Qin Zhi was working as a consultant at McKinsey & Co. when he first read Steve Jobs’ famous Stanford University commencement speech.
In his famous “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish” commencement address, Jobs instructed recent graduates to act on their passions, stating that, “the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.”
Bloomberg reports that the words prompted Qin Zhi to leave his job at McKinsey & Co. and join a Chinese startup, Autohome Inc., in 2007.
“After reading those words I thought to myself what I was doing then was absolutely not my passion,” Zhi told Bloomberg. “What I did had no risks and I felt like I was wasting my life. So I decided to seek a change.”
Six years later, Zhi is now Autohome’s CEO, a company with over 1,000 employees and home to China’s most popular website for comparing vehicles.
With a possible Autohome IPO on the horizon, Zhi has seen large success after acting on the late Apple co-founder’s advice.
This past year, Autohome took in over $163 million in revenue, with its website seeing over 6 million unique visits a day.
In Zhi’s case, it looks like it pays to “stay foolish.”