10 Months and 10 Thousand Miles Later
This is how 10 Months and 10 Thousand Miles changed the direction of my life
Ten months ago my parents separated, nine months ago I started part time freelance webdesign, eight months ago I had an idea, seven months ago I was on the roll of a high school, six months ago I gave a local business hope, five months ago I pitched my idea at Startup Weekend, four months ago I reevaluated my priorities, three months ago I dropped out of high school, two months ago I traveled the furthest I have ever been from home, one month ago I learned the importance of coming back to something with a fresh mind.
So here’s how the last 10 Months and 10 Thousand Miles have changed the direction of my life.
February — Separation and the unknown
My not so favourite month, the start of the school year. The second last year of high school is usually the time students decide whether they want to attend a university, polytechnic or get a job. Like most other students, I had no clear idea of what I wanted to do. Although I did have an idea of what sort of industry I wanted to get into, information technology.
Separation; it happens in life, and mostly for the better. This was a hard reality for me to accept. It happened all so fast, but I didn’t let it interfere with my life. I think this made me realise that I was a strong-minded person and helped me become who I am today.
March — Building my personal brand
During the first term school work is usually just boring fundamentals, and I needed something exciting to keep me entertained. I enjoyed doing web design as a hobby and a couple projects here and there.
Building my personal website was first on the list. I created it and explained a little about my self and what I can do. Great, so I have my website all up and ready to go!
A few days later I stumbled across a local business’s website which was compromised by a hacker. I have a background in website security so I thought, why not offer to fix it for him. I sent him a link to my website and he didn’t hesitate to give me access to all of his site’s files to investigate.
“By the way impressive CV and thanks for contacting me as i think we need someone like you on board” — Mike Sanford
Within 30 minutes I had his website back online again. Since then he has helped build my portfolio and my reputation among local businesses. “Was it fate?” I ask myself.
April — Brainstorming Ideas
I’ve had an idea for a while of building a more user friendly Learning Management System (LMS) for my high school, I call it ‘MEPO’. It has been an idea since late 2011 where I was throwing some ideas around with my science teacher. She agreed with me that the current system in place was inadequate.
I ended up doing some more research, which led me to sending an email directly to the person in charge of the implementation of LMSs, at the Ministry of Education. I was curious to see what sort of government funding would be available for a project like this. I was quickly told that it was unlikely that any funding would be made available and that the demographic was a “moving target”. This slightly discouraged me so I didn’t spend quite as much time as I was previously spending.
May — Priority reevaluation
It was also a time for me to reevaluate how I would spend my time. School was at the bottom of my list and it stayed that way, I spent more time focusing on improving my web design and development skills. I was introduced to a whole new world as I ventured into WordPress; I am still deciding whether I like it or not.
So with school at the bottom of my priority list I begun falling behind and more and more I was skipping days. The more days I skipped the further I fell behind. My attendance came to the attention of my school’s dean and they gave me an opportunity to enter the ‘GATEWAY’ program, which was designed for students like me to gain work experience at a local business in the field which they were interested in. The catch was that the only way I could get in was to improve my attendance. I really did try coming to school more often but it didn’t improve enough to be able to get into the program. In one way or another I am pleased I didn’t; I wouldn’t be where I am today if I did.
June — Giving a local business a chance
Remember that site that was hacked early in the year? The owner and I had been throwing around ideas for the new site and I ended up doing the re-branding and redesign of his website.
After months of brainstorming ideas and concepts, the website was online!
This was the first website I have ever built in WordPress. As thrown together as it was — it works and does the job it’s designed to do. I guess that’s just part of the startup culture, if it’s not broken don’t fix it(until it’s hacked).
July—Startup Weekend
July is usually an average month for me. I turned 17 and I realised I only had 1 year left until I was legally an adult. I didn’t really have much of a plan for what I wanted to do. It wasn’t until I stumbled across ‘Startup Weekend’ on the website I just finished, I thought that this would be a good way to tell people about my idea ‘MEPO’, as well as build my personal brand among locals.
Startup Weekend was coming closer and I realised I needed some business cards to hand out. So I quickly designed some and had them printed. That same day I was sitting in a cafe having a hot chocolate, I ended up convincing myself to go into local businesses and handing my cards out. I thought — “Why not?” .
It was the first day of Startup Weekend, I had my pitch all prepared. I’m not a great public speaker, so I was pretty nervous. I ended up completely missing one of my main points out of my pitch. That aside I think people got the concept — I ended up being one of the 9 voted in to build their idea, out of 24 pitches.
It turned out I wasn’t the only one who was interested in education and eLearning, this was where I met Neil Riley — CEO of Live-wire Learning and teacher of 30 years; who is now part of the MEPO team.
This was the first time I was introduced to the word ‘startups’. Which made me realise that I already have had a few startups already, which evidently were ‘failed startups’. Failures are common among startups, as hard as it is to accept. But with failures came experiences, which I learned from.
August — Dropped out of high school
During a school break I had a lot of time to really think about my future and I realised school just wasn’t cutting it for me. I found my self falling behind most of the year, simply because nothing in the school curriculum interested me anymore. Strangely enough I have only received positive feedback to me dropping out from my old teachers and friends.
Around the middle of the month one of the Startup Weekend organisers tagged me in a post which had a link to ‘Global Startup Youth’. I had a quick look and soon realised the conference was for ages 18-24, so I emailed to check if I was eligible to enter.
“The cover on your website says it all!! We love tech geeks!! Please apply!!!” — Vani Dhakshinamoorthy
So I submitted it! I was in the draw with 2000 other “coders, hustlers, domain experts and youth leaders”. Then it was the waiting game.
September — Judgement Day
In the middle of August I teamed up with the admin of a Facebook page with over 50,000 likes.
Together we created the brand ‘Mean Bro’. It is an iconic slang term here in New Zealand so we thought to use that as an advantage in our marketing strategy. The plan was to build an entertainment website with content which New Zealanders could easily relate to.
During September and August our brand grew rapidly and within 3 months of we had over 55,000 likes.
As part of our traffic direction strategy we identified latest trends and soon created more Facebook pages. One of them being ‘New Zealand Vines’ which now has over 97,000 likes. We also partnered with other pages which have a big presence in New Zealand and together our conglomerate of Facebook pages now have over 350,000 likes which we use to direct traffic to our website.
It was the day the results were being announced for Global Startup Youth! Judgement day. I was up anxiously waiting for the results. I ended up staying up until midnight then fell asleep. I woke up with the biggest smile as I checked my e-mails. I couldn’t believe in less than a month I would be flying 5 thousand miles to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia!
A group on Facebook was created for the selected participants, it was incredible to see the such diverse cultures and amazing people who I would get to meet.
October — Global Startup Youth (GSY)
Eight months ago I didn’t think I would be going to a business conference let alone traveling over 5 thousand miles to be among 500+ young entrepreneurs at a globally recognised boot camp. It wasn’t long until I was on the plane and off to Malaysia, this was it.
An 8 hour flight later, here I am in Kuala Lumpur. This was the furthest I’ve been from home. Half asleep, we traveled to the hotel in a bus from the airport. We were greeted with a lightning storm in the distance, which lit up surrounding scenery and the night sky.
It was time to check in at the Double Tree Hotel, this was the first time staying in a 5 star hotel for me.
The following morning we picked up our GSY bags and t-shirts. I was also given a team number and a list of who was in my team.
Everyone started to make their way to the Kuala Lumpur Convention Center (KLCC), but apparently I had other plans. I accidentally made my way onto the bus with all of the mentors and ended up having lunch with them, whoops☺.
During GSY there were many inspirational and informative keynotes from leaders themselves such as Dash Dhakshinamoorthy — Founder of Startup Malaysia and Jonathon Ortmans — President at Global Entrepreneurship Week.
As painfully slow the WiFi was for the whole trip it, our team managed to pull off our Minimum Viable Product (MVP). The project we worked on was a crowd-sourcing platform for education tuition fees for disadvantaged students.
On the second night an email arrived in my inbox, about an invitation to attend a roundtable with Secretary Penny Prizker and Rich Barton. I asked my team if any of them had gotten the email, turns out it was only for a very select few of participants from GSY.
“Congratulations! You have been selected to participate in a roundtable with U.S. Secretary of Commerce, Penny Pritzker and Rich Barton founder of Zillow and keynote speaker at GES ... This is an event for a select group less than two dozen young innovators.”
The day of the roundtable came and it was almost time to go it wasn’t long until I was rushing to the room. Turned out I wasn’t late after all!
There was about 14 other participants from GSY there, we were asked to share what were currently working on. They all thought it was quite ironic when I said “I just dropped out of high school”.
I was so intrigued by how amazing these people were, one of them are working on a remote surgery project another working with National Geographic on a documentary.
Rich Barton explained a metaphor which detailed what traits of what makes a great entrepreneur. The traits came from the movie ‘The Wizard of Oz’ which the Mighty Oz granted upon the 3 who accompanied Dorothy.
Scarecrow was granted wisdom. The factory of the entrepreneur is the brain. Great entrepreneurs are smart, have insights and appreciate assets that are locked in the heads of smart people.
Cowardly lion was given courage. Entrepreneurs have the courage of their convictions, a capacity to think boldly and an ability to convey that belief.
Tin man received a heart (passion). Leaders believe in what they’re doing. The passionate entrepreneur will win hearts and minds.
It wasn’t long until I was back in New Zealand. I now have a better understanding of the start-up ecosystem and how it’s evolving. It is great to know that now I have a network of over 500 young entrepreneurs from more than 100 different countries who share the same passions as I do.
I wanted to give back to the GSY alumni so I designed a platform that you can easily find someone who attended. We encouraged people to sign up and provide their social links such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Skype; so finding and getting in touch with other participants was easy. The platform also included a directory of all the participants, so you can easily search for a term such as ‘Designer’ and quickly find someone who had that in their bio.
November — Temporary hold and back with a clear mind
It was coming close to the end of the year, it was time to focus on building the MEPO prototype for beta testing in February. I begun to build the user interface and it was progressing well.
As I was scrolling through my Facebook news feed one day I noticed something. Everyone was posting items in buy and sell groups. These groups were for regions. I had a look through the group and immediately noticed how disorganized it all was. Items had been sold and not removed, questions remained unanswered and it’s full of spam. This got me thinking of a solution, so I started to brainstorm ideas of how I could tackle this issue. I came up with NZ Trader and started work right away; putting MEPO on hold.
A month later it was live and in beta, with over 40 members in the first week. I am pleased that I put off the MEPO prototype, now I have a better understanding of the PHP framework Laravel; which I am building MEPO in.
As well as learning a new framework, I have explored Facebook’s vast API and I was absolutely stunned at how powerful it is. My imagination was set loose thinking of new invitations that I could build using the API. At the same time it was scary to see what apps that use the API can really see and do with your Facebook account once you’ve clicked that ‘allow’ button.
So here I am, 10 Months and 10 Thousand Miles Later.
I consider myself a changed person. It has become clear to me, that now I have a dream. A dream that only I can make a reality, a dream which no matter hard life gets I will grasp onto it and never let go and a dream that no one will stop me from living.
"If you don't build your dreams, someone will hire you to help build theirs." - Tony Gaskins.
Special thanks to: The Malaysian Government, Startup Malaysia, Mike Sanford, The Web Design Forum, and every else who has helped me become who I am today.
