It was the fall of 2015, and I was sitting in economy class on a flight bound for Toronto, with only one thing on my mind: Money.
I had just spent my summer interning in the Bay area, at a small and relatively obscure domain registrar as a software developer. My resume comprised of some time at IBM and Shopify, and 2 years at the University of Toronto. By Silicon Valley standards, I was an undistinguished average Joe.
Everywhere I looked, there was exorbitant amounts of money. Money paid to Facebook employees. Money spent on nice houses. Money raised by rocket ship startups. Money I didn’t have.
It was then and there that I drank the Kool-Aid, and decided to become an entrepreneur. Here are 5 lessons I learned over the next 5 years.
1. Hack The 6ix — School Isn’t Essential
At the beginning of my third year at the University of Toronto, the President of Nspire offered me an opportunity to start a new hackathon. Looking to gain leadership skills for entrepreneurship, I founded Hack The 6ix.
As it turns out, organizing a hackathon is no walk in the park. Sponsors don’t fall out of the sky. Vendors aren’t charities. Food doesn’t grow on trees. Okay, maybe it does, but not in Toronto.
I also grossly underestimated how intense school would be. Engineering Science was well known as one of the toughest programs in Canada, and I was taking six courses per semester. It was a recipe for disaster.
When push came to shove, I chose Hack The 6ix over school. I sent cold emails to sponsors during classes. I skipped lectures and tutorials. I bombed midterms and exams. I finished the year with a 2.27 annual GPA.
In the end, we ran a deficit of $7.5k and raised only $1.5k. Despite that, the team pulled through; we landed a venue partnership with MaRS, and welcomed 200 students over 3 days. Today, Hack The 6ix has become an annual event, educated thousands of students, and partnered with companies like Wealthsimple, Amazon, and Microsoft.
Even though my grades sucked, it never got in the way of my career. The startups I applied to never cared about how I did in school. In fact, 5 years later at CodeMode, choosing Hack The 6ix over school led to a lucky break that saved us from bankruptcy. More on that later.
2. Wealthsimple — Big Egos are for Small People
At the beginning of 2016, my ego was inflated more than the dot-com bubble. I thought my experience with Hack The 6ix and Shopify could land me any internship I wanted; with high confidence, I applied to only a few US companies.
By summer, my ego was completely and utterly annihilated. I was rejected by every company I interviewed with. My fantasies of becoming a prestigious Facebook intern were dispelled.
One of my most embarrassing experiences was when I flew to New York for a full day of interviews with Bloomberg. During the first interview of the day, I argued with my interviewers in order to defend my solution for a tree-traversal. It went so badly, they cancelled the rest of my interviews for that day and sent me home.
I ended up interning with another relatively obscure Toronto startup: Wealthsimple. I cold emailed their Director of Engineering, who gave me a blind vote of confidence by opening up an intern position, even though none were available at the time.
The universe must have taken pity on me, because joining Wealthsimple lead to one of the greatest growth periods of my entire life. With my ego out of the way, I was as malleable as clay; I took criticism without getting butt-hurt, and actively sought ways to improve my craft. It wasn’t long before I decided to continue my education with Wealthsimple instead of school, and dropped out.
My time at Wealthsimple also showed me the importance of having a great mentor. My manager was well known for setting a high bar for code quality, and did not hesitate to provide feedback whenever I implemented poor practices. He taught me solid foundations in software engineering, which prepared me for all my future ventures.
3. Beatcamp — Uncertainty and Risk Are Not the Same Thing
I’ve heard from many aspiring entrepreneurs that they haven’t gotten started because they didn’t feel ready. There was always another skill they wanted to learn, another job they wanted to try, another idea they wanted to wait for.
To be honest, I never felt ready for any of my ventures. I started them thinking, “how the hell do I do this?”. Then, somehow, someway, I’d find a way to make it work.
While working at Wealthsimple, I spent my evenings and weekends creating an instrumental music licensing marketplace called Beatcamp. As 2017 came to a close, the MVP was still nowhere near ready for a public launch. My co-founders wanted to raise money, so that we could pay contractors to help us build the platform.
I went to the co-founder of TechToronto for advice, and possibly an investment. His response was as insightful as it was unforgettable:
I would never invest in a company with founders who don’t believe in their vision enough to do it full-time.
I had reached a difficult fork in the road. How could I quit my full-time job, after I had already dropped out of school? How can I take on such a big risk?
The revelation came when I realized that I wasn’t faced with risk; I was faced with uncertainty. We had enough money to hold out for 6 months. In that time, if we couldn’t raise more money or turn a profit, I could always go back to a full-time job.
All risks contain uncertainty, but not all uncertainties contain risk. It was uncertain whether our company would succeed, but there wasn’t any risk of me having no job and becoming homeless.
A week later, my manager sat me down for my annual performance review. He gave me a promotion, and I gave him my resignation.
4. Digital Nomad — Finding Yourself Is a Lie
Breaking news: Starting your own company is hard. Investors won’t hand you a $500k cheque just because you have a cool idea. Users won’t magically discover your product on their own.
After 8 months of working on Beatcamp, money was running out. We launched our platform and made sales, but it wasn’t anywhere close to being enough to feed an entire team. Our growth was flatlining, and the end was on the horizon.
I pulled the plug, and resigned. Without another technical person on the team, the rest of the company followed suit. Cuss words were thrown, and bridges were burned.
While everyone else on the team went back to their day jobs, I was hit with my quarter-life crisis. I wasn’t ready to go to another full-time job, carrying with me the story that I created a startup and failed. I didn’t know what to do with my life.
I ended my lease, sold my furniture, and told my newly-minted girlfriend that I was going to Asia for an indeterminate amount of time. I told her I wanted to find myself.
With only $5,000 left in my bank account, I bought a one-way plane ticket to Southeast Asia. I trained at a kickboxing bootcamp in Thailand, learned about human rights atrocities in Cambodia, and toured the Vietnamese countryside in a scooter. While it was a great experience that I would repeat if given the chance, I don’t feel like it gave me any epiphanies about my life.
In hindsight, finding myself was essentially a euphemism for avoiding responsibility. The truth is, I was transitioning into a fully-grown adult with financial, social, and personal responsibilities, but I wanted none of it.
5. CodeMode — Luck Favours Survivors
While I was backpacking through Asia, I funded my travels by taking on freelance development work. By the time I returned, I had enough clients and revenue to support myself without needing a full-time job.
I decided to incorporate and become a dev shop, which my mentor was hesitant to support. He told me that a cookie-cutter gun-for-hire doesn’t stand out, and that my company needs to find a niche specialization if it were to succeed.
Taking my mentor’s advice, I began looking for ways to uniquely present my company. With the help of my best friend of 10 years, we created CodeMode, a consulting company that specializes in creating enterprise-scale software solutions. In one year, we grew from nothing to $750,000 annual revenue.
The journey from inception to where we are now was far from smooth sailing. There were many days where we thought we would go bankrupt, and nights where we wanted to give up.
At one point, we were 4 weeks away from running out of money. We were down to our last client, and didn’t have any leads in the pipeline. The familiar feeling of imminent failure was creeping in.
The universe took pity on us one more time. I randomly stumbled upon a LinkedIn post by a former Hack The 6ix sponsor seeking design services. After submitting our bid, the client reviewed potential vendors with a trusted connection, who happened to be one of our previous clients. A few days later, we began work on the biggest contract we’ve seen to date.
None of our opportunities would have came to us if we gave up too early. By holding out until the very last moment, we maximized our chances of survival. Perhaps, if I didn’t give up on Beatcamp, it would have worked out. After all, you can’t get lucky if you’re dead.
While we’re doing well for a one year old company, the journey is far from over. In the coming years, there will be many more instances of fighting for survival. Life will get difficult, but we’ll do our best to remember not to give up.
Parting Thoughts
Five years ago, I had no idea I would become the founder of a professional services company. In fact, I probably would have detested the idea, and would have rathered be doing something else. Cali or bust, amirite?
I don’t think my current happiness is heavily dependent on the type of company I’m running, or the product I’m working on. I’m no longer obsessed with money, and my reasons for pursuing entrepreneurship are not the same as it was when I first started this journey.
The things that do make me happy are my freedom and my friends. These are the two things I always want to have, and I wouldn’t trade them for anything else.
Another 5 years from now, I won’t be talking about how much money I made. I’ll be talking about the places I’ve been, the value I created, and the lives I’ve touched. Truly, the journey matters more than the destination.
My name is Pei, and I’m a traveller, an entrepreneur, and an animal lover. During my spare time, I enjoy having coffee chats and eating delicious food.
My current venture is CodeMode, a consulting company that creates enterprise software solutions in order to increase productivity and reduce operational inefficiency. For work related inquiries, please email me at pei@codemode.co.
