78% failure rate
the universe slap slap slap me on my face
I worked on this to a popular founder I wanted to meet, and then he texted me back:
hey. ty for all this! ill be honest — based on this/your past work i can see online -- i dont see us rn just full trusting you to build this company with us rn. that's not to say you can't. more just my % confidence isn't 95%. my confidence generally increases as people just put out more and more stuff that gets to the masses over a longer period. feel free to always keep me updated on your stuff/projects on this thread if you ever want feedback!
Wow, that hurts. Since I really tried hard for this, it did hurt a lot. At least enough to make me feel that I don’t want to try in my life any more. I felt that my life after graduation is a big series of failures.
Have your ever play a fighting video game? Let me share with most of important slaps on my face.
Slap 1 (Oct 2023): I got fired due to bad relationships with my founder.
Slap 2 (Dec 2023): I met some nice women founder through dinner. I ended up getting rejected but that’a also my first time doing React.
Slap 3 (Jan 2023): The mentor who I helped out for free asked me to pay him $4000 and he will help me to prepare for interviews.
Slap 4 & 5 (Feb 2024)
I got rejected by a young founder on my face because my resume is “too data science” while my friend without any engineering internship got it by talking.
I got rejected by another young founder friends because they want other people.
Slap 6 (Mar 2024): I was able to make it to the last round, but didn’t get in. But the company also just had a big laid off.
Slap 7 (May 2024): I got “I don’t trust you” from the founder.
Slap 8 (In the future): I will probably get rejected by all the accelerators I applied.
And these are my successes.
Success 1 (Aug 2023): I got my first job without applying and meeting people in the community.
Success 2 (Feb 2024): I got admitted to an Edtech company but didn’t go because it’s not in US.
So now, we can see that my failure rate is 78%. Well…that’s terrible. Wait wait wait…a second. If my performance is this bad, let’s pause this game for second.
What was wrong? Let’s reflect on all the failures.
Slap 1 learning: I learn that getting a job might not solve your problem, but create more.
Slap 2 learning: I need to build more and show more about my software skills.
Slap 3 learning: Nice people can still do bad things when they think you don’t have power. But, what “experienced” people do is nothing magical. I just need to have more time.
Slap 4 & 5 learning: Sending resume is a terrible presentation to your existing network. Show your proudest work. I need more experience.
Slap 6 learning: Hiring is a random process that sometimes is really not your fault.
Slap 7…
Slap 7 is the one yesterday, though it’s very painful to hear people telling you “I don’t trust you,” this failure has a big hidden information: He cared enough to check my online presence even though we don’t know each other. Interesting. It means that I start to find my way to get to people I want to meet. Not being blinded rejected by an email or some random founders I don’t care much.
And that’s actually AMAZING because I’m minimizing the randomness in this game. And I also started to learn how to survive in SF jungle. For instance, online presence on twitter matters a lot (only for tech research or product), and getting connected to important celebrities and community makes a big difference. They are much more important than your job title and where you work at. Okay, that’s valuable.
So the strategy for the next round of this jungle game is
Keep using my creativity to attract attention. It’s working.
I need to build more online presence in tech product and AI research.
Meet people to through my network. Spend 0 energy on mass application. If they cannot give me what I want, ask who I can reach out to next.
Leetcoding is useful, but little places I want to go test it. Spend more time on tech skills.
My strengths and interests are in education. Focus on occupying this field worth 10x more than mass shooting because it’s an intersection between what I want and what the world wants.
Okay. Let’s restart this video game.