2017 brought about a lot of new experiences and lessons in various aspects of my life. 2017 was by far one of the years where I felt like a rookie again in a lot of ways, which was really exciting.
I’m thankful for all the people I got the chance to work with this 2017. I’m extremely thankful for the YouthHack Philadelphia family, Dorm Room Fund team, Twine Mafia, True Ventures Fellows, and all the other communities I got the chance to be part of and individuals I got the chance to meet this past year. You all truly made this year one of the best.
No doubt, 2017 was a year that reminded me of how much I enjoy working towards a vision starting from nothing and the intense roller coaster that it is. More importantly, it reminded me of how much I love working with people who really care about what they do and inspire me along the way! From Twine winning the Wharton Startup Challenge to all the adventures with the True Ventures fellows to getting YouthHack Philadelphia recognized by the Wharton Council, it has been an incredible year.
Below is a list of some of the biggest lessons I took away from the various experiences, side projects, internships, ventures, classes, readings, speakers, and mentors this past year. I’ve decided to bucket these lessons to a few big buckets in my life including: Startups, Career, Learning, People, Technology, and Life. I’m sharing this for two reasons: 1. I want to be able to look back a year from now and a few years from now on what my 2017 was like; 2. Maybe you’ll be able to take a way a lesson or two from this.
On Startups
2017 was the year I decided to take what I’ve learned from my previous startup projects and dive right back into trying to build something from scratch, which transformed into SkillStackers, the easiest way to outsource common business tasks to a vetted workforce. We’re only getting started but these last 6 months working on the venture has taught me a lot already.
- Everyone will be killing it from the outside – Indeed, when we were first starting out brainstorming potential ideas and paths to pursue with SkillStackers, we came across so many different competitors and so many different players in the space, and all of them seemed to be killing it from the outside but you quickly realize that this doesn’t reflect the true condition of the startup because there are so many things that go on behind the scenes and what you should really be focusing on is your customers and making them happy.
- Consistency is key – The biggest challenge about starting up especially in college is really putting in enough time to make progress on the startup and to do the little things day in and day out to push the needle forward. But at the end of the day, success doesn’t happen overnight and it’s really about being consistent and putting in the work every single day, even on days when you feel like not doing work.
- Startups really do take a long time to succeed – Building a startup and turning it into a company is a marathon and a sprint at the same time. You have to be in it for the long run, a reality I have learned to accept. While sometimes, it doesn’t seem like you’re making progress day to day, as long as you stick to it, good things eventually happen.
- The hardest part about startups is managing your psychology – There will be a lot of ups and downs. There will be days that completely suck and days where it seems like the startup will never work but you just have to keep at it. Don’t give up. Startups don’t die because of murder, they die because of suicide.
On Career
As a senior in college about to enter the workforce, career has been something I’ve thought a lot about this past few months. While I was initially stressed by the need to know what my short term plan would be and the need to feel a bit more secure, after talking to mentors and thinking about the long game, I’m now a lot more ready for this next phase of life.
- Optimize for people – Again and again, the biggest piece of advice I’ve gotten whether through my internships, interviews I’ve done with relatively successful people in tech and the speakers we had at True Ventures, was to surround yourself with people you respect, people with integrity and people you admire. Indeed, 2017 was about finding these people and intentionally hanging out with them, taking every opportunity to work with amazing people, and finding mentors that inspire me.
- Build for the long game – After talking to various entrepreneurs and reading books about successful entrepreneurs, 2017 solidified my desire to build for the long game. It’s easy to read about the quick successes and short term gains but 2017 made me realize that it’s important to be thinking about the long game whether that’s in company building, in the relationships we invest in, in the friends that we make and how we spend our time.
- Keep learning, keep pushing yourself – One thing I’ve tried to do in 2017 was to push myself out of my comfort zone, to take on tasks that were hard, to learn new things that were hard. A lot of days I would feel completely exhausted and ready to give up, but then the adversity muscle would kick in and I would keep going on whether that was through doing part time internships, working on a startup while doing a fulltime internship or taking 3 computer science classes, I tried to constantly push myself out of my comfort zone and I don’t regret it one bit.
On Learning
While I’ve admittedly never been a big fan of classes, I’ve always enjoyed learning and 2017, Mark Twain’s quote, “Don’t let your schooling interfere with your education” was something I really took to heart.
- Bookstores are a good way to restart – Toward the second part of this past semester at Penn, I started to get burned out with the mix of classes and running a startup. It seemed like I was just grinding every single day without any motivation or purpose. Then I took a detour one day to the bookstore and suddenly I had renewed energy after reading a few pages of a few books. Suddenly, I felt like the world was so much bigger once more. Since that moment, I’ve made it a point to visit the bookstore every now and then, and I pulled out my Kindle and started reading again.
- Learning from experts is the best way to learn – The best way to get up to speed with a topic is to find experts who know these topics a lot more than you do then ask a lot of questions then dive in from there.
- Just dive in, you’ll make mistakes and that’s okay – A lot of times the hardest part is getting started but once you dive in and get started, the learning is infinite. This was the case when it came to computer science and taking 3 classes this semester. This was the case with crypto investing and putting my summer savings to get some skin on the game and to start learning.
On People
Life is too short to spend time with people you don’t care about. 2017 was a year where I was more intentional with how I spent my time with people and tried my best to show up more and to be there for people I care about.
- Double down on the relationships that you care about – While I’ve always enjoyed meeting new people and networking, this past year, I learned how to double down on relationships I cared about and prioritize the people that really matter to me. You know who you are.
- The little things do make a difference – One of the most impactful videos I watched this year was the commencement speech of FirstRound Capital Founder Josh Kopelman to the Wharton Executive MBAs where he talked about taking out 3 sheets of paper at the start of each week and writing thank you notes to people who have impacted his life. Since then I’ve made it a point to take time every so often to just sit down and write notes to people I haven’t spoken with but have impacted my life in a positive way.
- It’s easier to change yourself than to change others – Everyone has their own working style, preferences, motivation and attitude that while certain times I wanted people to change to accommodate my style of work, I’ve learned to play to the strengths of others and to control what I can control which is more often than not myself.
On Technology
‘What a time to be alive’ is the phrase I’ve used a lot with my friends when discussing today’s world and all the advancements when it comes to technology.
- Blockchain/Crypto – I was initially skeptical about this technology and like everyone else thought that bitcoin and crypto was a bubble but after spending time learning more about the history and listening to talks by thought leaders, I do believe that we’re only just getting started and there’s a lot more to come in this space. HODL.
- Future of Work – I spent a lot of time this year looking into the future of work and how it has changed in the last few years and the problems within the industry and I’m excited to be working in this space and do believe that we’re going to see more and more distributed/remote workforces in the upcoming years!
- Artificial Intelligence – This summer I got the chance to talk to a lot of AI companies and am very excited by the progress we’re seeing in fields like self-driving cars but I do think that we’re still a bit far away from completely eliminating humans in the loop when it comes to AI.
On Life
One of the books I read this year was Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferriss and one of the interviews was on AngelList co-founder Naval Ravikant and he his words really drove home the fact that we will all die one day and so we shouldn’t worry too much about the small stuff because they will all be inconsequential one day.
- No matter how bad today may be, tomorrow will be better
- We will all somebody die so have fun; Don’t sweat the small stuff
- Life is short so don’t waste it doing things you don’t enjoy doing
- The world has a crazy way of giving you what your heart truly desires so trust in the process and know that things will work out
Thanks for reading! 2017 was awesome and I can’t wait for 2018 to be even better! If you’re interested in collaborating/working together this 2018, feel free to reach out!