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by sometimeshuman
1244 days ago
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The specifics of anyone's path will not be repeatable. Nevertheless I'll share specifics and a general conclusion at the end. 10 years ago in my late 30's I had destroyed my previous career by being out of the industry for too long. I was living off less than $20k a year and lived in the poor area of a poor city. I was lost and then heard the following challenge, "YC is harder to get into than Harvard". I had no real coding skills at the time and the chance of getting accepted were near zero. I created a youtube video because YC's application asked "what have you hacked lately" and I had no answer. Because that video's audience was expected to be one or two people and I didn't care about the number of views, the DIY-video was authentic. I put a lot of time into it out of respect for YC as an institution. No one would put that much effort in to their first video since it is usually a throwaway. But so many people surprisingly watched it that the hack idea transitioned to an actual product and then company. That alone has netted me $1M+ in addition to Youtube paying me for views (about 1million views). At the same time I released the youtube video, I taught a class at a local tech space just for the joy of it. I was totally incompetent but believed that someone in the process of learning a skill can teach effectively from the perspective of "here's what I found confusing". A manager from a local tech company walked into the tech space one day and asked around if anyone knew with experience in the framework/library I was teaching. They mentioned me assuming I must be an expert. 10years later I still contract for that company and netted again $1M+. So three takeaways: 1) I had a north star so to speak. I never got into YC but just trying for it lead to a purpose and direction. 2) If the gig jobs are keeping you above water then just work on something that you enjoy and that is hopefully useful, and do it without any expectations. 3) Remember your network. The only reason I shared a link to my Youtube video was so that it wouldn't have 0 views when YC looked at it. But it turns out one of those people in my network cross-posted it to reddit and it changed my life. I now live in the rich area of a rich city. |
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