November Newsletter - 0% to 60%
The Craziest Part of My Life
I used to think my life was pretty normal for a high schooler. I wake up at 6 AM for school, go through all my classes half asleep, come back, finish my homework, and sleep. But in the last couple of months, that has changed completely for me
I still wake up at 6 AM on weekdays and go to school. I still do my homework. I’m still half asleep in class. But now, I have these crazy events no one could ever anticipate mixed into that
The SATs
I took the SATs a while back, but I still have PTSD from them 😢. I get a rush of terror every time I see a reading comprehension question in English class, and grammar is just as horrible.
While preparing for the SAT is annoying for pretty much everyone, it was particularly annoying for me. I did a practice test a day, spending three hours after coming back from school to try and focus on a bunch of reading and math problems. Some days, I just broke down because I physically couldn’t take it anymore. But somehow, I got to test day with 34 practice tests completed and reviewed under my belt.
Luckily, I got a 1580. I didn’t have a retake the test, which meant the world to me. I couldn’t go through that torture again. But now, I had time to focus on what mattered to me most: programming :)
Crazy Shit Happening
After the SATs, I expected my life to go back to normal. I’d be doing my homework, playing some video games, watching some TV, programming, and sleeping. But instead of that, I tried to eliminate all the dead weight taking up my time.
I watched TV much less, and I stopped playing video games entirely
Instead, I focused on connecting with people on LinkedIn and building cool projects. I didn’t expect to get anywhere with this at first, but what I was doing proved to be really successful.
Life Felt Busy
Over time, I was finding my schedule to be much more booked than before. I started booking meetings with many of the software engineers, founders, and overall cool people I met online. Many days started to look like those Google Calendar days up top.
Now, a lot of people are probably thinking that this leads to burnout. But surprisingly, I was able to continue. By meeting all of these people, I felt healed, and able to go on and continue my work. Having people come into my life and give me feedback on my work was helpful for fighting burnout.
However, many of the people I met were just friendly connections. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but I wanted to turn some of my connections into opportunities.
Etched.ai
To try and get some opportunities and connect with people, I reached out to a lot of startups and applied for a lot of positions as a developer. Sometimes I just asked people if they needed help with the product or app they were working on. Surprisingly, it turned into a lot of good experiences.
One of these was Etched.ai, an AI hardware startup with 5 million in seed funding. Some of the execs took a real liking to me, so I started working under them directly and learned about what it’s like to be an executive in a startup environment. I also met with them in New York City just a few days ago, and had an inspiring conversation :D
I was able to talk with the founders of a bunch of other startups and apps as well, and I learned a lot about the indie hacker process and managing tasks with a small team.
But I also learned a lot about enterprise.
I built an app a while back called Ultramail. It lets marketers write personalized emails to users using fine-grained data. I hadn’t touched it for a while, but I wanted to take it to the next level.
I looked to a lot of enterprises working on AI marketing tools, and I decided to reach out to the biggest: Salesforce.
I thought that I had no chance of even getting to speak with someone from Salesforce. After all, they’re all really busy, right?
But after sending a crap ton of connection requests on LinkedIn, a couple of people responded!
Next week, I got on a call with a VP to talk about my product, and he liked it. I don’t know where I’ll go with this, but I think this is one of the most valuable things I’ve done so far.
And just like that, my life changed.
I know all the stuff that happened to me seems all over the place.
It is. And I haven’t even told all of it.
But just one decision turned my regular boring high school life into one filled with opportunities left and right.
My dream is to become a startup founder, and I need a lot of connections and a stable job for a while to reach that dream.
I’m just speculating here, but I think that in these last couple of months, I took my goal from flat 0 to a good 60%.
Maybe, just maybe, I can reach my dream and more by the end of the year ;)