its summer you dont go to school so make your attempt now and see how you do. If you cant see that and talking about dropping then its obvious you are not ready to evaluate your resources and time so allow me to question at least the validity of the idea.
Nontechnical 17 year old startup founder with chutzpah is asking for advice
31–40 of 64 posts
Re: Nontechnical 17 year old startup founder with chutzpah is asking for advice
#32Test your chops. I wrote my first contract program when I was 17 on an Apple IIe for a local bookkeeper. Once I did that I finally realized that I could take my skills and make something of value (Instead of just playing at programming where you never actually deliver value to anybody)
There's a difference between idle and productive dreaming. I had a hard time with this when I was your age. Productive dreaming is envisioning something just outside of your reach and then making it happen. You string together enough of these and you can go anywhere. Idle dreaming, on the other hand, is thinking about some ideal future state with no idea at all how to begin. It's a lot more fun -- but it doesn't take you far.
So test you chops. Prove you can code something somebody likes. Then prove people will pay you for it. Continue along this pattern.
My advice only -- good luck!
Re: Nontechnical 17 year old startup founder with chutzpah is asking for advice
#33Learn to program. Deciding at 17 that you're "nontechnical" is premature optimization, without the optimization. At that age you're not non-anything you don't want to be. And if you're going to be in a world where people make software, there's nothing more valuable you could learn than how that's done, even if it's not what you ultimately spend most of your time on.
I don't know. At 17 I had been programming for 5-6 years, which is pretty normal for most decent coders I know.
In my experience, if someone does not have the mindset for coding (anal retentive, OCD, borderline autistic, you know the type ;)), then trying to make them is an excercise in frustration.
Maybe better to focus on the things you are good at, such as business development, marketing, sales and whatever else is crucial in a startup.
Re: Nontechnical 17 year old startup founder with chutzpah is asking for advice
#34Don't drop out of high school, just bullshit your way through it and do enough to get by- this isn't hard stuff, and you get food, shelter, and a good internet connection. I know, in high school, that might not seem like a lot, but it's huge when you're out in the real world. Put as much time as you can into your startup and learning to program, just don't fail out. If you're smart enough to write as lucidly as you d…
re: Getting by in high school - my last year of high school I was able to spend all of my time in the teacher's lounge or around the school (I helped paint a mural) as long as I got A's on all my tests. Perhaps you can work out something similar.
Re: Nontechnical 17 year old startup founder with chutzpah is asking for advice
#35Public high school in the USA is indeed a waste of time. And, there is no time like the present to start a company. However dropping out can really mess up your life, and I don't mean 5 years down the road. I mean it can immediately mess up your life. A hacker friend of mine in high school did just what you are proposing, but 10 years ago. As soon as he dropped out of high school his parents kicked him out of the hou…
I don't mean to suggest dropping out, but it's not necessarily as bad as you imply. I dropped out at 16 (12 years ago) and still managed to go to a good college, and have had a series of good jobs.
More problematic things that I see:
You'll need an older co-founder. Justified or not, business folk and investors aren't going to take you seriously at 17. Not to mention that you won't be able to rent hotel rooms for business travel, or cars where need be, won't be able to open a business bank account, etc.
If it doesn't work out in the first go, which realistically speaking is probably for any first-off startup, you're not going to have a lot to show for it when you're, say, 18 or 19 and throw in the towel. Actually the worst case is it just stringing you along but not really going anywhere and it getting frustrating late to start college.
In my case, despite "making it", I still view dropping out as more or less a mistake. It didn't really screw up my life in any significant way, but looking back on it, it's just nine months of part-time, easy work. Nine months is nothing. I spent six months (while working full-time) just trying to learn what I'd need to know to jump into a start up before going full-time on it.
My brother was smarter about it. He just decided to not take any honors classes, set up about half of his time senior year to be internship hours and skimmed by putting in almost no effort. You could probably intern in your own company if you had an older co-founder...
Re: Nontechnical 17 year old startup founder with chutzpah is asking for advice
#36Please read carefully what i will write. Unlike other people i will not give you advice like "Go for it dude" or "Wait, don't be stupid". Instead i will give you my point of view.Im 18 and i have one year left in school. I started programing years ago, but never got any deep. Started with pascal, then c++ in school, but never learned anything. In December last year i started learning python and i am now quite knowled…
I'm not trying to flame you, but in what usage of the word can you call yourself an entrepreneur?
Re: Nontechnical 17 year old startup founder with chutzpah is asking for advice
#37Learn to program. Deciding at 17 that you're "nontechnical" is premature optimization, without the optimization. At that age you're not non-anything you don't want to be. And if you're going to be in a world where people make software, there's nothing more valuable you could learn than how that's done, even if it's not what you ultimately spend most of your time on.
I don't know. At 17 I had been programming for 5-6 years, which is pretty normal for most decent coders I know. In my experience, if someone does not have the mindset for coding (anal retentive, OCD, borderline autistic, you know the type ;)), then trying to make them is an excercise in frustration. Maybe better to focus on the things you are good at, such as business development, marketing, sales and whatever else i…
I'm close to getting my PhD in Computer Science. I consider myself a pretty good programmer, and the first time I did any programming, it was my senior year of high school. The first time I really understood code was my freshmen year of college.
When I entered college as a CS major, there were a lot of kids who already had programming experience, and they had an edge. After four years, that edge faded, and what mattered was the individual.
Re: Nontechnical 17 year old startup founder with chutzpah is asking for advice
#38Go to college for at least one year. The act of finishing high school with decent grades and getting admitted to a decent college (a state university, at least) is a basic badge of competence that will serve as a useful social signal for the rest of your life. Among people who went to college, high school dropouts get zero respect; even the ones who are rich get only the respect they can buy. I know that's unfair, but that's society for you.
Both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs went to college. They dropped out after a year, but I assure you that the first year is important. Among other things, you might decide that you really like college: It's completely different from high school, not merely because you're no longer in a minimum-security prison, but also because some of the smartest people on earth are literally eating lunch in the seat next to you.
OTOH, college is very expensive and you might decide you don't need it. But first go for a year and get the best grades that you can, given that you intend to spend every available hour hacking on your part-time startups. :) After you've been admitted to college and done a year of decent work, it will be that much easier to get readmitted to college, one or two or five years down the road. It will improve your maneuvering room, it will place you in the college-student social class (which might very well be the one you're marketing to, and the one your coworkers are in...) and it will be that much easier to tell the story of your life to a future employer, customer, or bank manager: "I did well in school and went to college, but then got distracted by my startup company and took a year off, but then the startup tanked so I went back to school for a couple of years before my second startup hit it big."
Re: Nontechnical 17 year old startup founder with chutzpah is asking for advice
#39Please read carefully what i will write. Unlike other people i will not give you advice like "Go for it dude" or "Wait, don't be stupid". Instead i will give you my point of view.Im 18 and i have one year left in school. I started programing years ago, but never got any deep. Started with pascal, then c++ in school, but never learned anything. In December last year i started learning python and i am now quite knowled…
I'm not trying to flame you, but in what usage of the word can you call yourself an entrepreneur?
I will explain. I work on my self. Most people around me waste their time. They just want to go get drunk or something. Some of them are ambitious, but most of them just say they are. A girl from my class says she wants to become a layer ant thinks that she can become one without any understanding of rhetorics or any other essential theory needed for that job. She doesn't even try to get good grades in the classes that she will need(she got some good grades but that is through obedience in school, not knowledge or any understanding of the subject). A lot of people around me are like that. They try to go the easy way. I am more ambitious. When i was a kid, me and my friends tried to make ice cream money through a lot of different means(some of them illegal too) Like selling sandwiches or cleaning houses and stuff like that. Most kids just watched TV, i was learning about the world, understanding my surroundings and looking for options. I knew from an early age that i had potential. My plan is simple. Go through school, and get in to a good university(all i have to do is get through a few math tests and i have a whole year to get ready) Then just study, have fun and meet people. Then if i actually get somewhere i might not graduate, but i think that i will get to the end probably(as a safety net) Then start a startup in Bulgaria, probably will not make a lot of money, but my hope is that it will be enough to move to the USA(or any other startup hub that may be existing in 8-10 years) and make money there. Of course it might not happen that way, so i don't make strict plans, i just try to learn to hack, its hard, because there are not a lot of good hackers near my town.
Re: Nontechnical 17 year old startup founder with chutzpah is asking for advice
#40Learn to program. Deciding at 17 that you're "nontechnical" is premature optimization, without the optimization. At that age you're not non-anything you don't want to be. And if you're going to be in a world where people make software, there's nothing more valuable you could learn than how that's done, even if it's not what you ultimately spend most of your time on.
I don't know. At 17 I had been programming for 5-6 years, which is pretty normal for most decent coders I know. In my experience, if someone does not have the mindset for coding (anal retentive, OCD, borderline autistic, you know the type ;)), then trying to make them is an excercise in frustration. Maybe better to focus on the things you are good at, such as business development, marketing, sales and whatever else i…
> the mindset for coding (anal retentive, OCD, borderline autistic, you know the type ;))
Sounds like you've been reading too much Slashdot, not enough HN.
Seriously, I'm a hacker and not any of those things (not that I am or ever was Mr. Popular either). I think there likely is some cognitive secret sauce that makes some people much more likely to be competent programmers, but I don't think it's maladjustment. [The Camel Has Two Humps](http://www.cs.mdx.ac.uk/research/PhDArea/saeed/paper1.pdf) paper I saw linked somewhere (probably here) seemed like a promising approach for showing who has the sauce.
The authors are now working on describing the sauce more carefully, and it looks like they're providing some of the testing materials they're using at http://www.cs.mdx.ac.uk/research/PhDArea/saeed/ .