Whenever I talk to someone who’s about to graduate I always advice them to just “get into startups”. Different financial responsibilities affect your career moves, but if you’re graduating today you’re in a huge advantage. By social standards you’re not yet at a place where you’re expected to be insanely successful; this gives you some room over the next few years to just try different stuff. The most important choice you have to choose everyday waking up is: Do not waste this potential. Do not just join some company to make some money. Next few years are possibly going to determine whether you’re stamping your unique blueprint or just following social norms.
Why startups? because it’s really a wormhole to an other side of possibilities & connections. Just few years ago this wasn’t a thing: Building a product of crazy potential with a small group & figuring out how to do stuff on the way. Because it’s not about titles, but about getting stuff done, this type of environment can make you better in multiple aspects & faster than you think. Over the past few years here in Egypt, tech startups became a cult & a community, I don’t see any reason a fresh grad out of college would want to miss out on that – and it doesn’t matter whether you’re building your own product or joining another startup as a full-timer, when it comes to acquiring technical knowledge, it’s really about the same. You’re pulling everything you know & doing all the research you can so you can roll out something that will be used by real consumers & whose impact you can see in real life.
You don’t have to dream of being a tech entrepreneur to join a startup as a fresh grad, sure if you do then it will accelerate your learning, but working at a startup kind of upgrades your professional skills at a faster rate. I’m talking about skills that are not entirely technical like working with people, communicating your work, doing proper research, documenting your work, doing reports, building real connections, learning about the market you are in, etc.
This post is just my philosophy & I don’t advise any one to not take it with a grain of salt. The blueprint I’m describing here is not going to make you a fortune in 2 years, but your work ethic defines whether & when you will go big, which can happen at any time.
Live below your means?
Bullshit-wrapped social advice everyone is used to throwing at young people. If you want to get very wealthy, worrying about expenses is pointless. Saving is okay; if you can’t control your money when you’re small you won’t control it when you have fortunes. BUT the context that people use this advice within is what drives me insane. I would say “Live below your means, but expand your means”. One doesn’t work without the other. Saving is NOT going to offer you anything on the longterm. At best, it’s going to secure you an emergency fund for a few months. But that’s it! It will not “save” you, or make you free.
What you’re aiming at is really just “freedom”; you want freedom from the system & you want to not be bothered by the news. You are free when you don’t have to care about when covid breaks or when a war starts or when the Egyptian currency is fukced or any of a 1000 other things. Building wealth is minimizing the amount of panic you go through when external factors happen.
An example of this is what’s happening in Egypt now, I don’t believe I will witness a worse rate of inflation during my lifetime than this year (unless we’re really really fukced). Everybody is talking about it, basic goods are getting more expensive, fuel rates are constantly being raised & importing is paused at the time of writing this. At the same time, few groups of people are still buying new range rovers, lots of small businesses are thriving & doing well if not better; it seems like a few don’t care. It’s important to note that those are not filthy rich or anything, these are just normal people who were building when the sun was shining, and they stacked enough luck for when the sun is no longer there. Many many examples of small-medium online businesses are generating $$$$ every month & they all started from Egypt, and I’m not being overly hopeful, you can go on LinkedIn & Upwork, do your research & approve yourself.
The cliche advice during hard times is to stop buying $3 lattes. But there’s another way; instead of saving money, make more money. The amount of money you can cut from your expenses is limited. The amount of income you can earn is unlimited. We’re optimizing our money in the wrong direction.
We shouldn’t want to limit our experience of life by cutting out on the good stuff because it costs money. Hard times should just be an inspiration to make more money.
Build with friends
The best dividends you can get on your time during your twenties are going to be from time spent building with friends. From my humbling experience, building alone can get you far, but not far enough. Oftentimes you’ll need to execute in parallel, and it’s critical to work with people that are trustworthy, because you don’t want to grind for 4 straight years then discover you started off with the wrong people. Choose people you’re comfortable to deal with, and above all choose people with integrity.
Oftentimes when you’re starting, with the right energy & reputation, people will reach out to you. Do not reject an opportunity you feel afraid of. It’s a paved way for learning, remember nobody is expecting you to achieve massive success anyway, so in the worst case scenario if you aimed big, put in hours, then failed, you still won. In fact you now have far more than what you started with. Along the way you’ll consciously learn when & how to say “No”. But early 20s is not the time.
Stack luck
You have to know working hard is never an answer.
Answers to hard problems come to you when you have less clutter in your head, but “working hard” is often a cover-up for an underlying problem. It’s common among people from older generations that the number of hours you put in is what determines your success, but no, working hard is not going to offer anything if you’re not working smart. Instead, focus on reducing your distractions, because they are an enemy. The more distractions, the harder you work.
A free & clear mind is what sets the tone for “productive” work; work that is in the right direction, because we aren’t designed to stare at screens for 14 hours per day. So if you don’t find a way to make the best out of 4-6 hours on screen per day, 14 hours won’t be enough.
Your network is your net-worth
One important aspect for increasing your luck surface area is building relationships in & out of work. A call from the right friend at the right time can be a shortcut for an otherwise huge amount of effort. Learn to implement this early on because along the way you will have to learn how to be resourceful to people before you can ask them anything. You can maximize your returns only if you can clearly communicate what you can offer; this can make a huge difference to your career. Know more people, get contacts, use LinkedIn, and most importantly, show your work. You attract luck by telling people what you’re working on.
Motion is clarity
One more thing to keep in mind, it’s easy to figure out things when you’re moving, as opposed to just assuming things when you’re still. Money is attracted to motion; but not only money! Most of high-level outcomes we all want out of life are more probable to happen when our energies are vibrating. Even if when you’re moving you’re not necessarily achieving something, you’re still stacking luck.
Most people don’t get anything because they’re still, but you know the saying you have to start before you’re ready? That is because you will mostly be ready when you’re on the road, but you’d never be ready had you never started moving.
Stacking luck as a concept can really be a book topic on its own, but this is a well-designed post I found interesting & I’d encourage you to read it:
First job I took
In late 2017 I joined a small company in Cairo, I was working on PHP code of Wordpress templates.
Back then I was intrigued and had a few up days when I first knew that I was accepted for the position knowing that there were many applicants, even if it was for a little money, the feeling was just good. The week I joined they handed me a regulation document that said: 8 working hours, 1 hour lunch break, get there at 9am, blabla, it was weird & pissed me off but I was pushing. 1 month in, I realized it wasn’t just worth it. The place is a little dull and the job itself was boring, I knew this when I caught myself looking at the clock on the wall (again if this didn’t stick: I was working on PHP code of Wordpress templates). During my time there I always thought about what I’d rather be doing. I wanted to learn during this wasted time, although before joining them I was already having lots of wasted time as an undergrad, but this was a turning point for me in terms of self-learning & attending online classes. I thought I’d rather study technology behind projects I’m interested in, and then join one of those. I realized machine learning is solving problems everyday & I don’t want to be not involved in this. That’s why I decided I’m going to quit and dedicate my time for the next three months to learn new technologies and search for projects on several platforms.
I wouldn’t say my first job was a failure, but it was critical for my compass.
Informal learning
Only during Covid lockdown did I realize the influence of Twitter. Consuming Twitter is like being part of a real-world community without physically relocating. Just with the right curation, you have access to a non-stop stream of ideas from the best people at what they do. In my case I accidentally found myself deep down the “Creator Economy” rabbit hole. Massive-influence people sharing ideas about making money online, lessons learned from startups, lessons of keeping a work-life balance, lessons from the best investors, lessons from founders who exited with millions, basically anything you would want to know about building stuff bottom up. All of this information is really held in form of conversations on Twitter.
Make $1 online, it will change you life
Twitter introduced me to Indie Hackers, a podcast hosting internet founders who started small businesses from scratch. It grew into an online community sharing ideas everyday, and it’s one of the best places you can learn from.
Also Twitter introduced me to online newsletters from the best creators in the world, to name a few: Sahil Bloom, Tim Ferris, Seth Godin, David Perell, Ali Abdaal & Naval Ravikant.
To the world that we know today, people like Tim Ferris & Naval are like the singularity of a tech investor/entrepreneur/leader. These people stopped launching tech startups & are now full-time creators talking & writing about their life philosophies; dissecting each & everything, between health, wealth, fulfillment & happiness.
The masses still idolize big tech, portraying zuck, bezos & elon as the epitome of tech success. Reading to people that are known as good tech investors but also enjoy a balanced perspective on living was a shift for me. Ultimately this has to be the end goal, for one simple reason: If you built enough impact in your 20s through your 40s, your 50s & 60s shouldn’t be for building, but for telling. This is exactly what these people are doing, they are building a legacy based off the impact they previously made & they are discussing it from higher-level; how to make your “building years” count, how to really take care of & pay attention to what matters.
On Entrepreneurship: Years of Foundation
If you look into young people in tech who exited with millions, it literally just takes 1-3 years of hard work to be set for life. And I don’t mean “hard work” the way most people mean it, 60-80 hr weeks, etc, I mean letting your work consume you for a brief amount of time, like a few-years sprint. In reality no one’s willing to do that so they end up working for 40 years.
My father was working as an accountant for a medium-sized construction company in 2004. By the 2004 standard, his paycheck was ridiculously low. He was 38 back then, he started his own construction company in late 2004, and almost stopped working around 2012. It took him 8 years. Since then he’s been running smaller projects & flipping real estate, some for money, some for fun, but in reality he checked out in 2012.
The thing about trying over & over is that it usually takes one great piece of work to bring the biggest shift in your life; one life event that changes everything. And because unfortunately you can’t know which one it could be, you keep pushing until it happens, but the one thing you need to keep in mind is: It will almost never not happen if you never stop trying.
The main reason to push entrepreneurship is to force people to take accountability for their lives. And once you’re self-reliant, it’s almost impossible to have bad worldviews. So people see pushing entrepreneurship as a vehicle to achieve a better collective worldview.
Pieter Levels is known for building nomadlist.com – I was listening to his talk on Indie Hackers, said he worked on 70 projects. 70 different projects & only 4 took off. I agree that you will possibly have to be at a financial advantage to give yourself the time to go through all of this, but again, I have seen people here in Egypt who came from nothing build ventures from scratch, raise insane capital & compete in fierce markets with minimum workforce. I genuinely don’t believe anyone who has been at it long enough can not get to where they want. And I also genuinely believe one of the best things one can do in their 20s is lose some money on a venture they believe in early on in life. Even if it was set for failure, the amount of lessons for their upcoming journeys can not just pop on their lap if they didn’t go through it.