1976 at 2066 Crist Dr, Los Altos, California: In the garage of the house found at this address, a 21-year-old college dropout and his friend started a company. The work done in this garage changed the way people use technology forever. Jobs and Wozniak started out building the Apple I; the first product released by Apple. Years later, The iPhone, was released becoming a household product and impacting almost every facet of our lives. It’s now one of the world’s biggest companies.
2021 at 2 Kraushe Rd, Warren, New Jersey: In a bedroom found at this address a 15-year-old high school student had an idea that allows students and teachers to share their schedules online and make group chats within their school community. The high school sophomore started building this product and marketed it to the students at his school called CourseTurtle. Several weeks passed and the local hype died and the company didn’t grow further.
For years I have been intrigued by the world of startups. A Startup is simply a business in its early stages; I have launched my own but also worked for other startups and it always confused the people around me, “why startups?”, they ask. They think it’s strange for a high school student to be more interested in software launches and pitch decks than working a job or playing sports and I’ve sometimes questioned myself as to why my path is so seemingly different from others. It’s easy to say I want to make a lot of money or I don’t want to work a boring 9–5 but I know it’s more than just that.
CourseTurle was the startup I attempted to launch and evidently, it was not a success. The idea was decent however, several key factors contributed to Course Turtle’s failure: A lack of funding, a lack of a team, a lack of experience, a lack of core developers, a lack of advertising, a lack of networking, etc. Instead of immediately jumping onto a new project I spent the year honing my skills and learning new development languages and technologies so that my skillset would be wider. Because of this I was recognized by an up-and-coming startup based at UT Austin called Populus. Populus is an app combining fantasy sports and the stock market; In their words, “a new fantasy sports experience for NBA fans to buy and sell shares of their favorite players, compete against their friends, and go long on the most promising names in basketball”. Working closely with a small team of 10–13 college students all with a common goal of getting their ideas to NBA fans everywhere was an incredible learning experience. Here I saw firsthand how motivated these people were and how much time, effort, and precision is required to run a company even on a small scale. A strong work/life balance culture was encoded into the brand, although there was a singular “boss” of the company everyone was sort of their boss, and each team member’s ideas and characteristics were taken into account. Nobody was being paid for the app since at the time it was in its very early stages however everyone believed in the app and themselves so they did whatever they could to get Populus to “blow up”. The developers did pitch decks with the marketing team and the marketing team ran tests for the development team. The team members didn’t just do their job, they went above and beyond for their startup. It was a very personal company and it didn’t operate like a business it operated like a passionate and creative group of people all with a common dream. This is what startup culture means to me.
I came along to the populus team because I had a fresh young perspective and offered creative and naive ideas and solutions yet enough technical experience to pull my own weight and bring my ideas to reality. To immerse myself in the Populus team and their culture I had to be able to graft myself like a flower bud and their values such as innovation, talent, and ideas into the foundation stem of a plant symbolizing foundational values and the startup’s mission. This allows me to have fresh perspectives, and creativity, while still grafted onto the original values and vision. A thriving startup culture leverages the innovation, agility, and risk-taking mindset of its dynamic team while maintaining a foundation of discipline, purpose, and mission. This is why each member of the team is different but still is able to accomplish great things as a group.
Since working at Populus I’ve worked for 2 other startups, but the goal is to create my own startup in the near future. The concept of creating businesses is a natural human instinct. As cavemen, we had built our own civilizations, hunted our own food, sewed our own clothes, and so on and so forth. These are entrepreneurial actions: to pave our own paths and become innovators, creators, and leaders for ourselves and our people. Over time we suppressed these instincts however all of us at our core are entrepreneurs. For me, I feel an additional intrinsic motivation to do my own thing and use my technical and creative skills to build a product not just for myself but for other people. In 4th grade I rode my bike down to the center of town to sell my old toys: This was my first business and once again I wanted to see a new venture of my own grow and succeed.
