[Music]
we appreciate your interest in our
company but we regret to inform you that
as of now we do not offer internship
opportunities to students last summer my
inbox is filled with emails like this
because I’d sent out my series to a
couple of companies hoping to intern
with them over the summer but after
being rejected by the 9th one and not
having gotten replies from the other
eleven I was understandably upset right
mostly because I was looking forward to
actually waking up before 1:00 in the
afternoon and doing something productive
with my summer so I looked online now
there’s literally a company that will
sell you a pet rock so there had to be
something that solved my problem right I
mean all I wanted was an internship but
there was it so now I had two options
one was to continue sending emails and
making phone calls and maybe at one
point I would annoy someone enough for
them to actually give me an internship
or I could put on my blackboard and I
can solve the problem myself and the
first option was certainly easier but
the second one was a lot cooler and
that’s exactly what I did maybe I was
watching way too much Silicon Valley but
as a leap of faith I decided I was going
to start a startup my startup was called
huge sigcomm
and what did I aim to do is be an
internship site for students here in the
UAE the thing is the culture with us
over here is we like to be pampered and
we don’t really get out of our houses so
the culture of doing an internship by
the time we are 16 or 17 isn’t really
there with more students and I aim to
solve this problem now as cool as it
would be to come out here and say that
my startup became massively successful
and made me a millionaire at the age of
17 I can’t because that never really
happened what happened was my started
startup ended up never getting off the
ground and I ended up with a little less
money in my pocket the night then I had
when I started
but not but some good did come out of me
being a pseudo Steve Jobs for a couple
of months in screwing up
I learned few lessons that I would have
never learned in a classroom or out of a
book and I managed to push myself out of
my comfort zone so tonight I want to
talk about the lessons I learned from a
startup that almost started and the
first one is how to land a meeting with
absolutely anybody so the first order of
business after spending several long
showers coming up with a name the first
thing I had to do was a the groundwork
for my startup right I realized the I
had to get a couple of companies to work
with me and provide internships on my
website so I made a list I noted
companies everything from electric
electronic stores to fashion stores to
cinema chains and everything in between
that I thought teens would probably want
to intern at I wrote an email and I
basically explained what I wanted what
my pain point was how I was going to
solve it and how I wanted them to help
me by posting internship opportunities
on their side the idea was that if I
could get more kids excited about doing
an internship because let’s face it were
almost always broke that way there would
be a steady temperature would be a
steady line of kids were interested in
doing an internship rather than a
one-off kid and in that way I was hoping
companies would actually find value in
having a well structured internship
program so I sent this email out and for
a week I got no replies now that got me
thinking was there doing something wrong
or every company in the UE collectively
decided to block my email so I went back
to the drawing board and I read my email
again and I realize one thing I kept
asking for things you know I said what
my pain point was how I experienced it
how I was planning on solving the
problem what I wanted tion then but I
never really touched on what was in it
for them and it seems trivial but I
missed that I missed that completely so
I scrapped that whole idea and
i scrapped the whole idea and i went
back to the drawing board and rewrote
the email this time I made sure that I
focused on the points of value that I
was including in for them I mentioned
how having an internship program would
create youthfulness in the work
environment and how it would boost the
brand loyalty of the company among the
eyes of the teenage youth and about two
days later I got an email it said that
the head of HR of a popular retail
company wanted to meet with me I was
over the moon it actually worked
so come Sunday I came to school I wrote
a physics exam I somehow left school
early and I also changed into a suit in
a cramped petrol station toilet and
eventually made it in time for my
meeting and I walked away with ten
internship openings across five stores
in the UAE and I realize there’s a very
simple key to this right and if you get
this one thing right it’s you basically
hacked your way into anyone’s office and
that’s making it look like you’re giving
more value than you’re expecting back if
you can get this one simple thing right
which is very hard to do but all you
have to basically do is figure out what
someone values and once you know that
you need to figure out how you can add
more value to that and if you can create
that I promise you that you can land a
meeting with absolutely anyone you want
so now I had my first partner I had a
couple of internships but I didn’t have
a site yet and so that’s what I had to
build next and that’s what taught me my
next lesson and that’s building
something great is a lot easier than it
seems now initially when I started
building the website I wanted to code it
right I mean how else are they gonna
include a cool coding scene when they
make a movie about it but but ok jokes
aside but the real reason why I did that
was because I had been dabbling in
JavaScript for a while and I thought
maybe this would be a good opportunity
to brush up on those skills and actually
build something cool while I’m at it so
I picked this up I spent a good month
and a half going through this wrapping
my head around the concepts and when I
was done I realized that I had grossly
overestimated my ability to pick up new
skills because the final product looks
something like this
now it was pretty basic and it got the
job done but it just wasn’t what I
wanted to put out there I really wanted
my first product to be incredibly high
quality and very functional which this
wasn’t and so I stumbled upon this one
day and right off the bat it seems like
a wordpress template right what is that
well I looked a bit into this and I
found that it looked really good it had
all the features I wanted but I just
wasn’t sure and then I found these these
are a couple of plugins that let me add
features and code to my site that would
normally take me months to implement
with JavaScript in a couple of minutes
and what me thinking how easy it is and
how low the barrier of entry is for
someone to create something cool today
instead of spending month a decade ago
you’d have to spend months and tens of
thousands of dollars to try and get a
proper developer to build something for
you and even then it wouldn’t be that
good but today with an afternoon and in
the fraction of a cost you can build an
incredibly good-looking very functional
website all by yourself with no skills
required and that bought me and that
means so now I had an actual web now I
had a crappy looking JavaScript website
I was a couple months behind my schedule
because all the time I wasted and that
brings me to my next lesson and that’s
the importance of starting so with all
this talk with all this work that I was
putting into the site and how easy it
was for me to add and create and
customize the site I got a little bit
carried away so I was spending way too
much time on all the little details and
I thought every little feature was
integral to the core product and any
entrepreneur worth their salt knows the
concept of an MVP right it’s basically a
Minimum Viable Product but and I thought
I was doing that I thought I was
building an MVP but in reality I was
trying to push out 90% of my features in
about 10% of the time this was an actual
MVP I know it wasn’t the most
good-looking and the most functional
with more packed with the most features
but it brought the job done and it was
functional for what it was had I
launched with this I would have at least
got the ball rolling and improvements
grab always come later
but instead I chose to waste time trying
to keep the Fonz across my website
consistent and kept delaying and pushing
the launch backwards and that brings me
to my next lesson and that’s a good team
is everything now that’s pretty generic
advice ed any book you pick up on
entrepreneurship or startups will tell
you that you have to have a good team
the thing is you seek never had a great
team at all let me rephrase me never had
a team at all the only people who knew
what I was working on were a few close
friends and that’s it and why they were
all incredibly capable I had this fear
in the back of my mind that maybe they
won’t care about the product as much as
me and maybe they I can’t expect them to
work as hard as me and that’s what kept
me hesitant from asking for help and
because of this I had bitten off way
more than I could swallow my days went
with writing emails and making phone
calls there I barely had time to do
anything else and and because and had I
had a team I would have at least got an
MVP out a little quicker and would have
had a few heads to bounce ideas off of
and that would have saved me from a
couple of blunders and to upset it along
the way and that brings me to my last
lesson and that’s don’t forget about
regulation so finally after going back
and forth and and right when I was about
to launch me being the idiot I am
decided to look at regulations at the
last moment that’s what came back to
bite me
I realized that starting something is
not as easy as the movies and the TV
shows make it look you can’t just build
or code something one night and then
pull it out there and then have
thousands of users the next morning
there’s a lot of steps that were between
finished product were actually launching
to market and especially here in the UAE
where things are a little bit more
regulated than some other parts of the
world it’s a bit more difficult to
actually start something at first I
required an actual office space which I
found out was complicity and my bedroom
didn’t really qualify and the only other
option I had was to join an incubator
program which also didn’t make much
sense because I was entering my final
year of high school and I just didn’t
think I’d had the time to devote that
much commitment to an actual startup
while still balancing my studies and so
unfortunately I had to shelve the
project it just didn’t make much sense
at the time but there’s a silver lining
to this I’m not too disappointed by you
see coms failure because well I mean
there were a lot of things wrong from
the start and a lot of things I could
have done right but it left me more
inspired because for me I was solving a
problem that was personal to me I
experienced it a couple of my friends
experienced it and so I was passionate
about solving it and similarly we find
ourselves in places throughout life
where we understand the problem better
than most people if you’re a doctor
you’ll understand the problem that
doctors face better than most people if
you’re a teacher you’ll understand the
problems teachers face better than most
people and that puts you in a unique
position to go out and solve that
problem and if you want to do it it’s
never been easier to do so because if a
16 year old come this close to starting
a start-up out of his bedroom just imagine what you can do
we appreciate your interest in our
company but we regret to inform you that
as of now we do not offer internship
opportunities to students last summer my
inbox is filled with emails like this
because I’d sent out my series to a
couple of companies hoping to intern
with them over the summer but after
being rejected by the 9th one and not
having gotten replies from the other
eleven I was understandably upset right
mostly because I was looking forward to
actually waking up before 1:00 in the
afternoon and doing something productive
with my summer so I looked online now
there’s literally a company that will
sell you a pet rock so there had to be
something that solved my problem right I
mean all I wanted was an internship but
there was it so now I had two options
one was to continue sending emails and
making phone calls and maybe at one
point I would annoy someone enough for
them to actually give me an internship
or I could put on my blackboard and I
can solve the problem myself and the
first option was certainly easier but
the second one was a lot cooler and
that’s exactly what I did maybe I was
watching way too much Silicon Valley but
as a leap of faith I decided I was going
to start a startup my startup was called
huge sigcomm
and what did I aim to do is be an
internship site for students here in the
UAE the thing is the culture with us
over here is we like to be pampered and
we don’t really get out of our houses so
the culture of doing an internship by
the time we are 16 or 17 isn’t really
there with more students and I aim to
solve this problem now as cool as it
would be to come out here and say that
my startup became massively successful
and made me a millionaire at the age of
17 I can’t because that never really
happened what happened was my started
startup ended up never getting off the
ground and I ended up with a little less
money in my pocket the night then I had
when I started
but not but some good did come out of me
being a pseudo Steve Jobs for a couple
of months in screwing up
I learned few lessons that I would have
never learned in a classroom or out of a
book and I managed to push myself out of
my comfort zone so tonight I want to
talk about the lessons I learned from a
startup that almost started and the
first one is how to land a meeting with
absolutely anybody so the first order of
business after spending several long
showers coming up with a name the first
thing I had to do was a the groundwork
for my startup right I realized the I
had to get a couple of companies to work
with me and provide internships on my
website so I made a list I noted
companies everything from electric
electronic stores to fashion stores to
cinema chains and everything in between
that I thought teens would probably want
to intern at I wrote an email and I
basically explained what I wanted what
my pain point was how I was going to
solve it and how I wanted them to help
me by posting internship opportunities
on their side the idea was that if I
could get more kids excited about doing
an internship because let’s face it were
almost always broke that way there would
be a steady temperature would be a
steady line of kids were interested in
doing an internship rather than a
one-off kid and in that way I was hoping
companies would actually find value in
having a well structured internship
program so I sent this email out and for
a week I got no replies now that got me
thinking was there doing something wrong
or every company in the UE collectively
decided to block my email so I went back
to the drawing board and I read my email
again and I realize one thing I kept
asking for things you know I said what
my pain point was how I experienced it
how I was planning on solving the
problem what I wanted tion then but I
never really touched on what was in it
for them and it seems trivial but I
missed that I missed that completely so
I scrapped that whole idea and
i scrapped the whole idea and i went
back to the drawing board and rewrote
the email this time I made sure that I
focused on the points of value that I
was including in for them I mentioned
how having an internship program would
create youthfulness in the work
environment and how it would boost the
brand loyalty of the company among the
eyes of the teenage youth and about two
days later I got an email it said that
the head of HR of a popular retail
company wanted to meet with me I was
over the moon it actually worked
so come Sunday I came to school I wrote
a physics exam I somehow left school
early and I also changed into a suit in
a cramped petrol station toilet and
eventually made it in time for my
meeting and I walked away with ten
internship openings across five stores
in the UAE and I realize there’s a very
simple key to this right and if you get
this one thing right it’s you basically
hacked your way into anyone’s office and
that’s making it look like you’re giving
more value than you’re expecting back if
you can get this one simple thing right
which is very hard to do but all you
have to basically do is figure out what
someone values and once you know that
you need to figure out how you can add
more value to that and if you can create
that I promise you that you can land a
meeting with absolutely anyone you want
so now I had my first partner I had a
couple of internships but I didn’t have
a site yet and so that’s what I had to
build next and that’s what taught me my
next lesson and that’s building
something great is a lot easier than it
seems now initially when I started
building the website I wanted to code it
right I mean how else are they gonna
include a cool coding scene when they
make a movie about it but but ok jokes
aside but the real reason why I did that
was because I had been dabbling in
JavaScript for a while and I thought
maybe this would be a good opportunity
to brush up on those skills and actually
build something cool while I’m at it so
I picked this up I spent a good month
and a half going through this wrapping
my head around the concepts and when I
was done I realized that I had grossly
overestimated my ability to pick up new
skills because the final product looks
something like this
now it was pretty basic and it got the
job done but it just wasn’t what I
wanted to put out there I really wanted
my first product to be incredibly high
quality and very functional which this
wasn’t and so I stumbled upon this one
day and right off the bat it seems like
a wordpress template right what is that
well I looked a bit into this and I
found that it looked really good it had
all the features I wanted but I just
wasn’t sure and then I found these these
are a couple of plugins that let me add
features and code to my site that would
normally take me months to implement
with JavaScript in a couple of minutes
and what me thinking how easy it is and
how low the barrier of entry is for
someone to create something cool today
instead of spending month a decade ago
you’d have to spend months and tens of
thousands of dollars to try and get a
proper developer to build something for
you and even then it wouldn’t be that
good but today with an afternoon and in
the fraction of a cost you can build an
incredibly good-looking very functional
website all by yourself with no skills
required and that bought me and that
means so now I had an actual web now I
had a crappy looking JavaScript website
I was a couple months behind my schedule
because all the time I wasted and that
brings me to my next lesson and that’s
the importance of starting so with all
this talk with all this work that I was
putting into the site and how easy it
was for me to add and create and
customize the site I got a little bit
carried away so I was spending way too
much time on all the little details and
I thought every little feature was
integral to the core product and any
entrepreneur worth their salt knows the
concept of an MVP right it’s basically a
Minimum Viable Product but and I thought
I was doing that I thought I was
building an MVP but in reality I was
trying to push out 90% of my features in
about 10% of the time this was an actual
MVP I know it wasn’t the most
good-looking and the most functional
with more packed with the most features
but it brought the job done and it was
functional for what it was had I
launched with this I would have at least
got the ball rolling and improvements
grab always come later
but instead I chose to waste time trying
to keep the Fonz across my website
consistent and kept delaying and pushing
the launch backwards and that brings me
to my next lesson and that’s a good team
is everything now that’s pretty generic
advice ed any book you pick up on
entrepreneurship or startups will tell
you that you have to have a good team
the thing is you seek never had a great
team at all let me rephrase me never had
a team at all the only people who knew
what I was working on were a few close
friends and that’s it and why they were
all incredibly capable I had this fear
in the back of my mind that maybe they
won’t care about the product as much as
me and maybe they I can’t expect them to
work as hard as me and that’s what kept
me hesitant from asking for help and
because of this I had bitten off way
more than I could swallow my days went
with writing emails and making phone
calls there I barely had time to do
anything else and and because and had I
had a team I would have at least got an
MVP out a little quicker and would have
had a few heads to bounce ideas off of
and that would have saved me from a
couple of blunders and to upset it along
the way and that brings me to my last
lesson and that’s don’t forget about
regulation so finally after going back
and forth and and right when I was about
to launch me being the idiot I am
decided to look at regulations at the
last moment that’s what came back to
bite me
I realized that starting something is
not as easy as the movies and the TV
shows make it look you can’t just build
or code something one night and then
pull it out there and then have
thousands of users the next morning
there’s a lot of steps that were between
finished product were actually launching
to market and especially here in the UAE
where things are a little bit more
regulated than some other parts of the
world it’s a bit more difficult to
actually start something at first I
required an actual office space which I
found out was complicity and my bedroom
didn’t really qualify and the only other
option I had was to join an incubator
program which also didn’t make much
sense because I was entering my final
year of high school and I just didn’t
think I’d had the time to devote that
much commitment to an actual startup
while still balancing my studies and so
unfortunately I had to shelve the
project it just didn’t make much sense
at the time but there’s a silver lining
to this I’m not too disappointed by you
see coms failure because well I mean
there were a lot of things wrong from
the start and a lot of things I could
have done right but it left me more
inspired because for me I was solving a
problem that was personal to me I
experienced it a couple of my friends
experienced it and so I was passionate
about solving it and similarly we find
ourselves in places throughout life
where we understand the problem better
than most people if you’re a doctor
you’ll understand the problem that
doctors face better than most people if
you’re a teacher you’ll understand the
problems teachers face better than most
people and that puts you in a unique
position to go out and solve that
problem and if you want to do it it’s
never been easier to do so because if a
16 year old come this close to starting
a start-up out of his bedroom just imagine what you can do
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