12 ms·

Ask HN: I've tried lots of things but haven't finished any.

• dsplittgerber 17y ago
  It reads like an amazing list of accomplishments. Actually though, you have accomplished close to nothing (please read on, I don't want to put you down; I had the same problem). Sure, you are interested in a lot of subjects. That's nice. But that's never going to translate into any success. Stop the dabbling, determine which field you really want to put work into and do that for some years. You can later change fields anyway. But there is no use doing 10-15 things sub-par if you could do a single thing outstandingly. Stop using dabbling around as an excuse for real, hard work.
• DanielStraight 17y ago
  You're 18... give it time.
  • anewkid 17y ago
    I think "give it time" is good advice if you have a project which is not very successful now but is on the ground running and is growing quickly, but I can't think of anything I'm doing that falls into that category.
    • daveungerer 17y ago
      He's not talking about your projects. Give yourself time and stop being so hard on yourself. A lot of your apparent failures will seem completely meaningless in the future. I would count doing poorly in match/science contests under those, as well as the blog. Are those things really important in the long run? And some of your other failures will be very important in the years to come. You've already learnt how badly things can blow up if you don't formalise your business arrangements in writing, for example. It's sounds cliche, but set some concrete goals for where you want to be 5 to 10 years from now and focus on the things that will get you there. Strip out the rest, but keep the things you are passionate about even if they don't have much practical value.
      • DanielStraight 17y ago
        Right. Practically no one has "succeeded" at anything except school by 18. I wonder too... it seems like you think you need to be in an ivy league school, and really in an ivy league among ivy leagues, in order to be successful. If you do think that, why? What don't you have now that you feel you need?
• MikeCapone 17y ago
  You're young and you still have lots of time to figure what works, but you seem to be doing the right thing by trying lots of things that interest you. This will give you lots of experience quickly and teach you about yourself. You seem to be on the right track. From what you've written, doesn't seem like your doing any specific thing wrong (except maybe spreading yourself too thin, but that depends on many factors that I can't know from just reading this).
• numair 17y ago
  Dude, you're 18. The more important question is, are you carrying out meaningful social experiences with people your age? Are you making really great friends who have nothing to do with your career? Are you engaging in dramatic, possibly-hopeless romantic endeavors with cute 18 year old girls (or boys!) that you'll enjoy thinking about when you're 60? You can't buy back your youth, kiddo.
  • anewkid 17y ago
    I don't get why, but it seems that few people here are interested in any of the same things I am. It's not like my interests are narrow; indeed, people criticize me for being too much of a dabbler (I am interested in math, physics, chemistry, biology, economics, politics, history, computers, and a whole bunch of other stuff). People just tend to talk about sports and dating and parties and clubs and stuff. Why do so many people talk about youth as some sort of idyllic time in one's life? I, for one, have found a strong trend of things getting better as I get older, not worse. Old people, in general, have more of everything, because they've had more time to accumulate it: more money, more friends, more family, more power, more skill, more social status, more life experience, more of pretty much everything (except of course for physical stamina, but this is not terribly important in today's world, as the success of numerous disabled people shows).
    • lsc 17y ago
      perhaps because they don't remember? As far as I can tell, life gets better as you get older and gain more control over your life. Childhood was miserable for me. I mean, physically, yeah, it's pretty much all downhill from there. but everything else gets much better. I would not worry too much if your social life doesn't pick up until you are a little older. Mine did not. Also note, if you don't connect with your peers, consider finding new peers. For me, moving to the San Francisco bay area (I'm in the south bay) has massively improved my social opportunities. Also, as you get older, the other nerds start to come out of their shells. At your age, many of them either studiously avoid other people or pretend to not be nirds.
    • lsc 17y ago
      perhaps because they don't remember? As far as I can tell, life gets better as you get older and gain more control over your life. Childhood was miserable for me. I mean, physically, yeah, it's pretty much all downhill from there. but everything else gets much better. I would not worry too much if your social life doesn't pick up until you are a little older. Mine did not. Also note, if you don't connect with your peers, consider finding new peers. For me, moving to the San Francisco bay area (I'm in the south bay) has massively improved my social opportunities. Also, as you get older, the other nerds start to come out of their shells. At your age, many of them either studiously avoid other people or pretend to not be nirds.
• quizbiz 17y ago
  Unlike the rest, I ask, "why wait?". I'm sure the school you go to has great resources. I'm a freshman at Emory and even though there is no reputation for startups here, the business school and the library still offer extraordinary resources. I've been emailing around searching for local business men to connect with. If you reach out you will find people with similar interests and I have found partnership to be a superb motivator for getting stuff done. Persistence is key.
• joecode 17y ago
  Yes. There seems to be a common thread here. You are taking on way more than you, or really anybody, can handle. I mean, seriously---a program to model the stock market? That's why everybody else keeps bailing out. Anyway, if you get a bit more realistic (don't read: less ambitious), then I'm sure you'll be a lot more successful. Failure is actually a good thing, as long as you learn from it. And it looks like you've got plenty of material in that regard.
• ramanujan 17y ago
  Hey -- as someone who thought similar things at that age, you probably have quite a few skills from all those bruises. Very few people are writing multiple web apps, multiple papers, etc. at 18. My advice to you would be to seek out a mentor who sees themself in you. That could be a graduate student, a young prof, or an entrepreneur. Forget all that shit about "socializing". Completely agree that things get better as you get older. Clubs are overrated. Work out hard and get a decently hot girlfriend if you want. But then get back to work. PS: stay ambitious. Read Richard Hamming on ambition. PSS: Look for a mentor that is where you want to be when you are their age. You need to find someone who you respect technically and who wants to teach you, to give you their wisdom to help the young version of themselves avoid all the mistakes they've made.
• carpo 17y ago
  Maybe you're trying to do too much? Perhaps you could find something which you are really passionate about and work at doing it the best you can. Looks like a lot of the time you've been doing things for or with other people. Why not think of something you are really passionate about and do it exclusively for a while. Do it for yourself, not anyone else. That way you only need to be persistent to succeed. And you never know, there might be other people out there that like it and want to use it too.
• codexon 17y ago
  You are not focused. If people gave up after one or two failures, nothing would get accomplished. - Wrote a program to model the stock market Everyone wants to do this, but unless you have insider information like Goldman Sachs or some rare mathematical insight that a million PhDs have overlooked, you are likely to fail. The stock market is a zero-sum game where most of the profits go to the high end of a Pareto distribution. This is too ambitious for you. - Worked on a paper with a professor. Unless you are a genius, I doubt any of these professors would be working with you seriously instead of just being free lab labor. Your knowledge is most likely too shallow to be useful in high-tech research that gets all the grants. However, this might be your goal if you want to go to grad school. - Tried to start a company over the summer. Keep trying. - Applied for X internships You are too young. There is also a recession so you can lower your expectations. - Half a dozen math/science contests There's something wrong with your plan if you have the time for half a dozen of them. - Tried to start a blog, worked on it for two years. Link?
• fuzzmeister 17y ago
  To be honest, I say keep trying and don't get discouraged. While joecode is correct that you might need to be more realistic about some of your goals, if you keep trying, you will find success, even if it's modest. If you're interested in doing another webapp, I say do one start-to-finish completely on your own. That way, you don't have to rely on the dedication of other people for it to be successful. Also, try to reach out and find other people interested in tech entrepreneurship at your school - I've found a surprising amount here (Washington University in St. Louis) just by poking around.
• thaumaturgy 17y ago
  It's hard to tell just from your post, but so far it sounds like you're more of a "starter" than a "finisher" -- you're not following through enough on your projects to keep them going. I'm not an expert on your life, so this is just a guess. However, the one that really stands out for me is: "Did another webapp for one of the student clubs. (Someone else also wrote one and theirs was better, so everyone (including me) just used that instead.)" In your other examples, there were external factors that created large barriers to finishing the project. That happens sometimes, but with this one, you simply ... gave up. There's not necessarily a negative connotation there; you could have made a perfectly logical decision after factoring in your interest in the project, the amount of work it would take to compete with the other webapp, and whether you had any immediate ideas that would make your version better. But, it looks like you're asking why you haven't been successful yet, and here's a case where there really wasn't anything stopping you. Aside from that, I think most folks here have a pretty big stack of failures and dead projects. I sure do -- I've even lost track of them. I've got failures in inventions, big what-if ideas, political ventures, software projects, business leads, and on and on. As long as you're able to get something valuable out of those failures, some lesson or some insight or some social connections or something, then it's not really a failure. It's just more experience.
• bk 17y ago
  1. It's a good idea to partner with people, but pick projects where you don't depend on your partners to finish. Pick a problem/domain where if everything else failed you could at least push out a minimal version to see if you can get traction. 2. For abandoned projects, salvage the scraps - publish the drafts or parts of them, open-source your code (unless it still holds significant value, but don't overestimate the potential value). 3. You seem ambitious and not easily discouraged - both valuable characteristics. So keep trying, but be on the lookout for blind spots, and patterns in your failed projects. Distill your strengths and preferences and see how you can apply them best, and work around your weaknesses. 4. Make sure you're not someone else's "useful idiot" (and obviously, don't exploit others). 5. As others have mentioned here - enjoy your life, seriously! Don't race to the presumed finish line. (Read Philip Greenspun's article on early retirement). You should always strive to pursue something that you find personally meaningful. What's the big picture of what all your efforts are really for? Sitting in a vault of cash by yourself like Scrooge McDuck won't make you happy. 6. Unless you want to become an academic or consultant/i-banker, don't worry too much about your GPA, but meet and work with as many people as possible. Make friends and test-drive them for productive pursuits. College (and I guess grad school) are statistically almost the last stops for finding co-founders. Just look at startups you respect, and look up the founders' stories - the vast majority met at the latest at university.
• revorad 17y ago
  Can you give links to those webapps you made? Have you tried figuring out why no one uses them? If you worked on either of them for another year, will they still not be successful? If not, why not? Sometimes, you have to plod your way to success, for years. Unlike most people, you are smart enough to have made a start. Don't give up in first gear.
• jey 17y ago
  Keep it up, you're doing fine. You're learning a lot from your projects, and even if you don't "finish" them, you benefit greatly from them. That's a good place to be when 18, and you're already aware of the usefulness of finishing stuff, so keep doing what you're doing but keep an eye open toward finding projects that you can/want to stick with.
• akamaka 17y ago
  You don't have to be successful at anything. I spent most of my twenties dwelling on my failures and wondering what I was doing wrong. I wish someone had just told me to chill out and do what I enjoy, but nobody did. You seem to have a lot of curiousity and willingness to try knew things, which is awesome. If you can come out of your twenties as a person who is healthy, learned, and experienced, you have accomplished a lot. Tomorrow, forget about all the past endeavors you've mentioned, and just go out and have fun and try something new.
• lionhearted 17y ago
  You're thinking too externally: ...capital, capital, people, people, publishing, acceptance/denial... and so on. To be successful, you can't wait to be blessed or funded or accepted by anyone else. A good place to start would be trying to get small jobs/contracts/articles/whatever that'll make you a bit of cash, a bit of success, and some lessons and contacts. Also: Feel free to ignore the people telling you to soak in your youth. The Western world infantalizes people - keeps them younger than they need to be. Kids used to be officers in the army as early as 14, coming of age ceremonies at age 12, starting basic work at age 8. I was making pretty good money playing cards at age 18 and started my first successful company at 19. Getting a huge head start on professional success now is quite likely to lead to a fun life with lots of cool people, experiences, and travel. Don't sweat missing opportunities to drink beer and socialize with young girls - it's overrated and you can do it in a much more high class and comfortable way after you make it later. I'd recommend you start shooting for small wins that pay just a bit. Don't worry about your hourly rate, focus on your monthly rate. If it takes you 50 hours in one week to make $500, but you learn from it, that's good. Hell, 50 hours to make $200 in business could be worth it - it takes a long time to get started in business to the point where you make any money at a reasonable speed, but controlling your own destiny scales up much better. My first year in business I think I averaged like two dollars and change per hour - we're talking 50+ hour weeks for like a touch over $10,000 at the end of the year. Ugly, but I learned the ins and outs of running my own shop, which was necessary for later. For now, look to grab some small wins. Try to not spend much too - if you can build your bank account up to the $50,000+ range over the next 2-3 years (very possible), then you'll be ready when you get a good opportunity to invest in some people, you can frontload marketing and distribution contracts for better economies of scale, you can test hire someone for six months if you meet a good person, you can throw in and get a share of a commercial real estate deal... look to live off of rice, ramen, cheap rent, minimal alcohol, the dollar menu at fast food restaurants, and bank all you make. Do a lot of little stuff, don't get arrogant and think anything is beneath you or not paying enough. You're 18, so everyone is going to write you off. It sucks, but all us young entrepreneurs went through it. You don't have a track record, and there's also a lot of things that you're not aware you don't know. Hustling and taking little projects, jobs, opportunities when possible helps fix both those problems, and can build the bank account for the bigger wins later. Best wishes - I admire the ambition. Most of my friends were on a similar track at your age, and a lot of them have come out crazy-well just now into their mid to late 20's and early 30's.
• Tichy 17y ago
  As for the webapps: did you create a web app that you yourself would like to have? What I mean is, perhaps you could try to create something that is useful to you, then it does not matter as much if other parties lose interest. Chances are if you like it, other people might like it, too. A lot of the things you mention seem to be for other people's benefit, not for your own. Like writing papers - presumably the professors have more to gain. Or the science contests - sure, they'd look nice on your CV, but are you also intrinsically motivated to work on that stuff? Perhaps you could focus more on what you like and less on what you think other people would like to see. Just guessing, though. Another thing could be to "launch" early, so that users keep motivating you.
• FreeRadical 17y ago
  Focus on one thing, try a simple web app that can potentially gain traction quickly (maybe twitter related? Finish it.
• alexmacgregor 17y ago
  I have some ideas that might interest you or at least get you started. (My email's in my profile) Like other's have said, time is on your side.
• scottdw2 17y ago
  I have a few pieces of advice: Your feelings are just normal youthful listlessness. It will pass. You could try getting REALLY DRUNK, but it won't really help. In a year or two, things will be a lot better. Modeling the stock market is REALLY HARD. No one has done it yet. Don't fret over it. In fact, I'd say don't try. You will probably have to wait a few more years to get research internships. That's just the way things are. Keep trying though. Starting a company will get easier as you get more work experience. Program committees for Academic conferences and Journals are not "double blind". The people reviewing your papers know your name and your institutional affiliation when they review your paper. Getting accepted without someone else's name attached is hard. Just keep at it. Don't worry about the school you go to. Being an entrepreneur is more about persistence than anything else. Just be stubborn. What year are you in school? Most of the Code you write as a Freshman is going to suck. You might not know it yet, but it does. Even if your code is the best in the class, it still probably sucks. Just keep hacking (and learning) and you will get better at it. Blogs are free, both to produce, and to consume. That means the barrier to entry is low, and their are a lot of them. As a product, blogs are commodities. The difference between your blog, and most other blogs, is imperceptible to the average reader. Think of it like tomatoes. If you grow a small plot of tomatoes in a community garden, what makes your tomatoes different than the one's at the supermarket? People know where the super market is. They don't know where your garden plot is. And even if they did, the only difference between yours and theirs is that you grew yours in a garden. What's the difference between your garden tomatoes and your neighbor's garden tomatoes? Most people don't know. If you want people to read your blog you have to: 1. Make sure they find out about it 2. Make it very obvious why your blog is different from everyone else's, and why it's worth reading. "But I'm smart and I wrote it" is not an obvious reason, because no one knows who you are. 3. Build something people want. People have to want to read what you are writing. What need does your blog fill? In any case, you should do 3 things: 1. Focus. 2. Relax. 3. Find your own path.
• chanux 17y ago
  Dude, almost same story as mine. But I fall very short at the number of items on your list :). But still I believe that it's all about experience. All those things on your list will help you someway or other, on the right time. Just keep it going and more importantly _balance your life_ (AKA numairs comment :) ). May the force be with you!
• byrneseyeview 17y ago
  Sounds like a good summary of most successful people before they became successful. But if you want to get that real sense of accomplishment, I recommend getting a fairly blue collar job either next summer or at night during the school year. What you need to figure out is whether you're facing bad luck or you're just not as talented / determined as you'd like to think. In most of these examples, it's somebody else's fault: your professors bailed, your friends bailed, the schools rejected you, etc. One of the reasons people work so hard in startups is that those excuses just melt away once it's all up to you.
• zackattack 17y ago
  It seems like you are dabbling in a bunch of areas and improving your overall intelligence. Your improvements will eventually cross-pollinate and patterns will indeed emerge, and you will begin to start thinking rationally about your behavior, instead of acting haphazardly. You have to ask yourself what you're aiming for. What you want. And then formulate an attack plan. Sorry, but you're not going to be able to get a finance internship and a research internship and a coding internship at the same time, while also becoming a writer. Mastery takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice (practicing, and then immediately implementing conscious corrections based on masters' recommendations regarding the technique). What do you want... Social status? Peer recognition? Parental recognition? Access to high-quality sexual partners? Money to buy toys? Happiness? Carefully evaluate if you are working on any of the above things as means to an end, or ends in themselves. If you aren't, it's OK: just try to figure it out what it is you really want, so you can attack it directly. Spend time investing in understanding your emotions, and it will pay dividends later. If you really really just want to do math physics chemistry biology economics politics history computers etc., you can. You just have to focus on improving your skill levels in each domain in order to create a meaningful impact. e.g. Improve your social intelligence in order to understand how to build something people want (figure out why people like talking about sports and dating and parties and clubs and stuff...hint: it happens for a reason, try to be open-minded and understand that everyone is human); improve your coding skills in order to understand how to actually make it. Read history books. Take advantage of all your free time in college to do more reading. Optimize your sleep schedule to use polyphasic sleep and spend all your time reading and working if that is TRULY what you care about. That is one good attack plan if you analyze your emotions and find out what is really important to you. But my guess is that it isn't. My guess is that you just want to fit in and seem recognized as a contributing human being. Who doesn't?
  • anewkid 17y ago
    "Sorry, but you're not going to be able to get a finance internship and a research internship and a coding internship at the same time, while also becoming a writer." Of course not. I apply for all of these internships at once so that, if one fails (as they often do), I have backup plans. "(figure out why people like talking about sports and dating and parties and clubs and stuff...hint: it happens for a reason, try to be open-minded and understand that everyone is human)" I'm not condemning them or anything, just saying that we're different. Indeed, if anything, you (and many others here) seem to be condemning me for being different.
• RiderOfGiraffes 17y ago
  Is this you? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=838640 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=838640 If so, why have you changed your username? If not, read the advice there, because your story sounds very, very familiar.
  • jacoblyles 17y ago
    The immature know how to ask for advice, but not to take it.
• diG1tY 17y ago
  You are much more experienced than most people I know. And you are quite younger than them. Work as hard as you can, and live without regret, the rest will come along the way ;)
• ahlatimer 17y ago
  I'll reiterate a lot of what the other people are saying: you're depending too much on other people. You're also looking at certain things that "failed" and saying, "I failed" instead of looking at them and saying "They didn't take off, but I learned this, this, and this." I'll take your webapp you built for a student club as an example. What made the other person's better? What did you learn, if anything, from building that webapp? If you had another opportunity like that, what would you do differently? You seem like a smart and motivated kid; I'm sure you can figure out what went wrong in each instance (excepting maybe the Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and internship positions). I'm sure you can even find problems with the internships. First, you're too young. I'm guessing you're a Freshman or a Sophomore, depending on whether or not you graduated early from high school. Most companies don't look at you until you're a junior or senior. Plus, it's a recession, so companies are more likely to cut internship budgets. That being said, you may have set your sights too high on gaining an internship. If you applied to say, Google, or another company renowned for its extremely high standards, you shouldn't be disappointed if you didn't get accepted. If you want to do web development, look for a local web development shop that might be willing to hire you. You might get lucky and not even have to work as an "intern"; you may very well get hired outright. I've already managed to do that twice, and where I am is hardly considered a tech center, but there's a decent amount of CS students at my Univ. that would kill for my job. Back to the relying on people bit. If you want to build a webapp, build a webapp. It really isn't that difficult to do on your own. Hosting is cheap, and even if you don't ever make it into a real business, you'll likely learn a lot along the way. If you want to start a business, start a business. If other people believe in you and want to join, have it in writing who owns what if things head south. If you didn't have that in your last foray into business, take it as a lesson and move on. If you really just want to cut your teeth on real world project, find an open source project you believe in and support it. If you think there's a niche that needs to be filled, fill it. The GData Ruby library, for instance, is drastically lacking (the Google Calendar is supported, kind of, but that was it, last I checked). Writing a gem for that has been on my todo list for a while. I'm sure you can think of a few things like that, and it might actually help you land an internship at Google or wherever if you write an open source plugin for one of their products. You can even write that GData library if you really want. I'll let you have it. :) Edit: My email address is in my profile. If you want someone to work on a few things, let me know.
• jacquesm 17y ago
  So, why not try something simple for a change. And then finish that, make sure it involves you, only you and does not require a bunch of money. Then when you've done that try again, but this time with something a bit more ambitious. Find your 'comfort level' and slowly keep expanding that. If you keep at it this hard surely one day you'll succeed. best of luck!
• jeromec 17y ago
  Yes, it seems to me you are doing two things wrong. First, you are not considering carefully enough everything an endeavor will require for success - and if you can and will provide what is required. That leads to the second, which is you jump in fairly hastily, then fail to deliver what is required for success, if success is even possible at the time. Note: I've been guilty of all this myself, and have worked to improve.
• louislouis 17y ago
  Success is 99% failure. Keep trying.
• bhseo 17y ago
  > Why do so many people talk about youth as some sort of idyllic time in one's life? Because youth is wasted on the young. It's a good thing that you've tried all that, even those left unfinished. The next step is to apply the Pareto principle, and stop doing a bunch of things. Do the easiest thing with the most benefit. Do what makes you happy. Do more things outside the academic and business areas. Dabbling isn't a bad thing. Here are some suggestions I find worthwhile, in no particular order: 1. Sex. 2. Meet people, help people, make friends, make allies. 3. Travel. 4. Improve your body. A healthy mind needs a healthy body. 5. Teach yourself how to cook. 6. Read books. (don't be afraid of not finishing them) 7. Learn more about the rules that govern you. Quite boring but so very useful. 8. Become a minimalist. Sell your things and stop buying things you don't need. Simplifying is good. 9. Study and practice meditation. 10. Learn how to grow, collect or hunt food. 11. Explore altered states. Some do it with wine, some do it with poetry. Exercise, alcohol, herbs, plants, fungi, pharmaceuticals, music or plenty of other activities, they can all do the trick. 12. Conquer fears. 13. Swim in the ocean. 14. Lie on the beach. 15. Don't worry be happy.
  • julsonl 17y ago
    I love tip number 6. I get that overwhelming sense of guilt for not being able to finish a book.
    • kalid 17y ago
      I read a sobering fact somewhere -- we'll only be able to read about 1000 books in our lifetime (50 years, 20 books a year or nearly 2 a month). Maybe 2000 or 3000 if you're a voracious reader. Given that, it doesn't make sense to waste time with a bad book when it's taking the place of a better one. This helped me with that same guilt.
      • sireat 17y ago
        I agree with what you are saying, but a voracious reader could easily hit 10k books by late middle age. 200 books a year is not that many.
  • 17y ago
• swombat 17y ago
  (Successful) life: you try 50 things. 1 succeeds. You're about halfway there, well done!
• julsonl 17y ago
  At least you had the drive, In my case I never knew what I truly wanted until a year ago. I kind of slacked all the way through college, thinking I was just going to be another cog in the wheel when I graduate. I felt that I wasted too much time. That said. I agree with having focus. Narrow down your area of focus to a couple of things and drive the nail all the way. As in my case, I'm focusing on learning graphics programming and image processing, and considering my current skill set and timetable, it would take at least 3-5 years to acquire reasonable expertise on this. Along the way, I will try to learn how to create and run a startup. This is my current plan for the future, just to give an example. As for webapps, you don't have to work on something that others might use or be happy with, rather, work on something that you, yourself can be proud of, even though nobody knows what the heck it does.
• mechanical_fish 17y ago
  I see that people have already told you that it's fine, you're 18, everybody is a dabbler at 18, and those who aren't will have a midlife crisis where they wake up one day and wish they were you. This is all true, as far as it goes, but I needn't say it again. Let's try some coaching instead. Vince Lombardi mode, engage! Stop trying to look smart. Being smart is wonderful as a source of personal pleasure, and is also really useful, but looking smart is an empty experience. Too easily faked. Any idiot can look smart. Many idiots specialize in it. Bernie Madoff looked smart. A sure sign that you're trying too hard to look smart is that you are "applying for finance internships" and "modeling the stock market". These are understandable mistakes -- the media works hard to convince you that these are respectable goals, much as they work hard to convince you that blackjack and poker are sexy games that you should play all the time -- but to a scientist this stuff is the badge of the lightweight. It has the intellectual content of a whiffle ball, and the only reason to do it is to collect money, generally from the gullible or the corrupt. (See "Bernie Madoff", above.) Real businesspeople don't "apply for finance internships"; they sell things or make things. And real investors (as opposed to gamblers and shills) don't waste time modeling the market, because they've all read Malkiel. You are in college. Do you... study anything? Your resume is seriously scary. Where do you find all this time? Your academic work must be way too easy. You are in college right now. You are surrounded by the infrastructure for learning stuff. There will never be a better time for that. Do not waste this time collecting C.V. entries like so many stamps; that is for later. I call upon the spirit of the geek's Vince Lombardi: Yoda. All his life has he looked away... to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on Where. He. Was. Hmm? What. He. Was doing. You claim to be interested in physics; do you understand Maxwell's equations, stat mech, quantum decoherence, general relativity? You claim an interest in math; have you run out of math courses? Chemistry: Do you understand the band structure of solids? Biology: Do you know what siRNA is, can you do graduate-level molecular biology lab work? Computers: Have you finished SICP, learned operating systems and algorithms? Have you even considered linguistics, or geology, or anthropology? Study any foreign languages? How's your music theory? Dabble, but dabble smart. Dabble like a scholar: Study things. Study the hardest things you can find. Study like you mean it.
  • anewkid 17y ago
    "Stop trying to look smart." Look smart to who? I studiously avoid mentioning any of this to anyone at my school for fear of seeming arrogant. "It has the intellectual content of a whiffle ball, and the only reason to do it is to collect money, generally from the gullible or the corrupt." Yup. I did these things entirely for the purpose of making money and not for the intellectual challenges, because money is useful and I'm currently broke. "And real investors (as opposed to gamblers and shills) don't waste time modeling the market, because they've all read Malkiel." Google Renaissance Technologies. "Where do you find all this time?" College is not very demanding. My usual load is two technical courses and two nontechnical courses, which take up 10 * 2 + 6 * 2 = 32 hours a week. "You claim to be interested in physics; do you understand Maxwell's equations, stat mech, quantum decoherence, general relativity?" Yes, yes, yes, somewhat (working on it). "You claim an interest in math; have you run out of math courses?" I will next year at my current pace. "Chemistry: Do you understand the band structure of solids?" Yup. "Do you know what siRNA is" Nope, thanks for the link. "can you do graduate-level molecular biology lab work?" I probably could given a month or so of training, but I seriously doubt any professor would let me because of my age and my relative lack of bio courses. "Computers: Have you finished SICP, learned operating systems and algorithms?" I haven't written my own OS or programming language if that's what you mean, but I find solving problems that have already been solved a zillion times better by thousands of other people working together over decades to be distasteful; what's the point? "Have you even considered linguistics, or geology, or anthropology?" Yes. I know some geology and anthropology but find linguistics boring. "Study any foreign languages?" Yes, I find them quite boring, it's basically just a great deal of memorization by rote. "How's your music theory?" Music cannot be explicitly taught in the same way that any of these other things can. I'm not sure how it can be taught, actually. I could probably become good at it given several thousand hours of work but don't see the point in investing that much time.
• coliveira 17y ago
  It looks like you're good at finding the wrong side of everything you do. Just look at the bright side. You did a lot of impressive things. Nobody is successful in more than a small percent of what they do. Moreover, in every success there is always some way to find flaws (it was too easy, nobody cares, I didn't learn anything....). So, you have to take yourself lightly, continue to work hard, and enjoy the things that you do. Try to define success for yourself, not for others.
• hooande 17y ago
  I think you're doing great. A lot of people on this thread say you should spend more time being social. There's nothing wrong with that, but if I had it to do over again I would do it your way. Yeah I had some good times as a kid. But now as I'm approaching 30 I don't really care about good times. I just want to do something big and I wish I had more of a head start. Life is a summation of experiences. The more diverse your experiences are, the more perspective you have on any given situation. Perspective is what allows you to see things that other people can't. Get as much perspective as you can and treat it like gold. The earlier you start, the better off you'll be.
• conquest 17y ago
  I sometimes feel the way you do. I started a local ratings company and then google and yahoo ratings took off. Interestingly enough it never really caught on and yelp perhaps has done a much better job. I've tried babysitting coops, and several other ideas all which failed. However the more I read, the more you discover that the key to success is working hard and trying lots of ideas and constantly refining those ideas quickly. I take myself too seriously at times and I really need to start having more fun with my side projects. Your broad range of ideas and knowledge is the important thing here, it will greatly benefit you in the long run.
• zaidf 17y ago
  I was almost in the same situation my freshman year around ~2006. I even wrote to pg(before knowing much about YC) on how he focuses and completes things. I was surprised when he responded. My context was startups. I kept building sites which I was promptly shutting down after launch because no one used it--and more importantly because I didn't do much to get people to use it. If I remember correctly, pg said to pick something and allocate the next x months to it--no matter what. It worked for me. A few months later I picked an idea, and said no matter where it goes, I will work on it for six months. I think you merely making a post like this means you are progressing. A lot of people would kill to just have tried so many things. You are clearly bored of trying stuff. Time to buckle up and get a little focused--because it's more rewarding and fun!
• brown9-2 17y ago
  Keep going. Don't give up and don't beat up yourself. You're trying and that's what really counts - most people have ideas and then never try to execute on them. It sounds like you are executing on a whole lot of things, which is really great. Also I don't get this thing about "my school has never produced any startups" - how do you know? Its not like anyone keeps a detailed, thorough and completely accurate history about this start of thing. People from all types of backgrounds - big name schools, no name schools, and no schools - start companies and are huge successes. You shouldn't look at just a few examples (which can be more hype than fact) and think that you have to follow in the same exact footsteps and life-story.
• code_devil 17y ago
  When I read this it immediately reminded me of King Bruce and the spider story. I googled and found the link http://www.longlongtimeago.com/llta_history_bruce.html http://www.longlongtimeago.com/llta_history_bruce.html I see all these setbacks of yours as stepping stones to success, plus you are only 18. In other words you are learning thing's earlier. Keep trying and soon you will be rewarded.
• btilly 17y ago
  Are you doing something wrong? Probably you are. But that is to be expected since there are so many ways to mess up. The question is whether you're learning from your mistakes. Personally I would ask why people keep bailing on you. You had 2 professors bail on letting you complete a paper you started on. You had co-founders bail and screw you over. The people working with you on the web application didn't continue working with you. (The point being that they didn't just abandon the application, they also didn't invite you to be part of the next thing they did.) This is a bad pattern because generally we can't succeed unless we can get other people to succeed with us. For example you're unlikely to start a successful startup without the close cooperation of a cofounder. I'm sure that circumstances are different in each case, but as the poster says, "The only commonality in all your failed relationships is you." This strikes me as a pattern that is repeating too much for coincidence. So you need to ask why. It may be that you'll get an answer that you can't easily solve. For instance people may find you not fun to be around. If that's the case then you're unlikely to be able to change your personality. In which case you need to find someone who can get along with you as you are. However it may be something like, "you've always got 50 other projects going on, and keep on dropping the ball" in which case you can fix it. (Do fewer things at once.) Whatever you find, be aware that you are almost certainly doing SEVERAL things consistently wrong. So once you've identified one thing to improve, don't stop there.
• startingup 17y ago
  When I was in college, I wanted it all - wanted to prove theorems, found companies, join politics and so on. As I got older, I realized that just getting deeply focused on one thing gives you all manner of creative opportunities. Pick one area, and get in deeper and deeper - that would be my advice.
• lsc 17y ago
  One big regret I have about some of my early projects was that I did not leave them online. I wrote a book price search engine when I was a few years older than you. it was actually pretty cool, but I folded the company because the competition looked pretty hot at the time. Folding the company (or at least not working on it more) was probably the right decision. The mistake was that I took the code offline and lost it. save every piece of code you write. If possible, put it in public. Not only does this help you if you later have an idea or opportunity that would use your old stuff, but it builds up credibility, and it helps give you an idea how far you have personally come. So yeah, if there was one piece of advice I could send back in time to me at 18, that'd be what I'd say. Make sure all the technical stuff you do is accessible online forever, even if it no longer works. Seriously, the social bullshit works itself out once you figure out that you get to choose your peers. (and you do. It's hard to imagine after going to high school and being forced to choose from the thousand or so people your age who happen to live within a few miles of where you are born, but as an adult, you absolutely get to choose your peer group and your culture. no matter how weird you are, there are other people like you.)
• kitcar 17y ago
  You only need two skills to succeed in business: the ability to negotiate and the ability to sell. Buy low (goods, services, knowledge), sell high. Without knowing your personally, I would say you need to work on the sales side of things, as there is quite a bit of rejection in your past.