Tell HN: Why I want to start a startup
How I got written off: phase one
It all started when I was in my final year in high school. One day, my math teacher asked me what I wanted to study. I’ve always been pretty determined and told him the truth. I’d like to study Computer Science in college, sir. Go for a master’s degree. He laughed at me, in my face. Point blank. I studied economics and languages back then, and I admit, the math I was taught was pretty poor. A few weeks after, he did the same to my mom on parents’ evening. It’s this sort of event where parents go to and get an evaluation of their kid. Your son will be lucky enough if he gets a bachelor’s degree and eventually graduates. It didn’t matter much to me. I would go to college and get this damn master’s degree. I couldn’t and wouldn’t give in now. And here I am, my CS degree almost in reach.
How I got written off: phase two
My first year in college was all right. However, I had some problems with calculus. I (still) had to learn how to derive a function and calculate surfaces, while the other guys in my class were pretty much all ready for some advanced differential equations. Damn it, I should’ve taken more summer classes. That’s what I thought back then. Would that have helped? I don’t know. Eventually, I passed the course by studying day and night. Bottom line is, I got through and my grades weren’t even that bad. That’s great!
Three years later, I met a friend from elementary school on my weekly train. He was going nuts over cycling and I recently bought a bike too. That’s when I decided I wanted to get in shape again. I hadn’t been practicing sports for three years. That’s a long time. Too long to keep you physically and mentally healthy. Basically, he became my trainer and mentor for the coming months. I stopped eating fried food, limited my meat consumption and ate a lot of pasta (gotta love carbohydrates! ;-)). Hahahahaha, you’re cycling now, are you? And you’ve stopped eating fast food? You goof! You won’t carry on, I tell ya! That’s what many of my dorm “friends” said. I’m in my second year of cycling now and I love it. Still going. And I will be going harder and faster. Mens sana in corpore sano.
How I’m getting written off: leaving college
So… it’s almost time for me to leave college now and I have a clear plan. I want to start a startup. Actually, I am starting a startup. We’ve been working on it for two to three months now (not only coding), and it’s going pretty well. It’s got to do something with photo sharing. I know what a lot of you will be thinking now. Another Instagram clone? Another PicPlz? I already share my photos and I don’t need another service! That would sound a lot like my math teacher in twelfth grade. But that’s ok I guess. My dorm “friends” are reacting likewise. They think going to the USA to pursue your dreams and start a startup is ridiculous. Maybe it is? I don’t think so. Let them have their way. I’ll have mine.
What exactly am I getting at now? It’s pretty simple. Believe in yourself, because no one else will. People tend to believe only in the successful. A lot of us have a strong belief in top CEO’s and other successful guys. Take Steve Jobs as an example. He’s seen a lot of resistance from Apple around 1985, but he kept going. At the end of 1997, he finally got it right. He’s got his own child back. And see how it has grown over the years.
If you never believe in yourself, you’ll never get somewhere. I haven’t got a...
43 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 63.6 ms ] threadThat may be the single most important point of all... well said, sir.
The thoughts of a 22-year old with no life experience
Well, FWIW, this 37-year old agrees wholeheartedly. :-)
That may be the single most important point of all... well said, sir.
I don't think that's true at all. While I'm not going to diminish the importance of believing in oneself, one of the greatest loves you can show toward someone else is demonstrating that you believe in them, too. Everyone should surround themselves with people like that.
Charisma, people skills, energy, good-vibe - call it what you will, but if you can engage people in a trusting and real dialog they WILL believe in you and follow you into fire.
Hmm... maybe one of us misunderstood the other, but I don't see what you just said as being mutually exclusive from what I said. I certainly am not advocating against showing your belief in others, nor do I want to diminish the importance of having support from others.
Actually, on a second reading, I think I see the issue. He wrote "Believe in yourself, because no one else will" and I mentally paraphrased that as "Believe in yourself, even when no one else does." That, I think, gets closer to the gist of what I believe about this sort of thing.
So "No" in this case is brief language for meaning; "Go build a great product, kick the teeth out of the competition/market and don't fall into a rut."
Life experience my dear son is relative, and with your attitude and outlook, you're going to have some great experiences to share with future generations.
Good luck, friend.
So don't frame things in terms of how much other people don't want you to do them - more likely than not, they really don't care. Just do what you want to do and don't do what you don't want to do. That's what every other person is doing.
The real world is cold. It takes time, especially out of college/uni, to realize this, but you have to keep on pushing. Best of luck to you.
This isn't a good or bad thing; it's just most people, the vast majority of the time, don't particularly care about what you're up to.
Long term friends do, of course, at least a little, but in perhaps limited doses.
This is both saddening and inspiring (liberating), depending on how you look at it.
Lots of lessons learned there!
That's why I love the "scratch your own itch" philosophy for judging good ideas, helps keep you motivated. And if you personally have a need for what you're building, someone else surely will too. The hardest part is often finding them and conveying it to them, but at least you can be reasonably certain they're out there :)
Another thing to consider is how much acknowledgement you can expect prior to having a tangible product. In my current project I make little updates on Facebook, but since my friends don't have the thing in front of them how excited can they really be about it? But the ones who've tried it, and the ones I'm working with testing it out love it, so there you go!
I guess it comes down to managing your personal expectations to help keep yourself motivated along the way. And who cares about age and life experience, just go for it! That's how you get life experience.
It says basically what Max said, except with more pictures.
You can do it. You have the drive for it. It's all one big learning experience. Never stop learning. Learning to gain knowledge is important. What's more important is learning how to learn, learning through understanding. Building your photo sharing site is one small learning experience in the grand scheme. You've got nothing to lose. Sure, you're investing time into it, but you'll walk away with knowledge and connections that you previously didn't have.
I, too, was written off. I dropped out of college and was a temp for 2 months at $9.50/hr before landing my first job in IT. It's been well over a decade and I haven't looked back.
You do need to be really good in maths, have a really solid basis or work your ass off to succeed in the first few years of university-level computer science education. You did the latter, and you have my respect for that!
I'm personally inspired by how you didn't let the kids on your dorm stop you with their mildly disinterested comments. If you didn't let that stop you, there's no way you're going to be stopped by an under-inflated bike tire, or even as many as 3 broken spokes (not all on the same wheel of course). Where do I invest?
But fair enough. The parent comment just seemed especially excessive to me.
Send me your email address, I'll send you a 10 paragraph rundown of the trials and tribulations of laundry day.
I doubt your stupid steve jobs after getting fired from apple and having a spare billion(or even more?) and being 30 did it because of the money, or for approval... or anything. He did it because what he felt about his creations was bigger and stronger than himself.
Maybe you shouldn't start a startup but be a teacher in CS, maybe marry a beautiful woman or even be a serial killer... I don't know? But follow your heart and you won't need to write a wall of text to prove yourself to HN.
Is Michael Jordan one of the greatest basketball players ever? Yes. Did he work incredibly hard to get there? Yes. Does he come off as very, very bitter in his speech? Absolutely, because he still dwells on insignificant stuff 30 or 40 years later.
I'm happy for you finding motivation in the random, slightly negative throwaway comments of your peers. Just remember that negative drive might make you successful, but it will definitely make you bitter.
-- from a formerly bitter 25-year old
[0] http://www.nba.com/video/channels/hall_of_fame/2009/09/11/nb...
For those that even read a book about Jordan, and what his peers said about him and his reputation, wasn't really surprised by the speech. Most Hall of Fame speeches are somewhat dull, mostly about thanking people who helped them in life, what their life was like before and after success, and what lessons of life they learned from their experiences. Not Jordan.
Jordan mentioned every slight that was done to him, perceived or otherwise, and told the audience about how he found motivation from those slights. It was all about him, and his, hunger, to be the best. He even stated then that he could STILL come back right now and play in the NBA. To him, basketball was the way for him to be the best, and by God, he was going to do it, no matter who got in his way. Personally, it was way more enriching than someone like David Robinson's, but it was somewhat shocking when it was done at the time.
People always get shocked when they hear how people got successful, and what they REALLY had to do to get there. People like hearing about the successes, but rarely the failures and hardships endured. Everyone ignorant of his history thinks Mark Cuban just got lucky getting his wealth from selling broadcast.com to Yahoo (and even he admits it), but they rarely really listen to how he was living 5 guys to an apartment, how for 3 years he was paid low wage selling computer programs and parts to other businesses, how in college he was working his ass off teaching dance classes, running a bar, plus other business ideas I don't remember off the top of my head, while trying to get his degree.
Instead of glossing over that part of his success like most other HOF speeches, Jordan I believe high-lighted them, which just surprised people, that's all.
Think about this for a second. Jordan has played almost two decades, won 6 (?) championships, and is heralded as the best player ever. At an event meant to celebrate his career, he instead talks for several minutes about being slighted in high school.
Can you imagine being a grown, old man that's bitter enough about high school to mention it at an event celebrating his career? It doesn't sound fun.
It's probably not true, but somehow helps...
Up until this (school) year I had been assessed by my peers as a nothing. Although I had been doing small-scale computer repair for a while at this time, I still lacked both the self-confidence and maturity to do anything substantial. I did however want change from an awful summer spent mostly alone in my room. Upon returning to school that year I had received probably the worst people in my classes I could, or rather, the people most like me, the people who were terribly unmotivated, for one reason or many. The school had specifically picked out the academically troublesome students based on their previous year and put them in slightly smaller classes with lower expectations but more teacher assistance. This was a great move by the school. This alone was not enough though, as most of the students and myself made a dismal effort to do well, the ability in these people weren't lacking, it was motivation.
My lack of motivation was a progression, I didn't have much motivation to begin with but, due to a summer spent mostly alone I frequently browsed Warez forums and attempted to write a package manager for Windows (I had been taking an interest in Ubuntu and really liked apt-get), and released a customized version of Windows for them a couple years prior. That was the height of my productivity in that school year, because in the following December I had begun smoking a lot.
After that I spent most of my time smoking. I smoked a ridiculous amount of weed, on average three times a week, but mostly on the weekends. I never went to school high however (and I don't plan on it). My friends (and the same people in my classes) were the people I would smoke with, although I paid for a lot of it, as I had a decent amount of income for an 8th grader ($75 per month or so on average, I fixed computers over Craigslist). I hadn't gotten a pipe or any smoking paraphernalia up until summer, and so I would use what was around me. Most of the time those were the insides of pens, with taking out the top where one clicks the spring to bring out the tip, and putting a tiny chunk of weed in it, lighting that end and breathing in where the tip of the pen would normally be. The joy I got from smoking started to end though.
It started to end in June or so. I remember wanting to stop back then but didn't feel motivated enough to do it. June also happened to be when I smoked more than before, as I had nothing to do other than that (This was after school had ended). I would just go to town and smoke with people, practically everyday, and then when I wasn't high I was around people who were, eating Taco Bell, or just walking around with people. However, I started to feel a need to be productive, and that was really when I stopped smoking.
My brother was in his fifth year at UCDavis, when I started sitting in at a class there. That class was ECS30, a 6 week course that taught the foundations of C. I had a fairly limited knowledge of C# and Visual Basic but I really didn't know how to program. This taught me how to do that. My brother had talked to my parents before about the possibility of me taking a class over the summer, and I thought it was a really good idea. So, I took the Amtrak train every Sunday afternoon for 5 weeks (last week was Finals week) to Davis, where I walked in a straight line for about 15 minutes to my brothers apartment on B street. I would wake up every morning at 7:30, shower, eat, have a cup of coffee and leave to go to class for two hours.
Taking this class was one of the best experiences in my life. Although the people weren't by any means entrepreneurial, it made me want to do something with my life. Just walking to the class was amazing. Passing the various lecture halls and weird decorations. Seeing all the sleep-deprived people on bikes heading to and from their classes. Wondering if people would give me weird looks seeing a 14-year-old with a significant amount of stubble go to a college class.
The class itself was fanta...