[carguy1983]

This is a fantastic article - something wannabes definitely need to be seeing - Instagram started when he was TWELVE YEARS OLD. I hope this article goes into a series like uses.this.

I personally also got a kick out of this one because I had an extremely similar 'start' - Doom levels and script kiddie maliciousness - amazing. Unfortunately it starts to diverge when he got accepted into Stanford and started kickin' it with internet billionaires and instead I went to UCSD and spent most of my free time drinking microbrews by the beach LOL.

Guess that's why I'm not the guy who made Instagram! Now I know. :)

[smalter]

Yeah, I was blown away by the opportunities available at Stanford (that he made the most of) to work and hobnob with internet luminaries. It really seemed to add jet fuel to his trajectory.

[astrofinch]

I was surprised that he found the introductory computer science class at Stanford difficult. If this guy can succeed, how can somebody like me who worked through half of SICP independently at age 16 fail? I don't think I'm exceptionally smart for an HN user, but I was surprised how little intelligence is needed before it stops being the main bottleneck (apparently).

[is74]

Intelligence has many aspects, of which the ability to understand complicated "analytic stuff" from books is only a part. There's also intelligence in getting things done and avoiding dumb mistakes in complicated and uncertain situations, which seem to play the greater role in startups.

[astrofinch]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics)

Of course it's not the only cognitive attribute that's important (I don't know of any evidence that ability to get things done correlates with g).

BTW, realized that the article didn't explicitly state that the computer science class was introductory, which changes things somewhat.