase landing page — that's all Stord.

We have an orchestration layer of software that helps manage, route, and execute the network. Then we run a physical fulfillment network with 10 of our own fulfillment centers and also partner with over 50 fulfillment centers.

There's one question I always ask myself

I went all in on building Stord while I was at Tech. I hired new employees, we raised a $2.5 million seed round — on top of checks from accelerators and angel investors. I dropped out before my fourth semester. Six months later, I won the Thiel Fellowship. It's a two-year deal that requires you to drop out of college.

There's a lot of talk about the value of college these days, especially for young entrepreneurs. I'm a dropout, and I gave my family an analogy to explain my case. Entrepreneurship is like professional sports. If you had an offer from the NBA, I don't think you should go to college, and delay the NBA just because you want the degree first.

Stord is now valued at $1.3 billion. Last year, we delivered 30-35 million packages to 11.5% of unique US households. This year, we expect to ship almost 50 million packages to nearly 20% of US households.

We exist in markets in the EU, UK, and Canada and plan to launch a few more. In light of the tariffs, we've seen an influx of interest in e-commerce brands looking to move inventory to our US and Canada locations. Over the past few months, we've helped brands divert millions of units. In the short term, I suspect we'll see a lot of brands holding more inventory closer to their primary markets.

There's a simple question I ask myself that brought me to where I am today: Why not you? Once you realize that everything in life was made up by someone no smarter than you, everything changes. You think, "If I give this all my energy, why couldn't I transform this industry?"