A few weeks ago, my friend Will read an article on Medium - or rather only the headline - then turned to me and said, “want to start waking up at 5:30 and working through our courses? I’ll do my One Month course, and you can do your Udemy one.” Without even looking up from my computer I said yes.
Getting up early and working on things that I enjoy has helped me be happier and more productive. This new found productivity isn’t from working longer hours, but putting in higher quality ones. The problem I was running into was that when I set aside time at night for my own things, I found it really difficult to stop the day from pushing its way into my time. Meetings would run late, work was due at midnight, emails would keep coming in - the day just wouldn’t stop. I would much rather work through the night and into the morning; however, with 8 am’s this isn’t really feasible.
I was starting to have a real internal struggle that got worse as I made less and less time for my side projects. My time was being sunk into homework and group projects, while my list of side projects, desired skills, and books to read was getting longer. I was becoming frustrated with myself and with my situation. It felt like I was running in sand - I could work as hard as I wanted but I wasn’t going anywhere. I didn’t feel productive finishing my homework - it gave me nothing, and I felt like a failure for not completing the projects I was constantly talking about. I needed to ship more things (and still do).
The 5:30am wake up call was my way of turning my schedule on its head - shaking up the rut I was in. What I didn’t expect was how waking up and starting my day by doing something that I loved would help me work through one of my many existential crises. I started spending less time on things that I didn’t value (read: homework assignments) and carved out more time for my own work. Will and I originally only planned on working from 6 - 8, but soon I was working until around 10 or 11, only stopping to go to class, and then I eventually started skipping class. By taking action I’m beginning to realize what is more important to me, and watching my priorities reorganize right before my eyes.
When people ask me why I’m dropping out of school my answer isn’t as clean as they expect. This decision wasn’t made off of one simple interaction, but countless small ones that compounded. Waking up at 5:30am helped make it clear to me that dropping out was something that I needed to do. It was in those moments when I was trying to force myself to put down my side projects - the things I really enjoyed doing, that were moving me towards my goals, and helping me learn the things that are important to me - that I realized I had to drop out.
I couldn’t have kept this up by myself. Without Will there were definitely mornings that I would have skipped out on. Having an accountability buddy is key when trying to form a new habit. You guys will push each other. It’s peer pressure, but with a positive connotation.
Waking up early in the morning is not something that I plan on sticking with after leaving school. If you’re in school or work a 9 - 5 job and find it hard to stay up all night, I’d highly recommend the early morning wake up approach. It has helped me accomplish a lot of the work that I wasn’t getting done when I stopped staying up until 4am.
What’s something you’ve been meaning to do/get better at? I challenge you to get up tomorrow at 5:30am. Just one morning. Invest in yourself. See how it feels. I know you’re sitting there right now saying you’re not a morning person, but you may surprise yourself.
We are living in a time, known in history as, “The Rise of the Idea Guy.” The amount of people with ideas for tech companies that don’t have the means (financially and/or technically) to bring them to life is on the rise.
Living in a college town where people are being constantly encouraged, by professors and faculty, to start their own ventures makes this rise especially prominent. The type of “Idea Guy” I’m specifically talking about here is the one of very hard pressed means looking for a) someone to partner up with or b) someone they can pay in equity.
I spend 6+ hours a day at the New Leaf Initiative, and since this is where people with ideas get funneled by the University, I probably deal with 2 - 3 “Idea Guys” in a given week. This means that when you walk into the Leaf - probably for the first time - you’re not special, but actually playing from behind, as plenty of rude “Idea Guys” before you have come through and left a bad taste in the mouths of many. (I’m not trying to discourage anyone from coming in, please do, I just ask that you at least finishing reading this article first).
So “Idea Guys”, let me share with you my perspective, as a person with technical skills, on your archetype, give you a little insight into how we perceive you, and then pose some questions to you that you better be able to answer - all so that you can stop irritating us and increase your chance of finding someone to work with. *Note: people are not going to ask you these questions when you approach them, they don’t interview you, you need to work these into your spiel. Also, these are only a few general questions that I’ve encountered through many conversations with “Idea Guys” and are only to get you started.
First off, a little on perceptions:
Please don’t contact us from a hotmail, yahoo, or aol email address. This one is trivial, yet simple, but important. Imagine walking into a Calvin Klein office in a tank top, cargo shorts, and wearing socks with sandals, asking for a job as a designer. Maybe you’re a good designer, but now you really have to prove it because everyone doubts you. First impressions are important, some would say it’s a major key.
Spend the time to do research on what you’re trying to build or rather have built. Don’t come in saying “this app needs to work on your phone and the Internet.” What does that mean? Do you want a website that is optimized for mobile (which it should be anyway), or do you want a mobile app that has a web dashboard? If you don’t even know what you want, how will anyone take you seriously?
If you ask us to sign an NDA, or talk in wide brush strokes around your idea, because you’re afraid we’ll steal it, we are going to walk away from you. Have you ever heard of someone actually stealing an idea? The only two I can think of are Apple borrowing the GUI from Xerox Parc, and Zuckerberg allegedly stealing the idea of Facebook from the Winklevoss twins. Two. That’s it. So odds are nobody will steal your idea.
Us programmers are not a commodity. We are not sitting around twiddling our thumbs waiting for a job. Hiring us is not a favor. We have our own projects, work, and lives. So please don’t act like you’re helping us out by giving us work. We aren’t the client - you are - treat us with respect and dignity. Learn a little bit about what it takes to build an app or website so that you can understand what it’s like, and realize that we can’t just “whip it up.”
Now here’s the most important piece of advice I think I can give. When trying to hire an engineer, especially for an equity stake and not as a contractor, have something to show. Some validation that your idea is working, that you’ve invested time into it. Read The Lean Startup and apply these general principles to what you’re working on. If you aren’t willing to run your whole company by hand at first, then you don’t care enough about the problem you’re solving to even be asking for our help. By hustling and putting in the time you’ll develop insights about the market that actually make you valuable to the engineer, more so than just your idea - which isn’t worth much. Let me give you two examples of the Lean Principles in action:
Product Hunt. For those of you who don’t know, Product Hunt is a place where people come to launch their products/keep up with the latest products. That’s my one sentence description. Product Hunt started out as a mailing list - nothing technical about that. Ryan Hoover, the founder, would send out a newsletter with links to products he’d found while searching the Internet for recreation. Eventually his newsletter grew so big that he decided to build a website - in a weekend. Just a simple site with product listings that could be upvoted and downvoted. So he went from newsletter to barebones website. He didn’t build the full product from the start. The email list gave him an idea, and the MVP site validated his assumption. By building one piece at a time, he was able to take feedback from the community and build something they wanted. This story also highlights the fact that you don’t need to be a programmer to build an online community. What’s your email list (metaphorically anyway, perhaps it’s a Slack channel)? If you have an MVP to show a developer, one that has growth and user feedback, you’re going to find that you’ll have a much easier time bringing someone onboard.
Food on the Table. This example is directly out of The Lean Startup and has always stuck with me. These two guys wanted to create a product that would generate shopping lists specifically for the grocery stores around you, based on the recipes you selected. At first they struggled to find clients, but in hustling and being very involved, they were able to find their target customer.To get their first customers they did everything by hand. Drove to stores, found the sales, made the lists - all by hand. They only had a few clients at first, whom they waited on hand and foot. By being so involved they gained insightful feedback from their clients, which they used to refine their process and offerings. As they took on more and more clients, they would automate another piece of the process. Eventually they ended up with a fully automated product. No venture money was required in the beginning because they were making money the whole time (while not a lot, it was enough to keep them in the game). Very few products need investors. If you can’t get people to pay for your product at first then it probably isn’t solving a real problem.
Ok, we’re done with the perception sharing part (and the digressive story time). Now onto the introspective part of today’s program:
Don’t try to weave a direct answer to these questions into conversation, this isn’t the SAT. Show us the answer, don’t make us ask you for it. Here are three overarching questions that - surprisingly - few people can answer when trying to find a partner or hire an equity based contractor:
Are you willing to do everything by hand, spend a few hundred dollars (minimum) without a clear return, and work longer hours than you already do?
If you answer no to any parts of this question, then starting your own thing isn’t for you and you’re in it for the vanity which a developer can smell a mile away. They’ll be much less inclined to work with you.
What value do you add? What can I, the developer, not do that you can?
If you fall back solely on the notion that the idea is your contribution then no one is going to work with you. You basically expect us to do all of the hard work. Figure out what else you bring to the table (skills, insights, connections) and make what you’ll be doing and what you’re bringing to the table crystal clear. If you can’t think of anything, this might be for a few reasons: your idea sucks, you know nothing about the problem you’re solving, you’ve spent zero time and energy bringing this idea to life (which makes us wonder how much you really care), or you are a wantrepreneur.
Why do you need a developer? What exactly will they be building and why?
Not everything needs to be an app or a website. Some things only need to be a Slack channel. Maybe your product is better as a blog, an Etsy store, or in-person events. Be ready to answer why you need custom software, and can’t use something that already exists. Once you know why you’re building something, and can articulate it well enough in 30 seconds, be able to explain it from the developers point of view. You’ve got this grand vision, know what infrastructure needs to be built, and steps executed on, to make it into a reality. Have a loose idea (at least) of the product roadmap, and what assumption each feature is testing. Metrics for success are also useful so that you and your developing counterpart are on the same page.
This is only the tip of the iceberg, and by no means the only things you should be able to answer. What I’m trying to say is, please do your homework, and don’t come to us making demands and thinking you’re hot sh*t because you have an idea. You’re human, I’m human, you have ideas, I have ideas. Whoop de freaking doo. That doesn’t make you special. So please stop treating your idea like the Goose that Lays the Golden Eggs. We’d love to welcome you into our community with open arms, just do your homework and don’t be rude.
I challenge you to look at my transcript and tell me what my major is. I have a mythology course on there, next to Introduction to Single Camera Documentary Filmmaking, more than a few levels of Spanish, some yoga, religious studies, some engineering classes wherein we are building and launching a venture in Africa, and credits for a camping trip. I always thought that college was a time to run rampant on the intellectual jungle gym that is higher education. My Dad used to tell me that I should take the widest array of classes possible. In applying to schools, I read through their class offerings and could not wait to take Introduction to Glass Blowing, Typography, Industrial Design, and programming classes of the widest variety. After all, college is the time to explore, to bush-whack and to stumble onto things that I’d never before considered. Shockingly, it took me until my Junior year (more accurately, last week) to realize the truth.
I knew that students were taking easy GenEds so that they could cheat their way through, and that people weren’t always pushing themselves to explore, and that’s ok. I figured that was just their loss; less competition on my end for seats in cool classes. When the cool introductory classes stopped cutting it I tried to push the envelope. I pursued Independent studies in Mechanical Engineering and Business Management, higher level film courses and other exciting support of minor courses for minors I wasn’t in. I was in love with exploring, with making the most of my time at University Park. I was playing with Apple watches, deploying code to Heroku, and producing short films with equipment I didn’t even know existed. If I’m spending thousands of dollars in tuition, I’m going to squeeze as much value out of them as possible. Pushing the envelope is what I was, and still am, all about. It was when I tried to turn it up to 11 and graduate a year early that the bubble popped - the curtains were pulled back and I saw all of the bullsh*t. And a steaming pile of it at that.
As I tried to get into higher level courses and have them to count for far less intensive GenEd requirements on my degree, I was met with more pushback than the UN dealing with Putin. In order to get these higher level courses to fulfill some of the lower level requirements, I had to use a secret form that only a persistent few have been able to uncover (and my advisor had never seen before. He didn’t believe it was real when I first showed it to him).
There were available seats in these classes, plenty of them, so I wasn’t bumping people who needed them. What I was doing was forcing people to do their job, to give a little bit of a damn and to make a decision - which I realized a lot of the University faculty don’t like to do. This shocked me. I had always thought other students just didn’t care to explore, but in fact the University was actively discouraging it. I couldn’t believe it. Why wouldn’t they let me explore my interests? Try and find out what makes me happy? Take harder than required courses? Become more well rounded? The answer I uncovered let me down harder than when Winston succumbed to Big Brother at the end of “1984”; harder than finding out that Santa isn’t real (of course I’m kidding kids, Santa is real).
The University doesn’t care about you, they don’t care about me. That’s what I realized. They don’t care about us growing and exploring. That’s not efficient, it takes effort, costs money. All they care about is making money. So how do they optimize for that? They try and get students out in 4 years - or less -, into jobs right away - and not just any jobs, but jobs in a sector where you can make as much money as quickly as possible.
So how do they get a high volume of students out in 4 years or less? Let’s make it easier. All of it - easier. Make entrance requirements easier, classes easier, graduation requirements easier. We require everyone to take a public speaking class, so let’s put it online, let them just talk to a camera in their room - that’ll make it easier and cheaper. Is it still public speaking? Who cares! Students also seem to be struggling with coordinating teams and building software. Then let’s make the technical classes all theoretical. Boom! - barrier removed! Keep moving through the system. GO! GO! GO! Don’t stop! No questioning! Drink from the firehose and don’t look back!
How do they get us into these jobs so easily? They have meetings with prospective companies. They sell the companies the right to influence our curriculum. Companies need entry level hires to do XYZ specialized task, so suddenly XYZ task replaces ABC broader, less restricting topic on the curriculum.
Here is what someone in advising said when asked about certain degree requirements. I’ve run it through Google’s Bullsh*t Translator so that it’s easier to understand what he is really trying to say, “KPMG doesn’t want you to be more well-rounded - that’s too hard to codify - they don’t care that you studied Greco-Roman literature, they want you to study specific corporate structures out of context in such a brutally redundant and miserable fashion that you’ll want to punch your mom right in the face. That’s what KPMG is paying us for. Sorry. If you want someone to listen then head over to CAPS (Counseling and Psychological Services), don’t come here. Can I assist you with anything else today?”
Not only do they put these topics into the curriculum, they also tell students that making money, knowing Excel, and working at Booz-Allen is all that matters. Leveraging social pressures and exploiting people’s insecurities makes that task light work.
God forbid if you come knocking as a small company or a non-profit that wants to solve a real-world problem on a smaller, leaner budget. You can’t afford to eat at this table. Your best bet is to create an informal relationship with a student club and get to them before the school does. You can’t afford the career fairs, to have an untargeted email spammed out to the student body, or to hire students who are told that becoming rich is all that matters. You aren’t financially worth the University’s time. Maybe one day at these organizations a student will make $100,000. One day. Or they can start at $80,000 with Deloitte. The University will see a much faster return on their student if they take that consulting job. They are like a VC, they don’t care about you - the student - they care about getting a return on their investment immediately. So why would they push for anything else?
I’ve struggled a lot lately with my feelings and actions toward wantrepreneurs. These are the people who say things like, “I’ve founded a company, it’s an app. Now I just need someone to build it because I’m the idea guy.” or, “Yeah, I’m an entrepreneur. What have I done? Well I’m in the entrepreneurship major so I’m learning to become one.” They are posing as entrepreneurs because it is currently fashionable to be one. Because of how pop culture has overused and devalued the word entrepreneur, I try to avoid using it as much as possible. I just don’t identify with it. I don’t call other people entrepreneurs, and my skin crawls when people say to me, “Oh, you’re an entrepreneur?” I’ve worked on a lot of projects - I don’t call them companies. Most of the time my goal is to learn and have fun, not generate a sustainable income. During my life, I’ve recycled cans, mowed lawns, built things that made money and others that didn’t. But these were just side projects.
Today, however, if you have technical skills, are working on a side project and don’t have a normal job (whatever that means) then you must be starting a company. That assumption is pretty poor and gets more irritating every time I hear someone make it.
One day I would like to start something. I think I can do it. But I don’t want to start something just to start something. Starting a company is going to be a long and at times soul-crushing slog. If I don’t truly believe that my product is going to make the world a better place, then I will probably fall flat on my face. And that’s the problem I have with a lot of wantrepreneurs - they start something to start something.
As I’ve struggled with these feelings, trying to understand them fully, I’ve come to a few realizations: 1) my frustration is not with what they are doing, but why they are doing it, 2) their “build it and they will come” mentality, and 3) - probably my largest source of frustration - the fact that I’m currently in school and the actions of these wantrepreneurs directly affects me in my day to day life.
Starting a startup just to make fast and easy money is very frustrating and honestly insulting. I worked full-time on one of my side projects over the summer and it never made a dime. There I was busting my ass and in walk these students who talk down to me. They thought that I should have $5 trillion dollars by now because I’ve been working for 2 months, and that they will cash out after about a week, without knowing how to program. It’s also sad to watch people waste enormous amounts of human capital and money on trying to make a marginal improvement to something for a few dollars and an ego boost. If you’re going to put in the time and effort, then make something amazing and valuable.
Getting someone to download an app is near impossible, and you would know that if you spent more than a week in the tech space before you called yourself a founder. Build it and they will come just doesn’t work. This isn’t “Field of Dreams.” If your plan is to hire someone to build an app with 55 features and then post it in a subreddit and buy Facebook ads (because why not?), then you’re f*cked man. Dead in the water. No chance. Also, who do you expect to “come?” Is your target audience moms in America? College kids? Can you make it a little less specific for me? Let’s just say everyone ages 1-99. And you think you’re going to become super famous and make millions of dollars? This is also insulting. If your idea was that simple to implement, don’t you think everyone you know would have executed on it by now?
Those previous two examples probably account for about 10% of all of my frustrations with college-aged wantrepreneurs. The other 90% stems from the fact that most of these wantrepreneurs directly affect the way people view me personally. They are only in it for the image, so they talk about it, write about it, seek out press about it, but never actually ship anything. They optimize for the vanity metrics of likes and shares, not for users or revenue; so everyone hears about them. In the off chance they do optimize for growth, their product doesn’t hit 5 million users overnight and they give up. Let me clarify, I’m not frustrated with seeing articles, because I usually don’t, it’s not hard to avoid them. I’m frustrated with how this affects other people, like me, that are hustling and trying and hoping to solve a real problem and make a real impact.
Wantrepreneurs are not just annoying, but dangerous. They are the outliers (and not in a good way) that drive large organizations like Penn State off course. The press they optimize for seems to be all that Penn State hears. The individuals that are not representative of the group are given the biggest voice and mess everything up for those around them (what else is new).
When wantrepreneurs talk about their company (or companies if they’re really annoying) they focus mostly on getting to a place where they can raise money. Raising money requires legal services, venture capitalists, and some coaching on how to pitch correctly. Finding pitch coaches on a college campus is easy, but providing legal services and finding venture capitalists is not. So Penn State has to go to great lengths to provide them, because after all that’s what the wantrepreneurs want, and Penn State can’t tell the difference. They create extensive incubator curriculums, court venture capital firms, and foot the bill for legal services, when in reality the majority of people don’t want or need any of that. By focusing so heavily on meeting the needs of wantrepreneurs, Penn State actually begins to marginalize the people that are going on to found companies; the people they are trying to optimize for with these investments.
Funding the programs these wantrepreneurs claim to need is also much, much, much (I can’t emphasize this enough) much more expensive than funding what everyone else needs and wants. The majority of students only want space, or perhaps a few bucks here and there for servers or a Udemy course. Real entrepreneurs (there I said it, ew, vom, I feel dirty) are scrappy. They don’t care about legal service, they’ll ask for forgiveness later. They don’t want venture capital, because they believe in their product and will fund it themselves or by working another job, and aren’t willing to let a VC influence their baby. These are the people that go on to generate revenue and donate back to the University. Wantrepreneurs usually don’t make it past graduation. The “entrepreneurship thing” is something they’ll remember fondly about their college self, but not something they’ll pursue later into life.
What has taken me the longest to come to terms with, is that at the end of the day I’d rather have wantrepreneurs coming into the space and trying to create something, anything really, than not. As much as I don’t like what I’m currently seeing, it is better than watching people go on to work at KPMG or Deloitte and be unhappy. Their motives for starting a company may not be the best, but at least these students are taking action and trying; and I’ve come to the conclusion that doing your own thing and not buying into the system is ultimately what I’d rather see people do. While most of these new companies are marginal tweaks to an existing product, every once in awhile someone comes along and tackles something important. If we have to suffer through posers to help encourage that one person than I’m okay with it. Realizing this makes it easier for me to listen to kids mumble buzzwords and talk about how they are the “idea guy”. I bite my tongue, point them to relevant books from the startup world canon and welcome them to the community. Not yet with open arms, but I’m making progress. (Baby steps).
A lot of the time we think we can’t do something simply because we think that. There is no reason we can’t do it, except that we have imposed boundaries on ourselves as a result of societal pressures. It’s quite amazing how much of what we do (and ultimately don’t do) is driven by these pressures.
I’m lucky to be surrounded by some great people here at school, friends that have pushed me to ask myself the hard questions. Questions that at first I brushed off. I thought I had all of the answers, that I didn’t need to “do some soul searching”, and that my friends had something wrong with them for even asking. What I’ve come to realize is that I was hiding. Hiding from the truth, from myself, and ultimately from the uncertainty of the world around me, the one we all live in together.
Beginning to try and answer the hard questions is equally as important as finding the answers. I’m nowhere close to the answers, but I’ve started to look, and in looking I have become exposed to many things, the most powerful of them being my truer self. I work hard everyday to increase my sense of self-awareness, and in doing so I have stumbled into the world of Comfort Zone Challenges.
Comfort Zone Challenges really force you to answer some of the hard questions. Why am I afraid to ask that guy to buy his backpack? Why does asking a stranger to dance on the sidewalk seem to give me paralysis?
The answer is often a slew of things: “they’ll think I’m weird”, “I’m not supposed to do that”, “it’s just not something normal people do”. Ultimately you end up realizing that there is no real reason why you shouldn’t, other than that society has lead you to convince yourself that you shouldn’t. Society has told you that breaking the mold is bad, and that reaching out and touching the world is not something normal people do.
So I invite you to open yourself up and set yourself free. Try a Comfort Zone Challenge. You’ll see that it’s harmless and that you’re not going to die. You’ll get nervous, and pretty uncomfortable, but take those feelings and meditate on them. Ask yourself why you’re feeling the way you do. You’ll be surprised at how you respond.
What a comfort zone challenge is:
A comfort zone challenge is some kind of social interaction that makes you feel uncomfortable in a positive way, such as talking to strangers or dancing by yourself in public. It is harmless and goofy.
What a comfort zone challenge is NOT:
A comfort zone challenge is NOT something that you impose on someone else, only you have the power to instantiate a comfort zone challenge. It is also NOT something that is uncomfortable because it is illegal or potential harmful to yourself or others. Comfort zone challenges should NEVER put anyone in danger.
Just wanted to clarify that. A comfort zone challenge is not the new #YOLO, that you use to justify doing some dumbass stunt.
Here is a video of some Comfort Zone Challenges:
If you enjoyed that one, here is another of Will, Eric and I:
I hope you enjoyed these videos, and I encourage you to go out and make some of your own. It is easier to get started when you are recording them. You can tell yourself, “It’s not weird because I’m doing this for a video and I’m making my friends laugh.” Hopefully that is not the only reason you want to do Comfort Zone Challenges, but this mindset helps you get started at first - well at least it helped me.
It quickly became really addicting for me. Now I try and do Comfort Zone Challenges in my daily routines. That’s where the real growth happens, when nobody is there to share it with you and you are just doing it for yourself.