Months 3 + 4: Visions

Andrew Min
Jul 21, 2017 · 6 min read

I’ve been telling myself I’d write this for a while now. So yeah. I’m finally doing it b. Essentially, this post serves as a wrap-up for my time at Horizons as well as a few things that happened afterwards that have significantly shaped the outlook of my near future. For the sake of maintaining a thematic sequence, I’ve grouped months 3 and 4 together into this one post. It’s a bit of a beast, but whatever. Let’s get it.

Horizons

A lot has happened very quickly. Post Horizons-graduation, I spent some time pretty much just kickin’ it — celebrating my best bud’s 21st, visiting Penn to attend the graduation of the class of 2017, winding down in SoCal for a bit, and spending time in my beautiful hometown of Federal Way (haha) catching up with my day ones. Now I’m back in SF, attempting to recapitulate all that’s happened recently while sitting in a Caltrain and bumping Hov’s 4:44.

In my previous posts, I offered separate accounts of months 1 and 2 at Horizons. Those 8 weeks in total were notably structured and highly optimized for learning via planned curriculum. In contrast, the subsequent 8 weeks were much more flexible. Some of us pursued client-oriented, contract-based projects. Others spent most of their time pursuing summer internship or full-time opportunities. The remainder, myself included, worked on our own projects. I had the opportunity to work with some fantastic, insightful, and tremendously talented people on a variety of products. We explored the concept of a personal relationship manager, had an interesting time sourcing projects from individuals who needed sites/apps to be built, and ultimately ended up working on a fitness-based game called Jack, now available on the iOS app store.

If you recall, month 1 was tough for me. Sleep deprived, I’d dig deep to muster up the energy to complete that last assignment or fix that one big that was screwing up all the test cases. Month 2 was more of the same. Once I got to month 3, I felt kind of liberated. No longer did I have a set of assignments to complete. It really just came down to willpower, dedication, persistence, and synergy between team members. I realized once you’re doing your own thing, be it a simple project or a fully functioning startup, the onus is really on you to get from point A to B and navigate all the ups and downs in between. And that is where the challenge lies.

So what’d we actually do?

At first, we dove into the aforementioned idea of a personal relationship manager. Without getting into revealing details about the project itself, the process was pretty comprehensive. We went through sending out mass Twitter DMs to get the opinions of potential users — what do they want? What is the problem? And how would we come up with a well-designed and effective solution? Then, after brainstorming quite a bit, we got to prototyping — making UI mockups in Figma/Sketch, coding early iterations of a mobile app using React Native and Expo, and architecting how the backend should work in conjunction with a logically structured database.

As I’m writing this, a particular Steve Jobs quote comes to mind: “The customer never knows what they want until we show them.” While surveying people to see what they want is valuable and insightful, sometimes, they themselves don’t even know what they really want. Steve Jobs’ rare ability to figure out what people want, without them explicitly knowing it, is what made him legendary and able to unleash a huge change in paradigm within modern computing.

After losing a little steam with that project, we moved onto sourcing and exploring projects that remote clients had in mind. After making some exquisite slide decks and going through numerous phone calls, no particular project gained enough traction. So we moved on. Again.

A few months prior, while trying to figure out how to make a better version of “Bop It!” for mobile, we ran into some technical roadblocks and ended up taking a hiatus. Now that we had the time to pursue an idea of our choosing, we decided to pick back up on this idea and create that aforementioned fitness-oriented multiplayer game for mobile. We soon found that there’s a lot that goes into a given mobile game. You have to present information intuitively and be crystal clear with implicit instructions, be cognizant of the way you store data (like usernames, high scores, etc) and come up with clever ways to allow multiplayer gaming to happen. When we finally got the accelerometer component to register data points, we were ecstatic. This fueled the following sprint to launch the app asap. We ended up gaining a bit of traction on a few college campuses, but unfortunately, this all happened as our program was winding down. Because we all split off and went different ways for the summer, further development was tabled. Maybe we’ll pick it back up at another time.

Alright. What did I learn during those 16 weeks?

Well, in short, I learned a lot. About San Francisco, the “tech” industry, software engineering, product, marketing, sales, other people, and myself. And for that, I want to thank Horizons and its founders, instructors, and TAs for providing me the opportunity to make a big leap in terms of personal development.

If you missed the previous posts and would like to see specifically what I learned in terms of tech stack, once again, here are the links to months 1 and 2.

How do I feel?

I’m happy I did Horizons when I did. Prior to participating, I had gone through a season of OCR (on-campus recruitment) that didn’t go as planned. So I was like “aight bet 🤝, game time.” I had been looking for a general sense of direction, and Horizons definitely helped me find what really interests me. More importantly, I’m extremely grateful for the people I’ve met through the bootcamp and within the San Francisco community as a whole. Looking ahead, I feel a sense of empowerment that I didn’t possess before. I can do stuff. Conceive. Build. Push. Distribute. Iterate. Moreover, if I don’t know something now, I feel like I have the tools to learn it. And that’s the takeaway that I value most.

This summer, Horizons is having its third session. It’s continuing to grow, and I’m thankful to have been a part of it. I know I’ll definitely miss it — the long nights, the meals we had, and the arduous walks to and from class every day. I owe a huge thanks to all whom I had the chance to personally interact with. GOATs.

What now?

Post-Horizons, I was able to somehow get myself into an internship at Movebutter, a grocery startup. It’s been an amazing experience thus far, working closely with the founders and the rest of the team to help build a community and gear up for the launch of its upcoming store. I’ll probably have a lot more to say about my experience here come the end of summer, but for now, I can definitely say that I’ve been having fun and learning at a pretty high pace. Not just about technical skills, but more so about the day-to-day operations of a startup that’s sprinting to make things happen.

Wrap up

All I have to say is, what a time to be alive. It’s a blessing to have lived through the turn of a millennium. Technological development + Moore’s law has ushered in this new era where everything continues to develop unbelievably quickly. In the grand scheme of things, I think it’s unbelievable that modern computers have only been around for a max of ~100 years. We have more tools available for our disposal now than ever before. It’d be a shame if we didn’t make the most of our opportunities.

As an aside, this thing called “writing” is lowkey very hard to do. I respect those who churn out articles day-in and day-out because it takes a lot to convey your thoughts accurately and succinctly while also engaging your audience through words. At the end of the day, writing is an important channel of communication. Sure, there is a loss of precision when a snippet of writing goes from one to another. But it’s nevertheless important. If you feel like you’re “not a good writer,” don’t let that stop you. I was never particularly fond of writing. I never thought I was good, and I still don’t. However, I realize the value it could bring, to both myself and others. Just start writing. Put down your thoughts on paper, or in Evernote, Google Keep, whatever. Work your brain. Practice conveying your ideas.

I’m looking forward to learning more, writing more, and creating more in the near future. San Franciscan ambition is just on another level. We have significant figures in tech trying to both extend and enhance human life. A topic for another day would be how such changes might affect the way that we live today. Be on the lookout. Hennything is possible.


Let’s talk

If you have any questions or comments about anything mentioned above, hit me.

Topics of interest: the dot com bubble, fintech, blockchain, crypto, AI/ML, sports, sneakers, fashion, life, whatever.

andrewmin8@gmail.com || twitter || fb || linkedin

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