hello everyone I am horchata I’m a 16
year old app developer and entrepreneur
and I come from soccer today I’m here to
share my journey about how I dropped out
of school learn to code internet sales
worse co-founded the startup at MIT and
made an app that was acquired by Redwood
City ventures a VC firm in Silicon
Valley last week I will also be sharing
about one of my worst nightmare coming
true and how I dealt with it three years
back I was introduced to the world of
technology and the wonders of building
software by my computer science teacher
at school he would find some really
interesting design projects like
designing posters designing imaginary
apps and websites I remember I even made
a little animated video on deforestation
for an international video contest he
then introduced me to scratch can you
pull the next life he then introduced me
to scratch and MIT App Inventor both
both tools for learning programming for
kids where I learned basic programming
concepts in no time I was obsessed with
coding few months later I started to
realize that I wanted to play more with
programming languages it started to dawn
upon me that the formal education at my
school wasn’t really teaching me
anything practical or interesting or
useful I was having so much more fun
making apps and websites during that
time I started reading essays by Paul
Graham and his essays next slide and his
essay assyrians guide to startups
sparked my interest in startups I
realized that being young meant that I
had some advantages when starting off
and I really wanted to try my hands up
I realized that I wanted more time to
focus on my passion and build out some
projects and see where they go and that
obviously means more time so I thought
of leaving school and sort of pursuing
unschooling its previous yeah
unschooling is an alternative to formal
education and education path that better
equips a child to handle the real world
and schooling means learning what one
wants when one wants in the way one
wants for one’s own reasons choice and
control resides with the learner the
coming in and schooler simply meant that
I could choose to spend my time on
whatever I wanted and getting all that
time to focus on coding what’s priceless
but at the same time it was a very risky
but at the same time this is a very
risky decision it could have
irreversible damage on my career but
what my friends and family support I
decided to take the leap of faith and in
hindsight I can say dropping out of
school and pursuing my passion turn out
to be one of the best unrig Rhett’s that
I have after I left school I have the
entire date in my hand so I started
spending time learning web development
and did some freelancer projects to get
experience back and I did not really
know what I wanted to do in life which
by the way still don’t but I think I
have an idea of the kind of problem that
I want to solve more on that later but
anyway two years ago I saw this post on
the Facebook group for homeschoolers
about Salesforce starting a junior
internship program I checked it out it
looked pretty interesting they were
starting a program for twelve high
schoolers and college students so that
they can get experience early on kind of
a new thing in India so I applied for it
it did some interviews and got accepted
it was so exciting and I was scared at
the same time because I live very far
from Bangalore and at 15 I’ve never
taken a flight that long before let
alone stay in an unknown city for one
month all alone it was very hard to
convince my parents but I pestered and
so another lesson that I learned that
day that I want to share is that there
are umpteen opportunities out there no
matter how old you are or where you come
from interacting with social media the
right way can help you a lot in those
four weeks that failed sorts I got to
work on demo engineering projects
learned in depth about sass models and
cloud computing and I also got to learn
marketing and work on some dozen
presentation projects learn marketing
and so much more and for the first time
I got to meet and interact and work with
people who have been in the tech
industry for decades they were so
friendly to noob like myself and that is
why I absolutely love the culture at
Salesforce they were open-minded and
willing to teach anything and I formed
some very long-lasting relationships I
believe I mentioned how these
relationships helped me when I came back
from say of course I knew I wanted to
start something of my own
signing up sound like this old person
aiding an interesting activity to take
on and have always been a fan of bold
and fascinating things but I did not
know anyone to co-found with barely had
any product development skills no
network no funding basically I did not
know where to start so obviously I went
to the Internet for an answer so I
didn’t lose a bit of research and learn
about this program by MIT call MIT
launch which was sort of like a startup
incubator for high school entrepreneurs
and hackers I decided to apply for it
again that some interviews with a launch
stock member and got accepted
again it was very overwhelming it was
exciting but this time I was overwhelmed
it felt like the gateway to a lot of
opportunities open up to me and
evidently it said that starting
preparing for the trip to the US and for
the program so I went to MIT attended
the program profoundest University a
social platform for connecting college
students for group cooking sessions by
creating and through a free phone app
where they can meet other people to
schedule them it was the first time I
got to me talk and work with so many
other young passionate hackers and
entrepreneurs from around the world I
also got to meet and interact with some
incredible people working at startups in
Boston and we got to try my hands with
iOS app development for the first time
at MIT the program had classes on
various aspects of starting up doing
market research and building your
products so basically starting to start
up from nothing but an idea and a great
team a lot of the lessons that I learned
at MIT have had a profound effect on me
and in how I approach various aspects of
starting up and I had some incredible
memories from there I wanted to make the
most out of the trip so I decided to
look for internships or after the
program and big us did not know back
then that I could have been turned on a
visitor visa but in the process of
researching on internships and cold
messaging a lot of people on Quora I got
introduced to Charles tips a wedding
entrepreneur whose family I stayed with
in Texas for two weeks who also
introduced me to a family in Silicon
Valley who agreed to host me for free
for four to five months why I find that
internship I do it a Silicon Valley is
the place where I’ve always dreamt to be
it’s like the Hope or startups after all
so next up I flew to Pella for now
without an internship but with lots of
hope that I’ll find one and in the next
few weeks I got a I got accept as an
intern at a VC firm in Palo Alto I went
there for a few days and worked there
but later on they asked me to
discontinue because they were too
uncertain about the Ouisa major bummer
but I still spend the rest of the three
months learning exploring networking
meeting some of my role models making
friends attending cool tech offices and
some whatever I could do to absorb and
learn as much as possible and make the
most out of the cost of flying to the US
and everything else the cost of living
in Silicon Valley even though
technically my rent was free during that
time we’re too high and I had a limited
stay visa so I decided to come back to
India and when I did I spent a few more
months learning Iowa app development at
that time I just wanted to work on
mobile apps I saw on the potential in
the mobile app market and felt that it
was relatively easier to code an app
from just your bedroom so last year I
started researching on problems that I
could solve with my newly acquired
skills and iOS app development just
worried about crypto currencies and
solving 16 but never really seriously
took on a project related to it I didn’t
evolve in 17 cryptocurrencies were all
over the Internet literally everyone was
talking about them so though there’s
probably a space in the market that I
could fill with my iOS app design and
development skills and after some
research I found that people wanted a
new price tracking and portfolio
management app sorry previous life they
wanted a new price tracker or portfolio
management app
there was a lot of competition in the
space had read some negative reviews bug
people complaining about horribly design
apps and the features that they wished
existed in them yes there is a market
need and I am going to build an app for
that this is where all the friends and
the people that I met came into the
picture
I started messaging all of my friends I
wrote a scripts to message all of them
and asking that if they’re interested or
invested in cryptocurrencies and if
they’re be up for five minutes
chat about them and the apps that they
use for tracking prices some of them
replied and and they told me the apps
that they use and what they wish was
better about them and I came up with a
huge features list for the new app so it
took me about a month to design it and
another month to develop crypto price
tracker with the help of my awesome
mentors and friends so I released the
app this year inch on 28 January at so
long I put together my story about
building the app from scratch on medium
and it publishes under free code cab and
it ended up getting a lot of attention
and just 24 hours
[Applause]
okay I posted on reddit where my post
went viral I launched some blush the
album producthunt where it ended up
getting featured next morning when I
woke up the out was already number two
up in finance category in the App Store
[Applause]
it was mind-blowing to me I could never
imagine my ABS getting so many users and
just in just twenty-four hours and
sewing Donald’s with literally zero
marketing budget and overwhelming all
over again it all increased mood for a
week and downloads were increasing and I
was working hard for a working one point
the previous one this is the first time
I felt I faced the big bad world that’s
people talk about few people on the
internet were accusing me a plagiarism I
ignored the haters for a while because I
knew the acquisitions were false but in
a few hours
trolls on the Internet when two reddit
twitter facebook core up products I’m
meeting pretty much everywhere and made
some extremely rude and vulgar remarks
some even personally I could not process
what what’s going on internet mobs were
harassing and bullying me online based
on those false acquisitions and I feared
it could escalate to something much
worse I did not know what I could do to
stop any of this so I asked my friends
and they suggested that our report the
two people who wrote the original post
to their respective employers wind
screenshots and links so I did exactly
that I sent an email I knew those two
people and out there I need their
employers from LinkedIn and
I sent their employers screenshots and
links of their respective employees
online behavior and in a few days
they took down the post and one of the
guys issued a public apology I thought
it was a win for me because I could
fight against the trolls it took some
time to recover from the anxiety that
the online harassment had caused but I
did not let it stop me from improving my
app in a few days The Daily Beast
contacted me and interviewed me for a
story and when they published it it
invited a lot of positive feedback from
women and tech and the cryptocurrency
community doubled the people on the
internet messaged me and told me how
happy they are that I made an app into
love and that I’ve fought the internet
trolls gracefully bad thing I felt so
happy being a part of this community of
empathetic people that care and support
see you days later my app got covered by
your story then Times of India also
interfered and next slide and I was so
proud to see myself in the national
newspaper and then interviewed by dozens
of interviews by dozens of news and
media outlets followed it been on for a
few weeks some folks at Apple notice my
app and invite a meteor tech evangelist
program in Bangalore where I got a ton
of feedback on my app and more
I started getting some acquisition
offers in the last month and a few days
ago I finalized a deal with Redwood City
Ventures a vici firm in Silicon Valley
that acquired my app it was the fun ride
from the day I started with just an idea
to the day I find the acquisition deal
and for my story I wanted to take three
key takeaways one that you can to design
your own path in life you don’t always
have to follow the conventional wisdom
and risks like dropping out of school
can be well worth down the line to
top-tier users understanding the market
needs and what people want can help you
build meaningful products if you’re just
coding because you want to code any
don’t care about what people want you’re
not gonna be able to sell your products
and succeed at your startup 3 when you
do great ambitious things in life it
will make some waves some good some bad
learn to ignore the bad ones and keep
doing the wonderful things good people
will notice you and help you I had
complete strangers accept me in their
house when I was in the US and people
helped me in building my app and
marketing is what motivates me every day
is the fact that I can build something
meaningful that solves people’s problems
for recently I realized how much sharing
my story has helped people to do
something of their own I wake up every
day with emails and messages from
young entrepreneurs and programmers
telling me how much I inspired them and
sharing details about their project to
get my feedback and that feeling of
knowing that I can create an impact in
in his TED talk
dan Dennett said the secret to happiness
it’s fine something more important than
you are and dedicate your life to it
and what truly makes me happy is that I
can build something meaningful and share
my three that encourages others to do
the same I cannot wait to see the
wonderful things you do in this world [Applause]
year old app developer and entrepreneur
and I come from soccer today I’m here to
share my journey about how I dropped out
of school learn to code internet sales
worse co-founded the startup at MIT and
made an app that was acquired by Redwood
City ventures a VC firm in Silicon
Valley last week I will also be sharing
about one of my worst nightmare coming
true and how I dealt with it three years
back I was introduced to the world of
technology and the wonders of building
software by my computer science teacher
at school he would find some really
interesting design projects like
designing posters designing imaginary
apps and websites I remember I even made
a little animated video on deforestation
for an international video contest he
then introduced me to scratch can you
pull the next life he then introduced me
to scratch and MIT App Inventor both
both tools for learning programming for
kids where I learned basic programming
concepts in no time I was obsessed with
coding few months later I started to
realize that I wanted to play more with
programming languages it started to dawn
upon me that the formal education at my
school wasn’t really teaching me
anything practical or interesting or
useful I was having so much more fun
making apps and websites during that
time I started reading essays by Paul
Graham and his essays next slide and his
essay assyrians guide to startups
sparked my interest in startups I
realized that being young meant that I
had some advantages when starting off
and I really wanted to try my hands up
I realized that I wanted more time to
focus on my passion and build out some
projects and see where they go and that
obviously means more time so I thought
of leaving school and sort of pursuing
unschooling its previous yeah
unschooling is an alternative to formal
education and education path that better
equips a child to handle the real world
and schooling means learning what one
wants when one wants in the way one
wants for one’s own reasons choice and
control resides with the learner the
coming in and schooler simply meant that
I could choose to spend my time on
whatever I wanted and getting all that
time to focus on coding what’s priceless
but at the same time it was a very risky
but at the same time this is a very
risky decision it could have
irreversible damage on my career but
what my friends and family support I
decided to take the leap of faith and in
hindsight I can say dropping out of
school and pursuing my passion turn out
to be one of the best unrig Rhett’s that
I have after I left school I have the
entire date in my hand so I started
spending time learning web development
and did some freelancer projects to get
experience back and I did not really
know what I wanted to do in life which
by the way still don’t but I think I
have an idea of the kind of problem that
I want to solve more on that later but
anyway two years ago I saw this post on
the Facebook group for homeschoolers
about Salesforce starting a junior
internship program I checked it out it
looked pretty interesting they were
starting a program for twelve high
schoolers and college students so that
they can get experience early on kind of
a new thing in India so I applied for it
it did some interviews and got accepted
it was so exciting and I was scared at
the same time because I live very far
from Bangalore and at 15 I’ve never
taken a flight that long before let
alone stay in an unknown city for one
month all alone it was very hard to
convince my parents but I pestered and
so another lesson that I learned that
day that I want to share is that there
are umpteen opportunities out there no
matter how old you are or where you come
from interacting with social media the
right way can help you a lot in those
four weeks that failed sorts I got to
work on demo engineering projects
learned in depth about sass models and
cloud computing and I also got to learn
marketing and work on some dozen
presentation projects learn marketing
and so much more and for the first time
I got to meet and interact and work with
people who have been in the tech
industry for decades they were so
friendly to noob like myself and that is
why I absolutely love the culture at
Salesforce they were open-minded and
willing to teach anything and I formed
some very long-lasting relationships I
believe I mentioned how these
relationships helped me when I came back
from say of course I knew I wanted to
start something of my own
signing up sound like this old person
aiding an interesting activity to take
on and have always been a fan of bold
and fascinating things but I did not
know anyone to co-found with barely had
any product development skills no
network no funding basically I did not
know where to start so obviously I went
to the Internet for an answer so I
didn’t lose a bit of research and learn
about this program by MIT call MIT
launch which was sort of like a startup
incubator for high school entrepreneurs
and hackers I decided to apply for it
again that some interviews with a launch
stock member and got accepted
again it was very overwhelming it was
exciting but this time I was overwhelmed
it felt like the gateway to a lot of
opportunities open up to me and
evidently it said that starting
preparing for the trip to the US and for
the program so I went to MIT attended
the program profoundest University a
social platform for connecting college
students for group cooking sessions by
creating and through a free phone app
where they can meet other people to
schedule them it was the first time I
got to me talk and work with so many
other young passionate hackers and
entrepreneurs from around the world I
also got to meet and interact with some
incredible people working at startups in
Boston and we got to try my hands with
iOS app development for the first time
at MIT the program had classes on
various aspects of starting up doing
market research and building your
products so basically starting to start
up from nothing but an idea and a great
team a lot of the lessons that I learned
at MIT have had a profound effect on me
and in how I approach various aspects of
starting up and I had some incredible
memories from there I wanted to make the
most out of the trip so I decided to
look for internships or after the
program and big us did not know back
then that I could have been turned on a
visitor visa but in the process of
researching on internships and cold
messaging a lot of people on Quora I got
introduced to Charles tips a wedding
entrepreneur whose family I stayed with
in Texas for two weeks who also
introduced me to a family in Silicon
Valley who agreed to host me for free
for four to five months why I find that
internship I do it a Silicon Valley is
the place where I’ve always dreamt to be
it’s like the Hope or startups after all
so next up I flew to Pella for now
without an internship but with lots of
hope that I’ll find one and in the next
few weeks I got a I got accept as an
intern at a VC firm in Palo Alto I went
there for a few days and worked there
but later on they asked me to
discontinue because they were too
uncertain about the Ouisa major bummer
but I still spend the rest of the three
months learning exploring networking
meeting some of my role models making
friends attending cool tech offices and
some whatever I could do to absorb and
learn as much as possible and make the
most out of the cost of flying to the US
and everything else the cost of living
in Silicon Valley even though
technically my rent was free during that
time we’re too high and I had a limited
stay visa so I decided to come back to
India and when I did I spent a few more
months learning Iowa app development at
that time I just wanted to work on
mobile apps I saw on the potential in
the mobile app market and felt that it
was relatively easier to code an app
from just your bedroom so last year I
started researching on problems that I
could solve with my newly acquired
skills and iOS app development just
worried about crypto currencies and
solving 16 but never really seriously
took on a project related to it I didn’t
evolve in 17 cryptocurrencies were all
over the Internet literally everyone was
talking about them so though there’s
probably a space in the market that I
could fill with my iOS app design and
development skills and after some
research I found that people wanted a
new price tracking and portfolio
management app sorry previous life they
wanted a new price tracker or portfolio
management app
there was a lot of competition in the
space had read some negative reviews bug
people complaining about horribly design
apps and the features that they wished
existed in them yes there is a market
need and I am going to build an app for
that this is where all the friends and
the people that I met came into the
picture
I started messaging all of my friends I
wrote a scripts to message all of them
and asking that if they’re interested or
invested in cryptocurrencies and if
they’re be up for five minutes
chat about them and the apps that they
use for tracking prices some of them
replied and and they told me the apps
that they use and what they wish was
better about them and I came up with a
huge features list for the new app so it
took me about a month to design it and
another month to develop crypto price
tracker with the help of my awesome
mentors and friends so I released the
app this year inch on 28 January at so
long I put together my story about
building the app from scratch on medium
and it publishes under free code cab and
it ended up getting a lot of attention
and just 24 hours
[Applause]
okay I posted on reddit where my post
went viral I launched some blush the
album producthunt where it ended up
getting featured next morning when I
woke up the out was already number two
up in finance category in the App Store
[Applause]
it was mind-blowing to me I could never
imagine my ABS getting so many users and
just in just twenty-four hours and
sewing Donald’s with literally zero
marketing budget and overwhelming all
over again it all increased mood for a
week and downloads were increasing and I
was working hard for a working one point
the previous one this is the first time
I felt I faced the big bad world that’s
people talk about few people on the
internet were accusing me a plagiarism I
ignored the haters for a while because I
knew the acquisitions were false but in
a few hours
trolls on the Internet when two reddit
twitter facebook core up products I’m
meeting pretty much everywhere and made
some extremely rude and vulgar remarks
some even personally I could not process
what what’s going on internet mobs were
harassing and bullying me online based
on those false acquisitions and I feared
it could escalate to something much
worse I did not know what I could do to
stop any of this so I asked my friends
and they suggested that our report the
two people who wrote the original post
to their respective employers wind
screenshots and links so I did exactly
that I sent an email I knew those two
people and out there I need their
employers from LinkedIn and
I sent their employers screenshots and
links of their respective employees
online behavior and in a few days
they took down the post and one of the
guys issued a public apology I thought
it was a win for me because I could
fight against the trolls it took some
time to recover from the anxiety that
the online harassment had caused but I
did not let it stop me from improving my
app in a few days The Daily Beast
contacted me and interviewed me for a
story and when they published it it
invited a lot of positive feedback from
women and tech and the cryptocurrency
community doubled the people on the
internet messaged me and told me how
happy they are that I made an app into
love and that I’ve fought the internet
trolls gracefully bad thing I felt so
happy being a part of this community of
empathetic people that care and support
see you days later my app got covered by
your story then Times of India also
interfered and next slide and I was so
proud to see myself in the national
newspaper and then interviewed by dozens
of interviews by dozens of news and
media outlets followed it been on for a
few weeks some folks at Apple notice my
app and invite a meteor tech evangelist
program in Bangalore where I got a ton
of feedback on my app and more
I started getting some acquisition
offers in the last month and a few days
ago I finalized a deal with Redwood City
Ventures a vici firm in Silicon Valley
that acquired my app it was the fun ride
from the day I started with just an idea
to the day I find the acquisition deal
and for my story I wanted to take three
key takeaways one that you can to design
your own path in life you don’t always
have to follow the conventional wisdom
and risks like dropping out of school
can be well worth down the line to
top-tier users understanding the market
needs and what people want can help you
build meaningful products if you’re just
coding because you want to code any
don’t care about what people want you’re
not gonna be able to sell your products
and succeed at your startup 3 when you
do great ambitious things in life it
will make some waves some good some bad
learn to ignore the bad ones and keep
doing the wonderful things good people
will notice you and help you I had
complete strangers accept me in their
house when I was in the US and people
helped me in building my app and
marketing is what motivates me every day
is the fact that I can build something
meaningful that solves people’s problems
for recently I realized how much sharing
my story has helped people to do
something of their own I wake up every
day with emails and messages from
young entrepreneurs and programmers
telling me how much I inspired them and
sharing details about their project to
get my feedback and that feeling of
knowing that I can create an impact in
in his TED talk
dan Dennett said the secret to happiness
it’s fine something more important than
you are and dedicate your life to it
and what truly makes me happy is that I
can build something meaningful and share
my three that encourages others to do
the same I cannot wait to see the
wonderful things you do in this world [Applause]
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