Last month has been crazy - finished my first year of university with average grades and above-average life plans. Travelled all the way back to India only to die from the heat (ate some amazing food that instantly made me sick. Worth it.).
It’s fascinating what AI’s been doing to the world lately. I wonder if people felt the same way when Apple introduced iMac and Google introduced their first search engine. I am sure Gordon Moore had an “aha” moment after seeing the ambition during the 70s and covered it with his transistors mumbo jumbo to come up with Moore’s law. Every day I wake up to someone building something cool on the internet and it genuinely excites me to see how much potential people have.
Ok enough with the emotional outburst.
Life update - I met Dominic Zlat, an 18-year-old high school student and self-taught full stack developer from Romania through Y Combinator’s Co-founder matching program (I clearly love to tell this story lol.). I don’t think I’ve ever emphasized this enough but I love YC so much. I think they are doing some really cool stuff out there.
So, Dominic and I instantly started talking about how it’s 2023 and people are still stuck in their boring jobs and are unable to figure out what they truly wish to do in life. We instantly came up with this solution - why don’t we let people try out different career paths before choosing the right one for themselves? Rest was history.
With shine in our eyes and strong black coffee in our cups, we started building our dream project - LifeWire (No we are not the tech news platform :3). We desperately wanted feedback and hence, we started talking to people. Within a week, we realized that this wouldn't be as simple as we imagined it to be. Thankfully, we also very quickly realized that it’s our monkey brain talking and started enjoying the thrill that’s coming with building a platform that’s not easy to make. I mean what’s a better way to learn than tinker with hard problems, specially at a stage where we have no users or investors to disappoint?
I am writing it all here so that I can come back to this one day and connect the dots. Because -
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.” ~ Steve Jobs
P.S. - I wanted to leave some resources that never fail to inspire me. I hope they can prove to be the same for you.
Paul Graham’s essays (absolute goldmine) - http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html
Brain Food Newsletter by Shane Parrish (my go to source for entertainment when I hold shopping bags for my mom) - https://fs.blog/newsletter/
My go to gym podcast playlist:
How to Take over the world - https://www.httotw.com (The one with Steve Jobs and Thomas Edison are my personal favorites).
Joe Rogan’s Podcast with Naval Ravikant (love this so much).
Sam Altman’s Y Combinator talk
Lastly Steve Jobs’ Commencement speech at Stanford (I wake up to this every morning) -
I’ll be back next week with more updates. Till then, keep making cool shit :))