21x Hackathon Winner Turned College Dropout | Jia Chen Interview

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 https://www.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 advice Timestamps: (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 self Where to find Jia: • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jia.seed/ https://www.sprint.dev/ • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/audrey-chen-tech/ https://www.sprint.dev/ • Startup (Sprint.dev https://www.sprint.dev/): https://www.sprint.dev/ Where to find Ryan: • Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/ https://www.sprint.dev/ • X: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman https://www.sprint.dev/ • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/ https://www.sprint.dev/ • Threads: https://www.threads.net/@ryanlpeterman https://www.sprint.dev/ • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlp https://www.sprint.dev/eterman To hear more, visit www.developing.dev https://www.developing.dev?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=show-notes-spotify-open-access

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I was able to keep my engineering GPA over 3.5, go to 15 hackathons, and also grow to 50K on social media.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  This is Gia. She's a college student who won 21 hackathons with a 70% win rate.

• 0:11Speaker 00

  I signed up for the next one. And actually, didn't tell my parents. Uh, secretly rented a car, drove to Ohio, and then won first place.

• 0:19Speaker 01

  Not to mention that she started a company while in college with a pretty crazy story.

• 0:23Speaker 00

  I said I wanted to start a company. So at 9:00 PM, I started like shipping out the MVP. And at 9:00 AM, 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. Um, it's okay. So literally the next hour, we got right back onto talking to clients. We landed seven YC companies working with us and 50 other companies.

• 0:43Speaker 01

  I appreciated her transparency and think you will too.

• 0:46Speaker 00

  There are so many like CS content creators getting canceled left and right for like their opinions on this topic. Um, my opinion is that...

• 0:54Ryan Peterman?

  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 saw, I just keep seeing like 70% being thrown around there.

• 1:09Speaker 00

  70%.

• 1:09Ryan Peterman?

  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 into hackathons as a college student?

• 1:20Speaker 00

  I got into hackathons actually from a non-technical background. I was a finance major.

• 1:26Ryan Peterman?

  Oh, really?

• 1:26Speaker 00

  I had taken one Python class, like tryharded it, sort of attended every single lecture, got a four point. And then I was like, I can try attending this hackathon this weekend. And she was, I didn't know any 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.

• 1:50Ryan Peterman?

  You said you're a finance... So did you have any experience in high school, like APCS or anything like that?

• 1:56Speaker 00

  I had APCS, but I was pretty like disinterested.

• 1:59Ryan Peterman?

  Okay, so you, 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?

• 2:09Speaker 00

  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. Um, and I was able to like... Unleash my creativity, so I signed up for the next one. And actually, didn't tell my parents. Uh secretly rented a car, drove to Ohio. And then won first place for hardware for the Ohio Hackathon. Um it was called.

• 2:35Ryan Peterman?

  So this was during, this was in college, right?

• 2:38Speaker 00

  This was in college, this was in my freshman year of college in the spring semester.

• 2:42Ryan Peterman?

  Oh my god, okay. So you really went out of your way, and you did a hardware hackathon too?

• 2:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I did a hardware hackathon. Um I basically had this like insane schedule where I would take my economics courses in 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 nine PM to five AM, like most days of the week. I would just be like learning new APIs, new tools, new libraries. Um and like new microcontrollers, yeah, it was it was kind of crazy.

• 3:17Ryan Peterman?

  What was the thing that you built that won the hackathon?

• 3:20Speaker 00

  Oh, the thing that I built that won the hackathon? Um basically, I just put a bunch of different modules together with a Raspberry Pi, Raspberry Pi PIGO. And it was able to measure the distance between the Raspberry Pi and uh whatever object was in front of it. Sort of like an extension of like a 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 ten feet, it would be like twenty feet. And wherever you pointed like your arm, it'd be able to like measure the distance.

• 3:53Ryan Peterman?

  You rented a car, you kind of just sent it. How'd you build the team? What happened when you got there?

• 3:59Speaker 00

  I had found a friend from just like reaching out on Discord servers, and so we drove there together. Uh but I just like full sent the hackathon solo.

• 4:07Ryan Peterman?

  Oh, okay, so you didn't 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?

• 4:16Speaker 00

  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 like divide tasks and people can specialize. Then like when everyone's working at the same thing, like all that manpower is extremely helpful.

• 4:32Ryan Peterman?

  What what makes a good team?

• 4:34Speaker 00

  Finding teammates not based on the credential, but based on like their skills. A lot of times like people would ape in on like the PhD research students um 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 the our particular like use case. And that was actually a better method because these teammates would be more passionate about the projects we were building, um put in more effort and sort of be more scrappy and have like less of a limiting mindset and more of like a growth mindset.

• 5:10Ryan Peterman?

  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?

• 5:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, I already come in with ideas. There is so much like hackathons are are not like typical like competitive programming competitions. There's so many aspects to a hackathon, like the social aspect, the timeframe aspect, how there's like only twenty four to forty eight hours. The fact that there's very different themed prizes, niche prizes, that you can research into 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 a Google Doc, research the different sponsor tools, sort of understand how they integrate with your different ideas. Visualize how you would be developing the project and if it's feasible within twenty four hours.

• 6:04Speaker 00

  I would often go for like 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 like grand prizes prizes where I do like something extremely complex, like for the Princeton Hackathon, we did lacing algorithm. For seeing if people mess with artists' NFTs.

• 6:28Ryan Peterman?

  Lacing algorithm. Well, what do you mean by lacing algorithm?

• 6:31Speaker 00

  Like an algorithm that can like trace back if someone has messed with someone's art in an NFT and it tracks it back to the original artist.

• 6:41Ryan Peterman?

  I see. Okay, so there's at some point in the tree of edits, it fans off of, okay, I see. And you 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?

• 6:54Speaker 00

  Yep, yep.

• 6:55Ryan Peterman?

  I see, I see. And that won the the grand prize for at Princeton?

• 7:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, that won the Verbar Prize.

• 7:01Ryan Peterman?

  I see, I see. Okay. What, 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?

• 7:11Speaker 00

  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 in 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 a one person tryhard 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 full sending the hackathon.

• 7:49Ryan Peterman?

  Makes sense. And you talked about the judges are also a big part of it. Yeah, I imagine you really have to sell your ideas or present. That's gotta 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?

• 8:05Speaker 00

  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 judges' 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 then 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 too, is where people explain about the whole tech stack and think the judges will be impressed rather than having them interact with a,

• 8:51Speaker 00

  with the project directly. Where they talk about, oh, I use MongoDB, I use NextJS and FastAPI. 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?

• 9:08Ryan Peterman?

  I see. So, and when you said theoretical, you're talking about like technical complexity.

• 9:13Speaker 00

  I know.

• 9:13Ryan Peterman?

  A lot of people think that it's actually a technically complex solution that's gonna win, but it's actually the thing that solves a real problem or is interesting and they could really see the, the value in the project. Is that right?

• 9:27Speaker 00

  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.

• 9:43Ryan Peterman?

  So, in your experience, what's more important? Is it the idea for the project or is it the execution on the project?

• 9:50Speaker 00

  I would say both. So, my aims would be fully connect front and backend, make sure it's working and make sure the idea is very unique.

• 9:59Ryan Peterman?

  Does the backend need to be working? I remember when I was at UCLA doing hackathons. We had one, we were trying to get the backend and the frontend 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 frontend working, but the backend was absolutely not working at all. And so, we just made the backend like a file or something and had the frontend just reading from that file. And I mean, it, it worked, like if you looked at it on, you know, on my local, but there's, there's no backend. 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,

• 10:44Ryan Peterman?

  they're not gonna add, ask any questions about what it's actually doing and how it's doing it?

• 10:48Speaker 00

  I think to a degree it can, 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, you 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 to add. We're going to see if it can like 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 end and back end together,

• 11:32Speaker 00

  even if like in the most simple way at the earliest stage possible, and then iterate on that. So see if the web sockets are streaming. See how the connection works. Set up the port, whatever.

• 11:42Ryan Peterman?

  Right, right. That makes sense. Out of all of the projects that you've done, I mean, over or over twenty hackathons, do you have any favorite projects?

• 11:51Speaker 00

  I think my favorite project is this VR that we built completely from cardboard and glass. And we use like an Arduino to project in a 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.

• 12:18Ryan Peterman?

  What was using the light? Is like a projector or something?

• 12:21Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. It was like an OLED from like an OLED screen that you can like integrate with an Arduino.

• 12:27Ryan Peterman?

  Oh, interesting.

• 12:27Speaker 00

  And then we connected it all through 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 a web app.

• 12:40Ryan Peterman?

  Oh, that is, that's crazy. I don't know. And you did that in twenty four hours?

• 12:43Speaker 00

  We did that in nine hours and we were able to sleep that hackathon. That's why it was insane. The entire team was cracked. No Ivy League kids, students. They're just community college kids. We literally drove there. Absolutely full center project, yeah.

• 12:55Ryan Peterman?

  That's crazy. How'd you put together that team?

• 12:57Speaker 00

  There's this guy just like at a community college nearby who was just building rockets in his backyard. And I was like, yo, wanna go to hackathon? And he was like, bet it up. And then like at my ad club, there are just these guys that were always working in the entrepreneurship center. And like they just had like the grindset. They just worked all the time. And so I was like, y'all wanna do a hackathon? And so then that was us four and we are all still in contact today.

• 13:26Ryan Peterman?

  Wow, okay, that's that's crazy. Random community college kid building rockets in his backyard. That's that's

• 13:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:34Ryan Peterman?

  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 it was 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?

• 13:50Speaker 00

  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'd be much more valuable to just make a product that people wanna use, like LongShr 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, RoboFlo. 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.

• 14:33Speaker 00

  But anything after that, like probably not the best for like body or yeah, you could be doing something else.

• 14:43Ryan Peterman?

  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, 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 out for recruiters, is that right?

• 15:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, both stand out for recruiters and also just learn more than you would at hackathons.

• 15:06Ryan Peterman?

  I see, I see.

• 15:07Speaker 00

  That's why I call it hackathons, yeah.

• 15:08Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, I mean, hackathons, it's literally in the name. It's just the most insane hack. It's, it's not, there's probably not a long, 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, got in a car. You just sent it to some random hackathon without telling your parents. And you went and you, it, it worked out and you won. But the thing that stands out to me is 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. Um, I'm curious, do you feel like it's a muscle? Or do you feel like your agency's gotten stronger over time?

• 15:52Speaker 00

  I always had like a little bit. Yeah, there's a point too 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, I'd like to think that, yeah, hackathons did increase my agency.

• 16:20Ryan Peterman?

  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, you know, hackathon. So that's something I'm curious about is like, how do you prioritize? How do you manage your time?

• 16:37Speaker 00

  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.

• 17:04Ryan Peterman?

  Oh my God.

• 17:05Speaker 00

  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 instead of school. But yeah, that one semester where I was focused on like all three. The way I manage 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 a 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 homework at 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

• 17:48Speaker 00

  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 casual reels 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 would 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.

• 18:16Ryan Peterman?

  I see. Okay, so your answer to the balance is just efficiency and

• 18:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, time blocking.

• 18:24Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, time blocking and then also prioritizing the most impactful stuff. Because it sounds like you're, 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?

• 18:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 18:42Ryan Peterman?

  And it's short, I'm just gonna send it and then move on, do the next thing?

• 18:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 18:46Ryan Peterman?

  Okay.

• 18:47Speaker 00

  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 should sort of like mentioning offhand, oh, this is gonna 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.

• 19:16Ryan Peterman?

  Right, right, right, right. No, 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?

• 19:38Speaker 00

  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 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 work on your agency so you can stand out.

• 20:05Ryan Peterman?

  I see. Okay, so you're basically saying if your school is not an outlier, you should be an outlier in the things that you do.

• 20:11Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 20:12Ryan Peterman?

  And that's that's what drew you to content, is that right?

• 20:15Speaker 00

  I mostly did it for fun too, but that was probably one of the reasons, yeah.

• 20:18Ryan Peterman?

  What do you think's 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?

• 20:27Speaker 00

  There are so many like CS 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 like provide it for you. It's also like a great way to meet people and buildings together, so like people the same age. But like the another like, I guess my other view on it is for like 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.

• 21:12Speaker 00

  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.

• 21:25Ryan Peterman?

  I 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?

• 21:35Speaker 00

  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 a hundred fifty K streams and I was like. I was like gonna just keep on gonna I was just gonna 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, I think everything that I have, every experience I've done in my life up to now has still contributed to the person I am now.

• 22:07Ryan Peterman?

  That makes sense. Is there something that you wish you knew before you got into college?

• 22:12Speaker 00

  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 advise the college application. Because despite good test scores or GPA or whatever in high school, like, that would still get beat out by people with, like, research internships or good, like, referral letters. Also, how much, like, network can propel a person in, like, any stage of their career.

• 22:40Speaker 00

  This, I don't know, this might be like,

• 22:43Speaker 00

  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.

• 23:00Ryan Peterman?

  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, well, everything is a strong word, 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 wanna start a company and maybe you wanna get into Y C. You know someone can, it can help. Or also with privileged information, too. I think that's a large part of why I do 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, you know, this is giving that privileged information to more people.

• 23:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, I love that mission.

• 23:44Ryan Peterman?

  I'm curious about the content stuff. How'd you get into creating content?

• 23:47Speaker 00

  Well, I had been making music content for a while, cause like, here the Spotify career where we were. 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 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 students, so. Yeah, that that really helped, I guess.

• 24:16Ryan Peterman?

  What was the prize?

• 24:17Speaker 00

  From there. The prize was like, I think, three thousand dollars, first place grant prize.

• 24:22Ryan Peterman?

  Wow, yeah, that's pretty good, especially for college.

• 24:25Speaker 00

  For college, yeah.

• 24:26Ryan Peterman?

  Oh, yeah. Okay, that makes sense. What's your definition of personal brand? Something that is helpful or relevant for college kids?

• 24:34Speaker 00

  I think it's good to have a personal brand for students, no matter like 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 like make a project and it's really cool, instead of getting to five recruiters, it could just get to like five hundred all at one point and increases like the chances of good opportunity reaching you.

• 24:59Ryan Peterman?

  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'd you get over that when you were first getting into it?

• 25:18Speaker 00

  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 like having that be something grounding and being like, oh, there are gonna be three people who support me no matter what. Even if like the hundred 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 what grounded me.

• 25:45Ryan Peterman?

  Being scared but doing it despite that because you have a support network?

• 25:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, support network.

• 25:51Ryan Peterman?

  Not every single person is gonna 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?

• 26:04Speaker 00

  Get out of local hosts, um, post 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. Yeah, and it's easy to link it to GitHub as well.

• 26:16Ryan Peterman?

  Right, right, right. Oh, so you're taking, you're saying, take the work, make it public. Don't just have it be some closed repo. Okay. You're taking a GAF semester in SF. I think that's pretty unusual for college kids. You're working on a startup. What's the story behind how that happened?

• 26:34Speaker 00

  Well, the startup started on a Thursday night when I was bored and. I said I wanted to start a company, so at nine P M. I started like shipping out the MVP and at nine A M I posted everywhere on Instagram. The app crashed after like it got too much traffic. I I just like, I was like, never mind. I started the app because of all the comments on Instagram about hackathons and I was trying to make an app that like 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 like Tahoe trip to go skiing with our hackathon friends. But we ended up staying in S F, raising angel investment at a Luma event, like a hot pot.

• 27:17Speaker 00

  And then raising V C investment at another Luma event. So at that point, we were like, yo, let's go forward with this.

• 27:25Ryan Peterman?

  And this V C investment over hot pot, was it like a V C event? Or you just happened to meet someone at this hot pot thing that was like, hey, here's an angel check?

• 27:35Speaker 00

  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. Cause like basically we were crashing all over in motels, shipping out the product. We had a lot of traction at the time, I think five thousand users. And a lot of like, when we were already making revenue from like B two B. 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 five hundred K on Instagram and thirteen other angels put checks in.

• 28:20Ryan Peterman?

  Wow, okay. You just proved, and 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 thirteen checks came from, so.

• 28:36Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 28:36Ryan Peterman?

  Um, okay, wow.

• 28:40Ryan Peterman?

  Alright, do you think you'll go back to to college?

• 28:43Speaker 00

  Likely won't be going back to MSU, but I could transfer to like a school in California.

• 28:47Ryan Peterman?

  And you're, that's another thing you said is like placing yourself in the right spot. So it sounds like California is a very big difference from where where you were.

• 28:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:55Ryan Peterman?

  You know, when you start a company, you probably get a lot of advice. Is there any particularly good advice that you've got?

• 29:02Speaker 00

  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.

• 29:10Ryan Peterman?

  Opposites.

• 29:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, two 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 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 break or doing something, yeah, that's not company or work related, probably probably.

• 29:50Ryan Peterman?

  So did you burn out and how did you know that you had burnt out?

• 29:53Speaker 00

  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.

• 30:05Ryan Peterman?

  Oh, man.

• 30:05Speaker 00

  So we literally had this like, even if I, even if I was gonna burn out, I was literally pressed. Like we like emailed like a hundred other clients that that very day, like we just couldn't like. Yeah, that was, that was a tough time for sure. Our, we got our laptop stolen, we got all my jewelry stolen and my co-founder's watch. But it's okay. The next, literally the next hour, we got right back onto talking to clients. We landed seven Y C companies working with us and fifty other companies. So we reached, we reached five, we reached five figures M R R this month and.

• 30:38Ryan Peterman?

  Congrats.

• 30:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:40Ryan Peterman?

  That sounds stressful.

• 30:41Speaker 00

  Even if I didn't burn out, it still like weighed hard on other aspects of my life, like mental health and relationships. Yeah.

• 30:45Ryan Peterman?

  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?

• 30:57Speaker 00

  I think I would not recommend dropping out. I mean, you, I would recommend setting win 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 land clients and like survive and 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 win conditions were a distribution system, technical ability to execute on the project. Yeah, confidence in like my own network for both clients' investments.

• 31:39Ryan Peterman?

  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?

• 31:59Speaker 00

  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 or and people will use. Cause there's only like an upside to it. It's either A, you figure out, oh, I built something that I want, like people want to use and I'm just gonna keep building something people wanna use. Or you build something people wanna use, people use it and then the recruiters love it. So for sure, like if there's one, one thing to just like straightforward tell people is try and build something that people wanna use.

• 32:31Ryan Peterman?

  Okay, cool. And then, yeah, the last thing is, is this one thing that you wish you could tell yourself before you got into college? What would that one thing be?

• 32:41Speaker 00

  Be more open, say yes to more things that bring you 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 bite me out, I would probably be like, oh, no. If you're a CS major, that's like not touching grass. Or you're like a high schooler that's not touching grass, probably go and touch grass. That's what I'd tell myself back then is.

• 33:05Ryan Peterman?

  That's interesting you say that, cause I feel like you're pretty. Willing to say yes to things. So you've grown.

• 33:12Speaker 00

  Now I am, now I am, yeah.

• 33:13Ryan Peterman?

  Okay, this is, okay, okay. You touch grass now.

• 33:16Speaker 00

  Hmm, that's debatable, but a little bit more, yeah.

• 33:19Ryan Peterman?

  A little bit more, okay, cool. Awesome, okay, well, yeah, that's, I mean, that's everything that I had. If you want, now's the time, if you wanna plug something, or maybe talk about the startup, you can feel free to talk and maybe people will go check it out.

• 33:33Speaker 00

  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.

• 34:16Speaker 00

  So you can be less afraid to attend hackathons and be more happy to make friends. Sprint.dev, like sprint as in like fast running and dev as in D E V.