don't waste your college years. That was 4 years of not needing to worry about food or paying rent that could have been used to launch and grow a startup to profitability.
Ask YC: What would you tell your younger self?
11–20 of 156 posts
Re: Ask YC: What would you tell your younger self?
#12I'm 21 and plan on moving from Australia to the Valley next year to start on my passionate life journey. So this advice is really interesting to me!
Especially specific advice regarding working in this general field in the Valley or California would be fantastic.
Thanks!
Re: Ask YC: What would you tell your younger self?
#13Learn more math.
Re: Ask YC: What would you tell your younger self?
#14"Think things through carefully, but once you're finished thinking, don't second-guess yourself. You're smart enough that once you've thought things through, you're almost certain to have reached the right conclusions, so just go ahead and act on your plans instead of wasting time worrying about them."
Re: Ask YC: What would you tell your younger self?
#15Given a choice between an engineering school with a great reputation or a school with a female to male ratio close to 70%, choose the second.
Re: Ask YC: What would you tell your younger self?
#16Avoid debt (for me, it was the IRS when I started being self-employed). Travel a LOT (it gets harder as you get older). Get jobs in interesting places (I went to school too near home and really didn't get adventurous 'till later). Being entrepreneurial is good, but don't get into services (I had a web dev agency-- crappy way to build equity)... Build products instead. Get to a tech hub sooner. Avoid the following 4 women (none of yer business). Set up an automated recurring investment program. Buy a house before mortgages get more expensive than rent.
Re: Ask YC: What would you tell your younger self?
#17Make more mistakes; don't be afraid to fail.
A college degree is overrated; the opposite is true of self-teaching.
Buy the Corvette. It's expensive and impractical but you'll never have more fun with a car like that than you will at 24.
Re: Ask YC: What would you tell your younger self?
#18Don't work for a large company straight out of school. Move to Silicon Valley. Don't buy a sports car - every penny you save is one step closer to not having to work for someone else.
Re: Ask YC: What would you tell your younger self?
#19don't waste your college years. That was 4 years of not needing to worry about food or paying rent that could have been used to launch and grow a startup to profitability.
ugh. there's plenty of time to start companies, but those 4 years of "not needing to worry about food or paying rent" are unique.
Re: Ask YC: What would you tell your younger self?
#20I got to do this! It's a great exercise.
My college (Berklee College of Music) asked me to give a talk to the incoming freshmen class on opening day. I wrote it by asking, "What would I tell my younger self?"
I called it "6 things I wish I knew the day I started Berklee" and came up with these 6:
#1 : Focus. Disconnect. Do not be distracted.
#2 : Do not accept their speed limit.
#3 : Nobody will teach you anything. You have to teach yourself.
#4 : Learn from your heroes, not only theirs.
#5 : Don’t get stuck in the past.
#6 : When done, be valuable.
Some of those won't make sense on their own, so you can read the full version at http://sivers.org/berklee or watch it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxYt--CFXK0