Our lives changed 180 degrees in the first few days of 2024. We went from college students worried about midterms to being handed half a million dollars to build a company in the span of a week. It was a tough transition for two 20-year-old international students. Now, I see more people going through a similar journey as the AI revolution unfolds, so I figured I should document the process.
Graduation Goggles
In your sophomore year, you think you have 2.5 more years of the usual college experience: boring classes, dining hall meals with friends, occasional sketchy frat parties… When you get the news that you're leaving that life forever in the next 2 weeks, all of a sudden, the things you thought you'd had enough of seem really valuable. I'm not going to get into much detail here, but I think this scene from How I Met Your Mother summarizes it best:
The hardest part is that YOU are graduating - not your friends. Even when you're gone, your friends' college life will continue pretty much unchanged. The fear of missing out on all those good memories your friends are going to make the graduation goggles effect even stronger.
One takeaway here: as with any other job, having a strict deadline made me work faster. I used to skip parties or activities with friends to work on side projects. Knowing my next 10 years would be spent building a company, I decided to make the most of my last 10 days at Northwestern (go cats!). I did everything I thought I would have done over the next 2.5 years:
- I learned how to play D-pong (It’s a drinking game called Dartmouth Pong. Think beer pong but with broken table tennis rackets)
- I never said no to a dining hall run - even if I wasn't hungry
- I spent all my dining credits on Starbucks with friends
- I worked at libraries with friends (I hated libraries before)
- Went to the Christmas Market at Wrigley Field in Chicago with my roommate Max
Then came my last day. I had an early morning flight the next day, so I spent the night with some of my closest friends chatting and watching them play D-pong (I obviously couldn't drink that night).
My roommate left that night before me to visit his family, so I was alone for my last night in my college dorm room. I slept on nothing but a thin mattress because all of my stuff was packed already. Needless to say, a no-pillow, no-comforter night in a Chicago winter doesn't make for good sleep.
Takeaways
- If you suddenly like college before you are about to leave, it’s normal. It’s mostly superficial.
- Make the most of your last few college days. Things you might have dismissed as stupid are supposed to be that way. This is your last chance to be a college student who plays silly games or discusses meaningless but funny "would you rather" questions.
- Collect mementos. This is what I regret the most. As you can see, there are no good photos I can share here because I didn't take them. Take more photos.
Leaving
The morning of my flight, I felt terrible. This was a huge surprise to me because I had DREAMED about what I was about to do since I was 10. Drop out, move to the Bay Area, build a huge tech company… that's the dream.
I don't think there was ever a time I felt more lonely. I was sitting in my empty college room all by myself. I had all of my belongings packed in 2 suitcases and was about to move across the country alone. Plus, I was still experiencing the graduation goggles effect, so there was a part of me that REALLY wanted to stay and keep doing what I was doing. I felt so terrible that I took a selfie in my empty room so I could show it to anyone thinking of dropping out. Here it is, in public for the first time ever:
The day I left, it snowed like crazy in Chicago. My suitcases were 7 pounds overweight. I had to take all of my coats out and wear them so I wouldn't have to pay the $100 overweight fee. My flight got delayed 3 hours and I had the most turbulent flight of my life in a middle seat as a 6'3" (190cm) guy. Needless to say, it was not pleasant. I wish I could say the Airbnb we got in SF was different, but unfortunately…
Takeaways
- Weigh your luggage or get a moving company for your stuff.
- Embrace that it's going to be hard. If you feel bad or struggle, remember that's why you're doing it. Sounds very cliche, but it's true: if it was easy, everyone would do it.
- If you're tall, get an aisle seat. It's worth it.
First Airbnb
We were one of the last companies to get accepted into the batch. So when we were moving, we hadn't received the $500k from YC yet. We needed to pay for our Airbnb out of pocket and therefore picked the cheapest 2-bedroom we could find. It was a basement in Bayview WITH NO WINDOWS. Here is a photo and the link to the exact same listing:
After everything we'd been through (my cofounder has an arguably worse travel story that he might turn into a separate story), coming to a place like this was supposed to be a big bummer, but I actually remember us being so excited because we were finally here! We had an actual startup and we were full-time in San Francisco.
Yes, our entire living space was as big as a small room with no windows. Yes, we had no stove to cook food. Yes, the closest store where we could find food was a CVS 30 minutes' walk away. And yes, we worked on the metal kitchen furniture that you see in the photo all day. But we were really happy. All that graduation goggles effect had worn off and we were locked in. We would have 16-hour sprints easily. Having no windows made us more productive since we had no idea what time it was.
Takeaways
- Get a good apartment if you can. It’s worth the extra money.
- Be grateful that you get to do this. Very few people get the chance to pursue their dreams, and I am forever grateful to YC and all of our investors for giving us this chance. Now, I work like hell to give them a 1000x return.
A Happy Place
A week after we moved to SF, YCombinator invited us to a "Batch Kickoff Retreat." They don't do this anymore, but whenever I talk to other YC founders, they all say it was a core memory for them too. For us, it symbolized the end of a chapter of our lives and the start of a new (hopefully much better) one.
We went to a 5-star hotel in Sonoma filled with only YC people. There I remember being VERY starstruck seeing Michael Seibel, Emmett Shear, Harj Taggar, Gary Tan, and all of the other YC partners. I had watched them talk about startups from afar, and now I was listening to them in person telling stories about Stripe, Airbnb, and Coinbase.
It was definitely surreal, and we were more pumped than ever to work hard and do what we love. During the next 3 months - the most productive of our lives - we onboarded our first users, iterated a lot, and raised a $2M seed round in 1.5 weeks. But I will never forget the cold morning I woke up to in my empty college dorm.
If you are going through a similar experince and struggling. It's very normal. Just put one step in front of the other and believe everything's going to be fine. Just like the quote from my favorite movie 'The Robinsons'
Keep moving forward.