How did I become a tech millionaire in 2.5 years

This is a story with a twist. This is a story about how to adapt and take advantage of a modern and rapidly changing environment. This could also be your story.

The fourth industrial revolution

Access to technology is (unfortunately) not evenly distributed. But unless you were living under a rock, it has disrupted about everything in your life. Breaking news, the new wave of technologies is going to have an even larger impact. From artificial intelligence to blockchain, quantum computing and nano/biotechnologies, the way we live is set to drastically change. A general intelligence could potentially solve all of humanity’s problems (work could be a foreign idea to new generations) while nanotechnologies could make us immortal. Nothing less than that.

“We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 character”

Everything is a question of timing. We tend to forget that revolutions don’t happen as fast as we hope they do. It is a long process. In the meantime, robots are coming for your jobs. The good news is that you can fight back and turn the threat into an opportunity. This is what I did.

The starting point

If you think that humans are some kind of sophisticated beings, you haven’t met me a few years ago. I was more like a primate. And this is probably insulting them. If a machine didn’t work the way I wanted it to, I felt the urge to communicate my discontentment in a physical and indelicate manner.

The problem with that approach is that it simply doesn’t work… Like with everything else in life, outcomes tend to improve when you know how to communicate. So I decided that it was time for me to learn how to speak the same language(s).

Now what?

Unfortunately, you can’t really become an engineer or programmer overnight (and the people who are telling you the opposite are lying). Not only it takes a lot of work, but you also need a certain way of thinking. My brain is different. But as a former investment banker, I knew how incredibly valuable information is. I am better at telling stories.

“ War is ninety percent information.” — Napoleon.

Big data was becoming a buzzword. The question was (and still is) how do you turn all that data into information (and information into insight)? Data science… Here it was, my open window.

Off to a rough start

You have to start somewhere. So I did what everyone would have done: I googled it. Not my brightest idea. According to the few articles and testimonies I read, in order to be a data scientist, I had to become a computer scientist, a mathematician AND a domain expert. Case closed.

A man with a plan

But then it hit me. To play soccer, you don’t need to be a marathoner, a sprinter and a kicker. You just need to be a soccer player (or at least play soccer). The rest is just a screen of marketing smoke and self-promotion.

I started browsing the internet for some course. I thought that a non programmatic one would be best at first — I was still shaking from my previous scare. I started with a bunch of “database management” lectures. Nothing too ugly. It was very useful to understand what is data and how to actually structure/organize it. It got me hungry. I kept going and I learned some SQL: once you have the data ready, you want to play with it!

SQL is a declarative language which means you code what is to be done rather than how to do it. It is a little easier to start with. After a few months I was ready to make reports. Which is cool, but not as cool as… Machine learning! Wooooooow, so shiny…

My next step was to learn R. R is a successful language in the field but it was already losing to Python. Why would I bet on the wrong horse you might ask? First, I do not lose bet (mostly because I do not bet). Second, I did that to smooth the learning curve. R is arguably easier to learn — and I also happened to have more learning material on R. After a few courses, I decided to consolidate all my learning with a Data Science professional certificate from Microsoft.

The snake

Here it was, massive and unperturbed. I couldn’t avoid it anymore. I had to learn Python. Back to (almost) square one. Hours of “pointless” programming exercises… until I decided to enroll in the Machine Learning Engineer nanodegree from Udacity. I had already taken some of their classes and their content is of really good quality. This time, it was a 6 months program covering supervised, unsupervised, deep and reinforcement learning. Yaaay, more work!

Building stuff

The program ended with a capstone project. It means that you have to build something… from scratch. This was the really fun part. Building stuff is actually really frustrating. I meant rewarding!! You actually see the result of your work. You have something to show.

It got me excited. So excited that I turned my capstone project (an app using computer vision to encourage home cooking — which is much healthier) into a real life project. It didn’t stop there. In an “unstoppable” creative spree, I started to work on another app (using computer vision to improve mental health) and two bots (Agentdonuts and a good old customer service bot).

This is the beauty of programming. You get to build stuff. And building stuff means (maybe) making an impact on the world and creating a legacy. You don’t need children anymore!!

The twist

Unfortunately, I am a multimillionaire… only in Venezuelan Bolivar (which means I have $40 on my bank account). But this is not the point. The point is that I went from being a simple user (I used to consider VLOOKUPs as pure magic) to some kind of a programmer. I went from zero to actually taking a class on computer vision from Georgia Tech University to help me better my two apps. If I am doing it, everybody can do it!

Yes, I will most probably never be a Mozart of coding. This is fine. First, Mozart lived at a time where computer was not even an idea yet. So take that in your face!

But more importantly, my code doesn’t need to be perfect. It just needs to improve each time. And that takes practice. Programming is a field that doesn’t require a formal education. You need to build. You need practice. All it takes is work and perseverance. Sometimes more perseverance than work. You will also need the internet. I can’t count the number of times I borrowed ideas/snippets of code from the internet.

The revolution is coming. You can be a part of it… You should be a part of it. Diversity is unbelievably valuable. Only by having a variety of people with different mindsets, experiences, backgrounds etc. play with those technologies that we will unleash the best of innovation. After all, those are enabling technologies. They are enabling you to do what your imagination wants you to do.