The Peterman Pod - 21x Hackathon Winner Turned College Dropout | Jia Chen Interview

Episode Date: April 14, 2025

Jia Chen is a 21 year old that won 21x hackathons and co-founded her own startup, all while being a content creator. She’s worked hard to succeed in tech despite attending a non-target school, and has recently dropped out to work on her startup, Sprint.dev.We discuss:• Winning hackathon strategies• How to stand out as a college student• Content creation• Dropping out to build a startup• College reflections and adviceTimestamps:(00:00) Intro(00:55) Getting into hackathons(04:10) Hackathon strategy(15:20) Developing agency & time management(19:27) Standing out at a non-target school(20:19) Is college useful?(24:28) Personal brand(26:25) Dropping out to build a startup(32:32) Advice to younger selfWhere to find Jia:• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jia.seed/• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/audrey-chen-tech/• Startup (Sprint.dev): https://www.sprint.dev/Where to find Ryan:• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/• X: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/ • Threads: https://www.threads.net/@ryanlpeterman• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman To hear more, visit www.developing.dev

I was able to keep my engineering GPA over 3.5, go to 15 hackathons, and also grow to 50K on social media. This is Gia. She's a college student who won 21 hackathons with a 70% win rate. I signed up for the next one and actually didn't tell my parents, secretly rented a car, drove to Ohio, and then won first place. Not to mention that she started a company while in college with a pretty crazy story. I said I wanted to start a company, so at 9 p.m., I started shipping out the MVP, and at 9 a.m. I posted it everywhere. on Instagram. The app crashed after like it got too much traffic. Our apartment got robbed. We got our laptop stolen. It's okay. So literally the next hour, we got right back on to talking

to clients. We landed seven YC companies working with us and 50 other companies. I appreciated her transparency and think you will too. There are so many like CS content creators getting canceled left and right for like their opinions on this topic. My opinion is that. The number one thing that I wanted to talk to you about was hackathons. You attended so many hackathons, it's crazy. And you have an insane win rate. I don't know. I just keep seeing like 70% being thrown around there. So, okay, you clearly have figured it out. You know how to win hackathons. You got some special tips here. How'd you get into the hackathons? What made you want to go so deep in hackathons as a college student? I got into hackathons actually from a non-technical

background. I was a finance major. Oh, really? I'd taken one python class, like try-hearted it and sort of attended every single lecture, got a four point. And then I was like, I can try attending this hackathon this weekend. The issue was I didn't know any of like the modern libraries, like React or next. But I was like, oh, there's builders at this hackathon. So I can probably just have them like build my idea. But I ended up building the entire time for the full 24 hours. And we ended up like losing that first hackathon. You said you were fine. So did you have any experience in high school, like APCS or anything like that? I had APCS, but I was pretty like disinterested. Okay, so you knew something, but you didn't expect this to be something that you got really deep into.

So after you did that first hackathon, what made you want to do another 20 after that? It kind of just naturally flowed. Even though we, like, lost the first hackathon, I wasn't that disappointed because, like, that was the first time where I felt so much enthusiasm for building. And I was able to, like, unleash my creativity. So I signed up for the next one. And actually, didn't tell my parents, secretly rented a car, drove. to Ohio and then one first place for hardware for the Ohio hackathon. It was called Blackham Hacks. So this was during, this was in college, right? This was in college. It was in my

freshman year of college in the spring semester. Oh my God. Okay. So you really went out of your way and you did a hardware hackathon too. Yeah and I did a hardware hackathon. I basically had this insane schedule where I would take my economics courses in the daytime so just cram them and get them out of the way. And virtually the entire day I'd be in the lab, like, experimenting with hardware, software. And from like 9 p.m. to 5 a.m., like most days of the week, I would just be, like, learning new APIs, new tools, new libraries, and like new microcontrollers. Yeah, it was kind of crazy. What was the thing that you built that won that hackathon? The thing that I built that won the hackathon, basically I just put a bunch of different modules

together with a raspberry pie. Raspberry Pi pigo and it was able to measure the distance between the raspberry pie and whatever object was in front of it sort of like an extension of like your walking cane or like invisible well not walking cane but like yeah cane for people with like visual disabilities so instead of like the cane being 10 feet it would be like 20 feet and wherever you pointed like your arm it would be able to like measure the distance you rented a car you kind of just sent it. How'd you build the team? What happened when you got there?

I had found a friend from just like reaching out on Discord servers. And so we drove there together. But I just like full send the hackathon solo. Oh, okay. So you didn't have a team. Out of all the hackathons that you do participate in, do you feel like the team's a big part of it? Or have you been soloing all of them?

A team is a big part of it. I think when going for like massive prizes or like going for grand prizes, for sure a team is an advantage rather than a disadvantage, especially when you can divide tasks and people can specialize, then when everyone's working at the same thing, like all that manpower is extremely helpful. What makes a good team? Finding teammates not based on the credential,

but based on their skills. A lot of times, like, people would ape in on, like, the PhD research students because of their credentials or because of their internships or titles or whatever. But I would take, like, the opposite route, and I would look at people's projects on GitHub, see how active their commits were, and see, like, what kind of experience they had. with our particular use case.

And that was actually a better method because these teammates would be more passionate about the project we were building, put in more effort and sort of be more scrappy and have less of a limiting mindset and more of like growth mindset. That makes sense. You're basically hiring for the exact skill set

that you need to build something. When you come into these hackathons, do you already come in with ideas? Yeah, I already come in with ideas. There's so much, like, hackathons, are not like typical competitive programming competitions. There's so many aspects to a hackathon, like the social aspect, the time frame aspect,

how there's like only 24 to 48 hours. The fact that there's very different themed prizes, niche prizes that you can research into and how the tools that you're like given are varied. So you have to be very scrappy. But in that way you can like sort of max out the aspects before building. Or for example, like even though you don't like type any code, You can put together Google Doc, research the different sponsor tools,

sort of understand how they integrate with your different ideas, visualize how you would be developed in the project, and if it's feasible within 24 hours. I would often go for a very solid, simple, straightforward finished product rather than going for something absurd or complex. I mean, in times, like, I would aim high in, like, very grand pies, where I do something extremely complex, like, for the Princeton, hackathon we did Lacing Algorithm for

seeing if people mess with artists NFTs. Lacing algorithm. Well, what do you mean by Lacing algorithm? Like an algorithm that can trace back if someone has messed with someone's art in an NFT and it tracks it back to the original artist. I see. Okay, so there's at some point in the tree of edits fans off, okay, I see. And you built some UI on top of it to like show that this was like a

descendant of some prior NFT or something like that. Yep, yeah. I see, I see. And that won the grand prize for at Princeton. Yeah, that won the Verbar Prize. I see, I see. Okay. So you mentioned, like, the, you know, in order to win, there's a social component.

Are you talking about the judges, or you're talking about the teams, or what is that? Both the judges and the teams. Like, for example, being able to read people for the team and see if they would, like, contribute positively or negatively to the energy of the team. Because, like, beyond skills, motivation, the hackathon for the whole 24 hours is pretty integral. Like, when someone gives up or thinks that the hackathon isn't as possible, like, there are only, like, yeah, there's only three other people to keep the energy of the team up.

And, like, being, like, one person try hard is also, like, motivating the team because they can see how serious, like, one person is. But still, like, the best results have come when every single member of the team is absolutely a full sending the hackathon. Makes sense. And you talked about the judge. are also a big part of it. I imagine you really have to sell your ideas or present. That's got to be a big part. In addition to building, do you have any tips for people who attend the hackathons? What works

when it comes to selling? A big misconception is that people think that the most theoretical ideas will win. Because another big misconception about hackathons is that they think that the most like theoretically cracked people win it. But that's actually not the case. Most of these judges are actually non-technical. So a big thing that I do is I look into the judge's eyes and see if they're actually following. And I also keep the pitch very concise. I simply state the idea, what it does, and focus the most on the demo and the judges interacting with the demo. So the judges can see for themselves that the product actually works without cracking versus like I've seen other approaches or mistakes where people, and also mistakes I've made to is where people explain about the whole

tech stack and think the judges will be impressed rather than having them interact with a project directly where they talk about oh use MongoDB i use next j s and fast API and then they keep rambling about all the technical details but all the judges want to see is is this project hype and would they imagine themselves using it or someone they know using it i see so and when you said theoretical you're talking about like technical complexity like a lot of people think that it's actually a technically complex solution that's going to win, but it's actually the thing that solves a real problem or is interesting and they could really see the value in the project. Is that right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I also think that aiming high for technical complexity is also helpful because

pursuing a more ambitious idea, but having thought through all of the steps, like in the Google Doc I said, makes a very technical project seem very simple to a judge because it's implemented with flawless execution. So in your experience, what's more important? Is it the idea for the project or is it the execution on the project? I would say both. So my aims would be fully connect front and back end, make sure it's working and make sure the idea is very unique. Does the back end need to be working? I remember when I was UCLA doing hackathons, we had one.

We were trying to get the back end in the front end to work. And we were all not great builders. We were just good tests, taking tests and stuff. we didn't know how to actually build software. And then so we got the front end working, but the back end was absolutely not working at all. And so we just made the back end like a file or something and had the front end just reading from that file.

And I mean, it worked. Like if you looked at it on my local, but there's no back end. So I guess my question is like, how much does the implementation details matter? Or is it just if you show something that looks good, they're not going to ask any questions about what it's actually doing and how it's doing it. I think to a degree it can work, but like if you're aiming for the win, then it's probably better

to have an actually working project because then you can explore more once you get it connected. For technical development, a big misconception is that when you divide your team, you can divide them into front end and back end, and at the end, it can integrate them all together. And so the front end people keep on making the front end more beautiful. They add like more buttons. They're like, oh, I have this idea. we're going to actually have an entire quiz for people to take. And in the back end, people are like, oh, let's keep on building the back end.

We're going to think about the different tables ad. We're going to see if it can load faster. And then at the end, it never gets fully integrated. So the actual approach would be, within the first few hours, connect the front and back end together, even if, like, in the most simple way at the earliest stage possible, and then iterate on that. So see if the web stockies are streaming, see how the connection works, set up the port, whatever. Right, right, that makes sense.

Out of all of the projects that you've done, I mean, over 20 hackathons, do you have any favorite projects? I think my favorite project is this VR that we built completely from cardboard and glass, and we use an Arduino to project in the glass prism in a hologram through, like, cardboard glasses, a transcription using AI transcription. We use Whisper AI and, like, projected the live transcription in a hologram through the VR. It was pretty awesome. What was using the light? It was, like, a projector or something? Oh, yeah.

It was like an OLED from, like, an OLED screen that you can, like, integrate with an Arduino. Oh, interesting. And then we connected to all due Bluetooth. And then, yeah, so if you were a student in class and your professor was talking, but you couldn't pay attention, like, all the notes would pop up in a hologram on the top right of your glasses. And then also get summarized in the web app. That is crazy. I don't know. And you did that in 24 hours. We did that in nine hours and we're able to sleep at hackathon. That's why it was insane. The entire team was cracked. No, I believe kids students. There are just community college kids.

We literally drove there. Absolutely full center project yet. That's crazy. How'd you put together that team? There's this guy just like at a community college nearby who was just building rockets in his backyard. And I was like, yo, want to go to a hackathon? And he was like, bet it up. And then, like, at my AI club, they're just these guys that were always working in the entrepreneurship center. And, like, they just had, like, the grind set. They just worked all the time. And so I was like, y'all want to do a hackathon.

And so then that was us for. And we are all still in contact today. Wow. Okay. That's crazy. Random community college kid building rockets in his backyard. That's a really interesting hire for your team. I'm curious.

Would you recommend hackathons? And if so, what are the benefits? Because I remember when I was, I guess a long time ago, but it wasn't really the top priority. There's a lot of other things to focus on. Why should someone do hackathons? I think in this day and age with like the competition in the market, it's really good to have personal projects to make you stand out.

But I also think that like the marginal benefit of hackathons decreases and it would be much more valuable to just make a product that people want to use like long term or just get a bunch of users. I think you learn more from that. But yeah, at hackathons, they have recruiters there. They fast track you to applications. Like, for example, Bloomberg, RoboFlow. They're looking for builders.

Hackathons also help you develop agency. Being able to just, like, think on your feet, do something new, not be afraid to do something new, and not be afraid to do it in an environment you don't know anything about. So, yeah, being adaptable. I'd say, I think, like, three hackathons is good, three to five. But anything after that, like, probably not the best for, like body or yeah you could be doing something else for sure for sure so you said basically it's a it's a forcing function to building a project but you think the thing that actually helps people

learn and distinguish themselves is actually not the hackathon it's the project and building something that matters that people are using that is what helps people stand up for recruiters is that right yeah both stand up for recruiters and also just learn more than you would at hackathons I see I see That's why we hadgathons. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, hackathons, it's literally in the name. It's just the most insane hack. It's not, it's probably not a lot of long term learnings from something that's

thrown together so quickly. You mentioned agency. That's really interesting because that actually stood out to me. You're talking about you random, you just got in a car. You just sent it to some random hackathon without telling your parents. And you went and you, it worked out and you won. But the thing that stands out to me, not you winning, but it's the, not the audacity, but the initiative to kind of just go,

not take permission and just go and send it. I'm curious, do you feel like it's a muscle, or do you feel like your agency's gotten stronger over time? I always had like a little bit. Yeah, there's a point to where I got so bored of school. Like, I just needed some sort of mental simulation that wasn't like regurgitating information from like a textbook. I don't know.

I think maybe it's like the deviation from where I came from. Like, for example, like no-name state school, starting a company is like pretty much unheard of. There are like two or three people that like were very serious about startups from that school. I'd like to think that, yeah, hackathons did increase my agency. You talk about school. I mean, when I was going to school, I felt like it was taking a good amount of time. I can't imagine balancing all this stuff. I mean, you're also doing social media, startup.

So that's something I'm curious about is like, how do you prioritize? How do you manage your time? Okay, well, there was this one semester back when I actually did care about, like, everything. And that's like, I had to do all of it because I just want to make everyone happy. Like, I had to do grades to make my parents happy. I had to do hackathons to make myself happy. I had to do content to put myself out there and get a job. And that was, that was a lot of pressure.

But I was able to keep my 3.5 engineering GPA, keep my engineering GPA over 3.5, go to 15 hackathons and also grow to 50K on social media. Oh, my God. I was like, I think that was like the semester before last semester. And yeah, last semester I just kind of full-sent it on doing things I wanted into the school. But yeah, that one semester where I was focused on like all three. The way I managed my time is that I would like do time blocking. So if I had like a task of homework to do, I would set a specific time during the day to execute on it and also location.

And then for hackathons, I'd make sure like all my homework was done before Friday at 5pm. So I could focus on the win for the hackathon because I see some people. doing at home or get hackathons and I would know I think full focus like in the environment you're in is good and then for content I sort of just like started to understand short form content and how you can put like a minimal amount of effort into one piece of short form content but get like a lot of leverage in the future so like I would just make like three second to five second reels that would just get a ton of views or like casualty wheels wherever I was in the day like yeah there's 24 hours in the day and enough time for a one minute

reel. So yeah, I was just like wherever I was, I was just like, you know, film that Walmart reel. I think a lot of people overthink content and think that it's hard to balance, but short form content is pretty okay. I see. Okay, so your answer to the balance is just efficiency and yeah, yeah, time blocking. Yeah, time blocking and then also prioritizing the most impactful stuff because it sounds like you weren't the type of creator, for instance, in the content where you were really sweating long videos. or posting nonstop, you really thought about this is like the highest ROI video. Yeah, yeah.

And it's short, I'm just going to send it and then move on, do the next thing. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Oh, and then also attending office hours, like, for all the hardest classes. Like, even if I wasn't doing, if I didn't have specific questions, I'd just, like, sort of sit in there and, like, just acquire information from everyone else's questions. And as well, the professor just, like, sort of like mentioning offhand, oh, this is going to be, like, something important on the exam. Just like being there in person or like being at hackathons in person, environment placement is pretty big.

So I also took that with me like when I went to Silicon Valley to be there for in the startup land when building a startup. Right, right, right, right. Now that makes sense. It's more efficient. You get more out of it. There's so many, I guess, second order effects of choosing what environment you put yourself in. You mentioned that you attended a non-target school.

How do you think about for people who are not attending a major big name school? what do you need to do in order to succeed? Become a decision maker in the area. So whether it's like leadership in clubs, like being decision maker there, or like being a decision maker for like a big project that a lot of people use, whether it's like not a company,

but like a big side project or something you do with your friends or being a decision maker for like content or having like a personal brand. Yeah, maybe in short, this is all just to say working on your agency. so you can stand out. I see. Okay. So you're basically saying if your school's not an outlier, you should be an outlier in the things that you do. Yes. And that's what drew you to content. Is that right? I mostly did it for fun too, but that was probably one of the reasons, yeah.

What do you think is the most important takeaway from college? Or do you feel like college was this thing where you just checked in, checked out, but it really didn't matter? There are some of me like cease content creators getting canceled left and right for like their opinions on this topic. My opinion is that it works for some people, it gives them structure and discipline. I think it's useful to have a structure, especially when there hasn't been that much agency built up. If you don't know what to learn, they just provide it for you. It's also a great way to meet people and buildings together, so people at the same age. But like another, like, I guess my other view on it is for me personally, it definitely, like, dulled down my creativity and my passion for learning.

Not everyone needs it, but it's good to have for a start and also very admirable, like, respectable to finish and continue going on that path to big tech or whatever. I think the structure can be good when you just don't know exactly like what you want to do. And also, if you know what you want to do as well, because it's just like a direct path into something that could be really amazing for you and be like really structured for your life. I guess I'm curious, because in your case, your agency is just like off the charts. If you didn't go to college, do you think it would have made much difference? I don't know. In high school, I was already doing, like, non-typical stuff, I guess. I was putting music out on Spotify.

I had, like, a music career. My parents, I don't know how they felt about that, but I got 150K streams. And I was like, I was like going to just keep on going to, I was just going to keep on being a music artist. Like, people in my high school were like, wait, you post music on Spotify. We've not heard about that. But, um, okay, college did help me find hackathons. I think everything that I have, every experience I've done in my life up to now has so contributed to the person I am now.

That makes sense. Is there something that you wish you knew before you got into college? Something I wish I knew before I got into college was how much network really did matter, I think, like knowing the right opportunities, having the right people advised to college application, because despite good test scores or GPA or whatever in high school, like that would still get beat out by people. with research internships or good referral letters. Also how much network can propel a person in like any stage of their career. This, I don't know, this might be like, I don't know if this is

the common take or I don't know how popular this take is. But yeah, I think network is pretty powerful. Even if a person is on the same like skill scale or the people they know or the people they intentionally go out to get to know can really like change the trajectory of where they go. for sure. You asked how popular is this opinion. Yeah, I don't think it's a hot take. I think everything in this world is, uh, or not all, everything is stronger, but most things are decided by people. And so imagine, you said you wanted a Disney internship. Imagine if you knew someone on the team and they were looking for an intern or you want to start a company and maybe you want to get into YC. You know someone can, it can help. Or also with privileged information too. I think that's a large far while I do this, this, this podcast. Imagine someone knew you, they could ask you all these things. Get a leg ahead when it comes to hackathons and all those things. Or we can just give it to everyone for free. So yeah, you know, this is giving that privilege information for more people. Yeah, I love that mission. I'm curious about the content stuff. How'd you get into creating content? Well, I had been making music content

for a while because like, Q the Spotify career or whatever. But a friend from high school told me to vlog a hackathon video. And I was like, that seems fun. And I didn't do it for it. a while until like I think by the time it was like my 16th hackathon win I just gave it a try and it blew up people love interesting videos they also like to see big cash money won by student so yeah that that really helped I guess what was the prize like from there the prize was like I think three thousand dollars first place grand price wow yeah that's pretty good especially for college for college yeah oh yeah okay that makes sense what's your definition of personal brand, something that is helpful or relevant for college kids?

I think it's good to have a personal brand for students, no matter what environment you're from. I think what it does is just it gives you leverage instead of sharing it to five people. Any subsequent action just gets built up by the time you make a project. And it's really cool. Instead of getting to five recruiters, it could just get to like 500 all at one point and increases like the chances of good opportunity reaching you. Yeah, increases your luck and the opportunities. I think a lot of people get scared or they could agree and be like, yeah, it's a good idea. I should post that project I built on LinkedIn or whatever. But I think a lot of people are scared to put themselves out there. How did you get over that when you were first getting into it? I think like I consulted like some close

friends about it first. And even if they weren't creator friends, just like talking to other people about ideas and having them support and having that be something grounding and being like, oh, there are going to be three people who support me no matter what, even if like the 100 people or something maybe think I'm cringe or don't like it. And like it is those three people that matter the most.

I mean, there probably are some other creators that phrase it better, but that's like regretted me. Being scared, but doing it despite that because you have a support network. Yeah, support network. Not every single person is going to be posting all the time. If you think about just your average college student that wants to be slightly more visible or stick out to recruiters, what's a concrete thing that you'd recommend they do? Get out of local hosts.

Host your project on the cloud. And even if you don't post it on LinkedIn or Instagram, like you'll have it on GitHub, you can send it to recruiters or put yourself out there. And it's easier to link it to GitHub as well. Right, right, right. Oh, so you're saying take the work, make it public. Don't just have it piece of closed repo. Okay. you're taking a gap semester in SF.

I think that's pretty unusual for college kids who're working on a startup. What's the story behind how that happened? Well, the startup started on a Thursday night when I was bored, and I said I wanted to start a company. So at 9 p.m., I started, like, shipping out the MVP, and at 9 a.m., I posted it everywhere on Instagram. The app crashed after, like, it got too much traffic. I just, like, I was like, never mind.

I started the app because of all the comments and Instagram about how hackathons and I was trying to make an app that helped people learn how to get into hackathons. But yeah, then a few months later, I met my co-founder, Aiden, who helped me get the app back up. And we went to a Lake Tahoe trip to go skiing with their hackathon friends. But we ended up staying in SF, raising angel investment at a Luma event, like a hot pot. And then raising VC investment at another Luma event. So at that point we were like, yo, let's go forward with this. And this VC investment over Hot Pot, was it like a VC event or you just happened to meet someone at this Hot Pot thing that was like, hey, here's an angel check.

Oh yeah, the angel investment was at the Hot Pot. And I just happened to meet someone who was like so intrigued by our story that he put in an angel check. Because like basically we were crashing all over in motels, shipping out the product. We had a lot of traction at the time, I think 5,000 users. and a lot of like when we were already making revenue from like B2B. So sort of told him about how I did all these hackathons and I'm now making hackathon app. I think he liked the product market fit or the founder market fit. Yeah, he was like, yo, can I put a check in and some other angel investor overheard on the table?

And then they both put checks in. And then I posted a video about getting the checks and it blew up to 500K on Instagram and 13 other angels put checks in. Wow. Wow, okay. You just proved, two of the things you said were your network matters. Okay, boom, that's the beginning of this, right? And then the other thing was the leverage of content. Boom, that's where the other 13 checks came from.

Okay, wow. Do you think you'll go back to college? Likely it won't be going back to MSU, but I could transfer to a school in California. And it's another thing you said is like placing yourself in the right spot. sounds like California is a very big difference from where you were. Yeah. You know, when you start a company, you probably get a lot of advice. Is there any particularly good advice that you've got?

I think good advice is like to move fast and keep shipping. And another piece of good advice is don't burn out, which are like two like, opposites. I think it makes sense. Like just keep on like consistently shipping fast. But also like when you need a break, probably take it. because, like, it really will weigh on, like, other parts of your life, like, relationships or your own mental health and things like that. And so I think when I first received that advice, I was like, eh, like, let's just keep on pushing.

And then it did come and bite me back later. But, yeah, if that's something I could tell people about startups is that there is probably, like, a healthier way to go about startups. Like, even if it's, like, a few hours of a break or doing something, yeah, that's not company or work-related. Probably, probably helpful. So did you burn out? And how did you know that you had burnt out? I didn't burn out, but I definitely felt like pressed. Like, I think I wasn't able, I wasn't able to afford to burn out.

We were definitely in a scrappy environment. Like, we were in Soma and our apartment got robbed. Oh, man. So we literally had just, like, even if I was going to burn out, I was literally pressed. Like, we, like, emailed, like, 100 other clients that that very day. Like, we just couldn't. Like, yeah, that was a tough time for sure. We got our laptop stolen.

We got all my jewelry stolen and my co-ponders watch. But it's okay. Literally the next hour, we got right back on to talking to clients. We landed seven YC companies working with us and 50 other companies. So we reached five figures MRR this month. Congrats. Yeah. That sounds stressful.

Even if I didn't burn out, it's still like weighed hard on other aspects of my life, like mental health and relationships. Yeah. Let's say there's a kid who's going to college. they're thinking about quitting and starting their own company. Is that something you'd recommend? What do you need to see where you feel that's a good idea? I think I would not recommend dropping out in me.

I would recommend setting wind conditions depending on what kind of person you are or how much you know yourself. My win conditions were like, do I have the background in the network to be able to raise investment? Do I have the skills that I would need to be able to lend clients and like survive an SF on like my own money and my co-founder's money and like yeah technical skills like knowing I was with the right people to like build out this product and also like be able to market it out to or have distribution systems for people so like yeah my wind conditions were distribution system technical ability to execute on the project yeah confidence in like my own network

for both clients investments so clearly you're coming into this very different from someone who just fresh wants to just start a startup you had all these pre-conditions that were going to really increase your chances of success. Knowing what you know now, would you advise people go into computer science after, you know, going through recruiting and seeing what it's like? Ooh, it's another one of those questions where it's like it really depends on the person. But I would recommend always trying to build, like always trying it out, trying out building something that people want and people will use. Because there's only like an upside to it.

It's either, A, you figure out, oh, I build something that I want, like, people. want to use and I'm just going to keep building something people want to use, or you build something people want to use, people use it, and then the recruiters love it. So for sure, like, if there's one thing to just like straightforward tell people is try and build something that you want to use. Okay, cool. And then yeah, the last thing is, it is one thing that you wish you could tell yourself before you got into college. What would that one thing be? Be more open. Say yes to more things that bring your consent. connection or like teachings. I think I was a lot more like I'd only hang out with a few specific

people whenever people like it wouldn't buy me out. I would probably be like oh no. If you're CS major that's like not touching grass or like a high schooler that's not touching grass probably go and touch grass. That's why I tell myself back then is. That's interesting you say that because I feel like you're pretty willing to say yes to things. So you've grown. Now I am. Now I am. Yeah. Okay. This is okay. You touch grass now. That's debatable, but a little bit more, yeah. A little bit more, okay, cool. Awesome.

Okay, well, yeah, that's everything that I had. If you want, now's the time, if you want to plug something or maybe talk about the startup, you can feel free to talk and maybe people will go check it out. Yeah, sure. Yeah, like startup I co-founded with Aidan Golan is sprint.dev. If you're a student or any, like any age developer, this is an easier way to enter hackathons. And we're looking for the best builders. By best, I don't mean like the most technically developed or like the best ranked.

I mean best as in you're willing to have creativity, execute on it, and you're willing to work with others, collaborate, and ship out things that people will love. You can go to sprint.dev and there are a lot of free tools out there, both for hackathons and also like company prizes. When you sign up for a hackathon, one of our hackathons will immediately provide you with like API credits. and support on our Discord so you can be less afraid to attend hackathons and be more happy to make friends. Sprint.dev, like Sprint as in fast running and dev as in DEV.