YouTube Deep Summary

## Intro [00:00] I was able to keep my engineering GPA over 3.5, go to 15 hackathons, and also grow to 50K on social media. This is Gia. She's a college student who won 21 hackathons with a 70% win rate. I signed up for the next one and actually didn't tell my parents, uh, secretly rented a car, drove to Ohio, and then won first place. Not to mention that she started a company while in college with a pretty crazy story. I said I wanted to start a company. So at 9:00 p.m. I started like shipping out the MVP and at 9:00 a.m. I posted it everywhere on Instagram. The app crashed after like it got too much traffic. Our apartment got robbed. We got our laptop stolen. Um it's okay. So literally the next hour we got right back on to talking to clients. We landed seven YC companies working with us and 50 other companies. I appreciated her transparency and think you will too. There are so many like CS content creators getting cancelled left and right for like their opinions on this topic. Um, my opinion is that the number one thing that I wanted to ## Getting into hackathons [00:55] talk to you about was hackathons. You attended so many hackathons. It's crazy. And you have an insane win rate. I don't know. I saw I keep seeing like 70% being thrown around there. So, okay, you clearly have figured it out. You know how to win hackathons. You got some special tips here. How did you get into the hackathons? What made you want to go so deep into hackathons as a college student? I got into hackathons actually from a non-technical background. I was a finance major. Oh, really? I had taken one Python class, like try harded it, sort of attended every single lecture, got a four point, and then I was like, I can try attending this hackathon this weekend. The issue was that I didn't know any of like the modern libraries like React or Next, but I was like, oh, there's builders at this hackathon, so I can probably just have them like build my idea. But I ended up building the entire time for the full 24 hours and we ended up like losing that first hackathon. You said you were fine. So did you have any experience in high school like APCS or anything like that? I had APCs but I was pretty like disinterested. Okay. So you you knew something but you didn't expect this to be something that you got really deep into. So after you did that first hackathon, what made you want to do another 20 after then? It kind of just naturally flowed. Even though we like lost the first hackathon, I wasn't that disappointed because like that was the first time where I felt so much enthusiasm for building um and I was able to like unleash my creativity. So I signed up for the next one and actually didn't tell my parents uh secretly rented a car, drove to Ohio and then won first place for hardware for the Ohio hackathon. Um it was called Hacks. So this was during this was in college, right? This was in college. This is in my freshman year of college in the spring semester. Oh my god. Okay. So, you really went out of your way. And you did a hardware hackathon, too. Yeah. And I did a hardware hackathon. Um I basically had this like insane schedule where I would take my economics courses in in the daytime. So, just cram them and get them out of the way. And virtually the entire day I'd be in the lab like experimenting with hardware, software. And from like 9:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m., like most days of the week, I would just be like learning new APIs, new tools, new libraries, um, and like new microcontrollers. Yeah, it was it was kind of crazy. What was the thing that you built that won the hackathon? Uh the thing that I built that won the hackathon. Um basically I just put a bunch of different modules together with a Raspberry Pi Raspberry Pi Pico and it was able to measure the distance between the Raspberry Pi and uh whatever object was in front of it. Sort of like an extension of like a walking cane or like invisible well not walking cane but like yeah cane for people with like visual disabilities. So instead of like the cane being 10 feet, it would be like 20 feet and wherever you pointed like your arm, you' be able to like measure the distance. You rented a car, you kind of just sent it. How'd you build the team? What happened when you got there? I had found a friend from just like reaching out on Discord servers and so we drove there together. Uh but I just like full sent the hackathon solo. Oh, okay. So you didn't you didn't have a team. Out ## Hackathon strategy [04:10] of all the hackathons that you do participate in, do you feel like the team's a big part of it or have you been soloing all of them? A team is a big part of it. I think when going for like massive prizes or like going for grand prizes, for sure a team is an advantage rather than a disadvantage. Especially when you can like divide tasks and people can specialize then like when everyone's working at the same thing like all that manpower is extremely helpful. What what makes a good team? Finding teammates not based on the credential but based on like their skills. a lot of times like people would ape in on like the PhD research students um because of their credentials or because of their internships or titles or whatever but I would take like the opposite route and I would look at people's projects on GitHub see how active their commits were and see like what kind of experience they had with the our particular like use case and that was actually a better method because these teammates would be more passionate about the project we were building um put in more effort and sort of be more scrappy and have like less of a limiting mindset and more of like a growth mindset. That makes sense. You're basically hiring for the exact skill set that you need to build something. When you come into these hackathons, do you already come in with ideas? Yeah, I already come in with ideas. There's so much like hackathons are are not like typical like competitive programming competitions. There's so many aspects to a hackathon like the social aspect, the time frame aspect, how there's like only 24 to 48 hours, the fact that there's very different themed prizes, niche prizes that you can research into tool into and how the tools that you're like given are varied. So you have to be very scrappy. But in that way you can like sort of max out the aspects before building or for example like even though you don't like type any code you can put together a Google doc research the different sponsor tools sort of understand how they integrate with your different ideas visualize how you would be developing the project and if it's feasible within 24 hours I would often go for like a very solid simple straightforward finished product rather than going for something absurd or complex. I mean in times like I would aim high in like very like grand prizes prizes where I do like something extremely complex like for the Princeton hackathon we did a lacing algorithm for seeing if people mess with artist NFTs. Lacing algorithm? Well, what do you mean by lacing algorithm? Like an algorithm that can like trace back if someone has messed with someone's art in an NFT and it tracks it back to the original artist. I see. Okay. Okay. So, there's at some point in the tree of edits, it fans off of Okay, I see. And you you built some UI on top of it to like show that this was like a descendant of some prior NFT or something like that. Yep. Yep. I see. I see. And that won the the grand prize for at Princeton. Yeah. That won the Verbar prize. I see. I see. Okay. What So, you mentioned like the you know, in order to win there's a social component. Um, are you talking about the judges or you're talking about the teams or what is that? Both the judges and the teams. Like for example, being able to read people for the team and see if they would like contribute positively or negatively to the energy of the team because like beyond skills, motivation in the hackathon for the whole 24 hours is pretty integral. Like when someone gives up or thinks that the hackathon isn't as possible, like there are only like Yeah, there's only three other people to keep the energy of the team up. And like being like one a one person try hard is also like motivating to the team because they can see how serious like one person is. But um still like the best results have come when every single member of the team is absolutely full sending the hack though. Makes sense. And you talked about the judges are also a big part of it. Yeah you I imagine you really have to sell your ideas or present. That's got to be a big part in addition to building. Do you have any tips for people who attend the hackathons? what works when it comes to selling. A big misconception is that people think that the most theoretical ideas will win because another big misconception about hackathons is that they think that the most like um theoretically correct people win it. But that's actually not the case. Most of these judges are actually non-technical. So a big thing that I do is I look into the judge's eyes and see if they're actually following. And I also keep the pitch very concise. I simply state the idea, what it does, and then focus the most on the demo and the judges interacting with the demo. So the judges can see for themselves that the product actually works without cracking versus like I've seen other approaches or mistakes where people and also mistakes I've made too is where people explain about the whole tech stack and think the judges will be impressed rather than having them interact with a with a project directly where they talk about oh I use MongoDB, I use Nex.js JS and fast API and then they keep rambling about all the technical details, but all the judges want to see is is this project hype and would they imagine themselves using it or someone they know using it. I see. So, and when you said theoretical, you're talking about like technical complexity. Like a lot of people think that it's actually a technically complex solution that's going to win, but it's actually the thing that solves a real problem or is interesting and they could really see the the value in the project. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I also think that aiming high for technical complexity is also helpful because pursuing a more ambitious idea but having thought through all the steps like in the Google doc I said makes a very technical project seem very simple to a judge because it's implemented with flawless execution. So in your experience what's more important is it the idea for the project or is it the execution on the project? I would say both. So my aims would be fully connect front end and back end to make sure it's working and make sure the idea is very unique. Does the back end need to be work? I remember when I was um at UCLA doing hackathons, we had one we trying to get the back end of the front end to work and we were all not great builders. We were just good tests, taking tests and stuff. We didn't know how to actually build software and then so we got the front end working but the back end was absolutely not working at all. And so we just made the backend like a file or something and had the front end just reading from that file. Uh and I mean it it worked like if you looked at it on you know on my local uh but there's there's no back end. So I guess my question is like how much does the implementation details matter or is it just if you show something that looks good they're not going to add ask any questions about what it's actually doing and how it's doing it. I think to a degree it can work but like if you're aiming for the win then it's probably better to have an actually working project because then you can explore more once you get it connected for technical development a big misconception is that when you divide your team you can divide them into front end and back end and at the end you can integrate them all together and so the front end people keep on making the front end more beautiful they add like more buttons they're like oh I have this idea we're going to actually have an entire quiz for people to take and then the back end people are like oh let's keep on building the back end we're going to think about the different tables to add. We're going to see how if it can like load faster and then at the end it never gets fully integrated. So the actual approach would be within the first few hours connect the front end and back end together even if like in the most simple way at the like the earliest stage possible and then iterate on that. So see if the websockets are streaming see how the connection works set up the port whatever. Right. Right. That makes sense. Out of all of the projects that you've done, I mean over or over over 20 hackathons, do you have any favorite projects? I think my favorite project is this VR that we built completely from cardboard and glass and we use like an Arduino to project in glass prism in a hologram through like cardboard glasses a transcription using AI transcription. We use whisper AI and like projected the live transcription in a hologram through the VR. It was pretty awesome. What was using the light? It was like a projector or something. Uh yeah, it was like an OLED from like an OLED screen that you can like integrate with an Arduino. Oh, interesting. And we connected it all through Bluetooth and then Yeah. So if you were a student in class and your professor was talking but you couldn't pay attention, like all the notes would pop up in a hologram on the top right of your glasses and then also get summarized in the web app. Oh, that that is that's crazy. I don't know. And you did that in 24 hours? We did that in 9 hours and we're able to sleep the hackathon. That's why it was insane. The entire team was cracked. No, I believe kids students there are just community college kids. We literally drove there absolutely full sent the project. Yeah, that's crazy. How'd you put together that team? There's this guy just like at a community college nearby who was just building rockets in his backyard and I was like, "Yo, want to go to hackathon?" And he was like, "Bet it up. And then like at my AD club, there were just these guys that were always working in the entrepreneurship center. Um, and like they just had like the grind set. They just worked all the time. And so I was like, "Y'all want to do a hackathon?" And so then that was us four. And we are all still in contact today. Wow. Okay. That's that's crazy. This random community college kid building rockets in his backyard. That's that's a really interesting hire for your team. I'm curious. Would you recommend hackathons? And if so, what are the benefits? Because I remember when I was I was a long time ago, but it wasn't really the top priority. There's a lot of other things to focus on. Why should someone do hackathons? I think in this day and age with like the competition in the market, it's really good to have personal projects that make you stand out. But I also think that like the marginal benefit of hackathons decreases and it'd be much more valuable to just make a product that people want to use like longterm or just get a bunch of users. I think you learn more from that. But yeah, at hackathons they have recruiters there. They fasttrack you to applications like for example Bloomberg, Rooflow. They're looking for builders. Hackathons also help you develop agency. being able to just like think on your feet, do something new, not be afraid to do something new, and not be afraid to do it in in an environment you don't know anything about. So yeah, being adaptable. I'd say I think like three hackathons is good. Three to five, but anything after that like probably not the best for like body or Yeah. You could be doing something else. For sure. For sure. So you said basically it's a it's a forcing function to building a project. But you think the thing that actually helps people learn and distinguish themselves is actually not the hackathon. It's the project and building something that matters that people are using that is what helps people stand out for recruiters. Is that right? Yeah. Well, stand out for recruiters and also just learn more than you would at hackathons. I see. I see. That's why I hackathons. Yeah. Yeah. I mean hackathons it's literally in the name. It's just the most insane hack. It's it's not there's probably not a long not a lot of long-term learnings from something that's thrown together so quickly. You mentioned agency. That's ## Developing agency & time management [15:20] really interesting because that actually stood out to me. You're talking about you random you just got got in a car. You just sent it to some random hackathon without telling your parents and you went and you it it worked out and you won. The thing that stands out to me is not you winning, but it's the not the audacity, but the initiative to kind of just go not take permission and just go and send it. Um, I'm curious, do you feel like it's a muscle or do you feel like your agency has gotten stronger over time? Always had like a little bit. Yeah, there's a point to where I got so bored of school like I just needed some sort of mental stimulation that wasn't like regurgitating information from like a textbook. I don't know. I think maybe it's like the deviation from where I came from. Like for example like no name state school starting a company is like pretty much unheard of. There are like two or three people that like were very serious about startups from that school. I'd like to think that yeah hackathons did increase my agency. You talk about school. I mean when I was going to school I felt like it was taking a good amount of time. I can't imagine balancing all this stuff. I mean you're also doing social media startup hackathon. So that's something I'm curious about is like how do you prioritize? How do you manage your time? Okay. Well, there was this one semester back when I actually did care about like everything and I was like I had to do all of it because I just want to make everyone happy. Like I had to do grades to make my parents happy. I had to do hackathons to make myself happy. I had to do content to put myself out there and get a job. And that was that was a lot of pressure. But I was able to keep my 3.5 engineering GPA, keep my engineering GPA over 3.5, go to 15 hackathons and also grow to 50K on social media. Oh my god, that was like I think that was like the semester before last semester. And yeah, last semester I just kind of full sent it on doing things I wanted instead of school. But yeah, that one semester where I was focused on like all three. The way I managed my time is that I would like do time blocking. So if I had like a task of homework to do, I would set a specific time during the day to execute on it and also location. And then for hackathons, I would make sure like all my homework was done before Friday at 5:00 p.m. so I could focus on the win for the hackathon because I see some people doing a homework at hackathons. And I would know I think full focus like in the environment you're in is good. And then for content, I sort of just like started to understand short form content and how you can put like a minimal amount of effort into one piece of short form content but get like a lot of leverage in the future. So like I would just make like 3 second to 5 second reels that would just get a ton of views or like casual reels wherever I was in the day. Like yeah, there's 24 hours in the day and enough time for a one minute reel. So yeah, I would just like wherever I was I would just like you know film that Walmart reel. I think a lot of people overthink content and think that it's hard to balance, but short form content is pretty okay. I see. Okay. So, your answer to the balance is just efficiency and Yeah. Yeah. Time blocking. Yeah. Time blocking and then also prioritizing the most impactful stuff cuz it sounds like you're you weren't the type of creator for instance in the content where you were really sweating long videos or posting non-stop. you really thought about this is like the highest ROI video. Yeah. Yeah. And it's short, I'm just going to send it and then move on, do the next thing. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Oh, and then also attending office hours like for all the hardest classes like even if I wasn't doing if I didn't have specific questions, I just like sort of sit in there and like just acquire information from everyone else's questions and as well the professor just like sort of like mentioning offhand, oh, this is going to be like something important on the exam. just like being there in person or like being at hackathons in person. Environment placement is pretty big. So I I also took that with me like when I went to Silicon Valley to be there for in the startup land when building a startup. Right. Right. Right. Right. No, that makes sense. It's it's more efficient. You get more out of it. There's so many I guess second order effects of choosing what environment you put yourself in. You mentioned that you ## Standing out at a non-target school [19:27] attended a non-target school. How do you think about for people who are not attending a major bigname school? What do you need to do in order to succeed? Become a decision maker in the area. So whether it's like leadership in clubs like being decision maker there or like being a decision maker for a like a big project that a lot of people use whether it's like not a company but like a big side project or or something you do with your friends or being a decision maker for like content or having like a personal brand. Yeah. Maybe in short this is all just to say work on your agency so you can stand out. I see. Okay. So, you're basically saying if your school's not an outlier, you should be an outlier in the things that you do. And and that's that's what drew you to content. Is that right? I mostly did it for fun, too. But that was probably one of the reasons. Yeah. What do you ## Is college useful? [20:19] think's the most important takeaway from college? Or do you feel like college was this thing where you just checked in, checked out, but it really didn't matter? There are so many like CS content creators getting cancelled left and right for like their opinions on this topic. My opinion is that it works for some people. It gives them structure and discipline. I think it's useful to have a structure especially when there hasn't been that much agency built up. If you don't know what to learn, they just like provide it for you. It's also like a great way to meet people and buildings together. So like people the same age. But like the another like I guess my other view on it is for like for me personally, it definitely like dulled down my creativity and my passion for learning. Not everyone needs it, but it's good to have for a start and also very admirable or like respectable to finish and continue going on that path to big tech or whatever. I think the structure can be good when you just don't know exactly like what you want to do and also if you know what you want to do as well because it's just like a direct path into something that could be really amazing for you and be like really structured for your life. I I guess I'm curious because in your case, your agency is just like off the charts. If you didn't go to college, do you think it would have made much difference? I don't know. In high school, I was already doing like non-typical stuff. I guess I was putting music out on Spotify. I had like a music career. My parents, I don't know how they felt about that, but I got 150k streams and I was like I was like going to just keep on going to I was just going to keep on being a music artist. Like people in my high school were like, "Wait, you post music on Spotify. We've not heard about that." But um okay, college did help me find hackathons. I think I think everything that I have every experience I've done in my life up to now has still contributed to the person I am now. That makes sense. Is there something that you wish you knew before you got into college? Something I wish I knew before I got into college was how much network really did matter? I think like knowing the right opportunities, having the right people advise the college application because despite good test scores or GPA or whatever in high school like that would still get beat out by people with like research internships or good like referral letters also how much like network can propel a person in like any stage of their career. this I don't know this might be like I don't know if this is the common take or I don't know how popular this take is but yeah I think network is pretty powerful even if a person is on the same like skill scale or the people they know or the people they intentionally go out to get to know can really like change the trajectory of where they go for sure you asked how popular is this opinion yeah I don't think it's a hot take I think everything in this world is uh or not well everything is strong word But most things are decided by people. And so imagine you said you wanted a Disney internship. Imagine if you knew someone on the team and they were looking for an intern or you want to start a company and maybe you want to get into YC. You know, someone can it can help or also with privileged information too. I think that's a large part why I do this this podcast. Imagine someone knew you, they could ask you all these things, get a a leg ahead when it comes to hackathons and all those things. or we can just give it to everyone for free. So yeah, you know this this is giving that privilege information more people. Yeah, I love that mission. I'm curious about the content stuff. How'd you get into creating content? Well, I had been making music content for a while cuz like cue the the Spotify career whatever but a friend from high school told me to vlog a hackathon video and I was like that seems fun and I didn't do it for a while until like I think by the time it was like my 16th hackathon win I just gave it a try and it blew up. People love interesting videos. They also like to see big cash money won by student. So yeah, that that really helped, I guess. What was the price like from there? The prize was like, I think $3,000 first place grand prize. Wow. Yeah, that's pretty good. Especially for college. For college? Yeah, for sure. Oh, yeah. Okay, that makes sense. What's ## Personal brand [24:28] your definition of personal brand? Something that is helpful or relevant for college kids? I think it's good to have a personal brand for students no matter like what environment you're from. I think what it does is just it gives you leverage instead of sharing it to five people. Any subsequent action just gets built up by the time you like make a project and it's really cool. Instead of getting to five recruiters, it could just get to like 500 all at one point and increases like the chances of good opportunity reaching you. Yeah. Increases your luck and the opportunities. I think a lot of people get scared or they could agree and be like, "Yeah, it's a good idea. I should post that project I built on LinkedIn or whatever, but I think a lot of people are scared to put themselves out there." How did you get over that when you were first getting into it? I think like I consulted like some close friends about it first and even if they weren't creator friends just like talking to other people about ideas and having them support and like having that be something grounding and being like oh there are going to be three people who support me no matter what even if like the hundred people or something maybe think I'm cringe or don't like it and like it is those three people that matter the most. I mean, there probably are some other creators that phrase it better, but that's like what ground guided me. Being scared, but doing it despite that because you have a support network. Yeah, support network. Not every single person is going to be posting all the time. If you think about just your average college student that wants to be slightly more visible or stick out to recruiters, what's a concrete thing that you'd recommend they do? Get out of local host. um post your project on the cloud and even if you don't post it on LinkedIn or Instagram like you'll have it on GitHub, you can send it to recruiters or put yourself out there. Yeah. And it's easier to link it to GitHub as well. Right. Right. Right. Okay. So, you're take you're saying take the work, make it public. Don't just have it be some clos Okay. You're taking a gap semester in SF. I ## Dropping out to build a startup [26:25] think that's pretty unusual for college kids who working on a startup. What's the story behind how that happened? Well, the startup started on a Thursday night when I was bored and I said I wanted to start a company. So, at 9:00 p.m. I started like shipping out the MVP and at 9:00 a.m. I posted it everywhere on Instagram. The app crashed after like it got too much traffic. I I just like I was like never mind. I started the app because of all the comments on Instagram about hackathons and I was trying to make an an app that like helped people learn how to get into hackathons. But yeah, then a few months later, I met my co-founder Aiden, who helped me get the app back up, and we went to a Lake Tahoe trip to go skiing with our hackathon friends. But we ended up staying in SF, raising angel investment at a Luma event, like a hot pot, and then raising VC investment at another Luma event. So, at that point, we were like, yo, let's go forward with this. And this VC investment over hot pot. Was it a VC event or you just happened to meet someone at this hot pot thing that was like, "Hey, here's an angel check." Oh, yeah. The angel investment was at the hot pot and I just happened to meet someone who was like so intrigued by our story that he put in an angel check cuz like basically we were crashing all over in motel shipping out the product. We had a lot of traction at the time. I think 5,000 users and a lot of like when we were already making revenue from like B2B. So sort of told him about how I did all these hackathons and I'm now making hackathon app. I think he liked the product market fit or the founder market fit. Yeah. He was like, "Yo, can I put a check in?" And some other angel investor overheard in the table and then they both put checks in. And then I posted a video about getting the checks and it blew up to 500K on Instagram and there's another angel's put checks in. Wow. Okay. You just pro and two of the things you said were your network matters. Okay. Boom. That's the beginning of this, right? And then the other thing was the leverage of content. Boom. That's where the other 13 checks came from. So, um Okay. Wow. All right. Do you think you'll go back to to college? Likely won't be going back to MSU, but I could transfer to like a school in California and you're that's another thing you said is like placing yourself in the right spot. So, it sounds like California is a very big difference from where where you were. Yeah. You know, when you start a company, you probably get a lot of advice. Is there any particularly good advice that you've got? I think good advice is like to move fast and keep shipping. And another piece of good advice is don't burn out, which are like two like oppositives. Yeah, two oppositives. I think it makes sense like just keep on like consistently shipping fast, but also like when you need a break, probably take it because like it really will weigh on like other parts of your life like relationships or your own mental health and things like that. And so I think when I first received that advice, I was like, eh, like let's just keep on pushing. and that it did come invite me back later. But yeah, if that's something I could tell people about startups is that there is probably like a healthier way to go about startups like even if it's like a few hours of break or doing something Yeah. that's not company or workrelated probably probably helpful. So did you burn out and how did you know that you had burnt out? I didn't burn out but I definitely felt like pressed like I think I wasn't able I wasn't able to afford to burn out. We were definitely in a scrappy environment. Like we were in Soma and our apartment got robbed. Oh man. So we literally had to just like even if I even if I was going to burn out, I was literally pressed. Like we like emailed like hundred other clients that that very day. Like we just couldn't like Yeah, that was that was a tough time for sure. Or we got our laptop stolen. We got all my jewelry stolen and my co-founders watch. But it's okay. The next literally the next hour we got right back on to talking to clients. We landed seven YC companies working with us and 50 other companies. So we reach we reached five we reached five figures MR this month and congrats. Yeah, that sounds stressful. Even if I didn't burn out, it's still like weighed hard on other aspects of my life like mental health and relationships. Yeah. Let's say there's a kid who's going to college. They're thinking about quitting and starting their own company. Is that something you'd recommend? What do you need to see where you feel that's a good idea? I think I would not recommend dropping out immediately. I would recommend setting win conditions depending on what kind of person you are or how much you know yourself. My win conditions were like, do I have the background in the network to be able to raise investment? Do I have the skills that I would need to be able to land clients and like survive in SF on like my own money and my co-founders money? and like yeah technical skills like knowing I was with the right people to like build out this product and also like be able to market out market it out to or have distribution systems for people. So like yeah my win conditions were distribution system technical ability to execute on the project yeah confidence in like my own network for both clients investments. So clearly you're coming into this very different from someone who just fresh wants to just start a startup. you had all these preconditions that were going to really increase your chances of success knowing what you know now. Would you advise people go into computer science after, you know, going through recruiting and seeing what it's like? Ooh, it's another one of those questions where it's like it really depends on the person. But I would recommend always trying to build like always trying it out. Um trying out building something that people want or and people will use cuz there's only like an upside to it. It's either a you figure out oh I built something that I want like people want to use and I'm just gonna keep building something people want to use or you build something people want to use people use it and then the recruiters love it. So for sure like if there's one one thing to just like straightforward tell people is try and build something that people want to use. Okay cool. And then yeah ## Advice to younger self [32:32] the last thing is is this one thing that you wish you could tell yourself before you got into college? What would that one thing be? be more open, say yes to more things that bring you connection or like teachings. I think I was a lot more like I'd only hang out with a few specific people. Whenever people like it wouldn't invite me out, I would probably be like, "Oh, no. If you're a CS major that's like not touching grass or like a high schooler that's not touching grass, probably go and touch grass." That's what I'd tell myself back then is That's interesting you say that cuz I feel like you're pretty willing to say yes to things. So you've grown now and this is okay. This is Okay. Okay. You touch grass now? M That's debatable, but a little bit more. Yeah. A little bit more. Okay, cool. Awesome. Okay. Well, yeah, that's I think that's everything that I had. If you want, now's the time. If you want to plug something or maybe talk about the startup, you can feel free to talk and maybe people will go check it out. Yeah, sure. Yeah, the startup I co-founded with Aiden Goolan is sprint.dev. If you're a student or any like any age developer, this is an easier way to enter hackathons. And we're looking for the best builders. By best, I don't mean like the most technically developed or like the best ranked. I mean best as in you're willing to have creativity, execute on it, and you're willing to work with others, collaborate, and ship out things that people will love. You can go to sprint.dev, dev and there are a lot of free tools out there both for hackathons and also like company prizes. When you sign up for a hackathon, one of our hackathons will immediately provide you with like API credits and support on our discord so you can be less afraid to attend hackathons and be more happy to make friends. Sprint.dev Dev like sprint as in like fast running and dev as in dev.