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by 171243
2457 days ago
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Interesting. As an informal evaluations of the premise of the top comment in this thread I read your bio. I am posting the comment and your bio here for other interested individuals: The comment: >I know two people on the “30 under 30” list. Both of them are incredibly charismatic and charming in person. Their Instagram and Twitter accounts churn out constant brand building material. They both have pseudo-startups with noble causes and vibrant websites. Their startups have a list of impressive advisers, including B-list senators and industry executives. However, neither of them have made any progress on building an actual business. One of them has supposedly been developing the same simple product for almost 7 years now, but they’ve never been able to produce even a proof of concept prototype. I thought I was missing something for the longest time, until I let go of the idea that they were really trying to build a company. They’re not. They’re building their personal brand, and succeeding wildly thanks to publications like the “30 under 30” list that have an insatiable appetite for underdog success stories. Surely some of these companies are legitimately successful with great business models, but they’re mixed into these lists with the brand builders who know how to game the system. I’d be interested in reading an honest “Where are they now” follow up series that checks in with these founders at the 5-year mark after they make this list to see who the real successes are. And your bio: >Tyler Menezes is the Executive Director at SRND, where he works to increase diverse Computer Science enrollment across North America by inspiring underrepresented students to give coding a try. Born in Canada but raised in the Pacific Northwest, he briefly attended the University of Washington before dropping out to start a Y Combinator and venture-backed social video startup in 2011. This, combined with stints working in machine learning at Microsoft Research and as a programmer at several Seattle startups, led to his work finding data-driven solutions to increasing CS diversity and enrollment since 2014. In his free time, Tyler helps run the Projects in CS class at Garfield High School, and organizes the public speaking event Ignite Seattle. |
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>Their Instagram and Twitter accounts churn out constant brand building material. >They’re building their personal brand
I don't even have an Instagram? And literally I made two business-related tweets in the last month, one of which was a RT of someone commenting on how the org I run is valuable. Which brings me to...
>They both have pseudo-startups
I run a nonprofit that's had about 42,000 students attend mostly physical, in-person events in 53 cities, over the last 10ish years. We are profitable and have employees. Our programs have a NPS of 70-80 and we get grants from a bunch of big companies on the basis of our outcomes. This has been my full-time job and only livelihood for the last 5 years.
>I’d be interested in reading an honest “Where are they now” follow up series that checks in with these founders at the 5-year mark
We've been around for 10 years, and I've been the ED for 5. We have continued to grow and improve our key metrics although we're not a startup and I'm not going for meteoric growth.