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1 year at U. enough for 5-hour ENERGY founder

During their four years of study, many University students rely on 5-hour ENERGY to stay on top of their workload. But after just one year of study, the creator of the ubiquitous caffeine and vitamin drink left the University for a different kind of education.

Manoj Bhargava, founder and chief executive of 5-hour ENERGY, attended the University from 1972-73, and he said that while he found this one year beneficial, he also found it sufficient for a college education.

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“It’s the same reason people don’t stay for five years, because you get whatever you need out of that, and when you’re done, you leave,” Bhargava said. “I thought I got what I needed to get out of Princeton in one year.”

While Bhargava came in like most other University students ready to complete a four-year degree, during his short time at the University he realized that he wanted to do more with the next few years than study at the university level. He said that his first-year experience wasn’t unlike that of other college students but that he learned a different lesson than most of his peers.

“Whatever college you go to, the first year has a huge influence on you, and it did with me as well,” Bhargava said. “The part that influenced me perhaps wasn’t what everybody else got out of it. I recognized I wanted more from life, more from education, than was available in the next three years.”

For Bhargava, the first-year Princeton experience showed him that he wanted more than a college degree and the accompanying allure of a stable paying job. He realized from his experience as a freshman at Princeton that money was not particularly important to him and that he did not think he would get much out of the remaining three years apart from “a stamp that said you got out, that you did a good job.”

Instead of sticking it out to get his degree, Bhargava decided to take a one-year leave, almost certain that he would never come back.

“I thought I learned a bunch at Princeton, but there was the next level of education,” Bhargava said. “It’s just like any graduate school, if you went through Princeton and you went through all four years.”

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Bhargava emphasized that even though his one year at the University convinced him not to finish his education, he still thought it was a worthwhile experience. For him, one year was “the perfect amount of time” to spend at Princeton, he said.

According to James Smits ’12, a founding member of the startup Tigerlabs and the program’s director, the decision to drop out of college to pursue entrepreneurship is often a calculated decision based on a lot of factors.

“You’re going out there into a large risk,” Smits said. “We’re at the point in our lives where we’re able to take on the most risk. We don’t have commitments in terms of family, kids and mortgages.”

Smits said the situation was unfortunate in that many student entrepreneurs feel they face a binary decision of either dropping out to pursue entrepreneurship or continue education as a student, and while he personally would not drop out, he understands that such decisions are very situation-based.

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After leaving Princeton, Bhargava worked several jobs in India before founding a plastics and raw materials company that eventually reached $20 million in annual sales. Bhargava said that during these years of work, he continued to receive a different kind of education.

“My belief is ... that education will start after you graduate,” Bhargava said. “It’s interesting that you pay a lot of money just to have some amount of preparation but not really the kind of education that you need for the workplace. And then when you get a job, they actually pay you and teach you what’s required in the workplace.”

In addition to founding Living Essentials — the company that makes 5-hour ENERGY — Bhargava’s ventures include the companies Sentarra Water, ETC Capital, Stage 2 Innovations, US Rail and Microdose Life Sciences.

Many students in addition to Bhargava have taken time off during their college careers with the intention of pursuing entrepreneurship, often unsure of whether they will ever come back. Joshua Miller ’12 is currently on leave after his startup, called Roundtable, attracted the attention of Huffington Post’s co-founder Jonah Peretti and Twitter’s co-founder Evan Williams.

“I decided to leave because of a unique opportunity,” Miller said. “I loved Princeton— I would recommend college to anybody — but learning from the people who started Twitter and the Huffington Post is just something that at Princeton and any university you just can’t get.”

Miller said that what he valued most of the Princeton experience was the social development rather than what he learned in the classroom, which he didn’t think was necessary for the rest of his life.

“The liberal arts education is more of a luxury than a necessity,” Miller said.

Miller noted that while more than 90 percent of businesses fail, most entrepreneurs will not consider a failed business a failure since all experiences are valuable.

Since leaving Princeton, Bhargava received little media attention for most of his professional career, but he has recently received plenty of coverage from sources like Forbes, NPR and Daily Finance in light of 5-hour ENERGY’s success.

While the Forbes article gave a negative description of Bhargava’s time at Princeton, claiming that, “the pretentious eating-club culture wasn’t really for him,” Bhargava said that this was not an accurate description of his time at the University.

“That was just made up by the article, that Princeton wasn’t a great place. It was a great place,” Bhargava said. “It’s just not true at all; anyone who goes there would not say that.”