I've notice that these articles are good at generating one thing: envy. The problem with comparing oneself to the person portrayed in an essentially random article are many. But first and foremost is the utter lack of context: I'd argue that Lachy's peers at his high school would be better off comparing themselves to him. And even then I would hesitate, as luck really does count. The rest of us fall prey to a kind of assumption of universality: that his context is roughly the same as ours, and so the only difference are variables we can control. That's not true!
The one quote that I really like in the article was from his "fan" headmaster, David Gee. "I think he’s a great example of someone who has followed his passion, hasn’t let age be a barrier and hasn’t said ‘well I can’t do this because I’m 17’" That's a fantastic sentiment, and I share it. The most tragic reason to fail is because of some delusional belief that failure is tied to some innate quality like age.
Note that these two sentiments are not at odds! It's true that context can prevent your success, but we don't usually know which part of that context is to blame.
I live in Perth where this guy is from, and Wesley is one of the most expensive and most highly regarded schools around. Given the sentiment of the headmaster, I'm not surprised it's doing so well... Seeing beyond "get my school's average up" and seeing genuine talent and potential, then fostering it - that's the sort of school I'd send my one-day kids to.
I went to school with Lachy and it was really great to see the complete support of the head (Mr. Gee) behind his endeavours.
Also this isn't a once off occasion that he has helped and supported students. My brother during his final year was heavily involved in Cycling at a national level. His commitment was at school was minimum, Gee saw this and helped the best he could.
Plus he has an uncanny ability to greet every student by name. Great guy.
My kids have gone to more schools than I care to consider (I'm military): the headmaster's ability to remember kids' names is a minimum necessary sales tactic. Of, oh my, 10? headmasters, they all know my kids by name on an impromptu basis. I wouldn't make too much out of it.
Schools vary. Possibly by geographic location and size. Having 1500 or so students doesn't help.
I went to a similar school (as in, really expensive) as the OP in Melbourne. The principal was universally well regarded, and even got a Member of the Order of Australia (a couple of steps below a knighthood) for his contribution to education, but he knew very few of us students by name.
When I was at uni, I noticed a Who's Who book in the library, and flicked it open to the page that my old principal was on...
It's got a lot to do with context - his school could have a superstar pianist prodigy kid, who isn't featured in the article. It's luck also that skills in the web domain have become such a big deal today - he could just as well be really good at making remote controlled cars - it's just that there's no big bubble around RC-Carmaking at the moment - as there is around web-based businesses ;)
As a 17 year old, this makes me feel under accomplished. While I do have skills in regards to computery things, I'm hitting a block when it comes to developing backends to sites. I know HTML and CSS decently but programming languages that I'd need to learn just seem to bounce off.
On the plus side, I'm good at other things too, like photography / producing electronic music (no Madeon though. He makes me feel under accomplished as well). And I know that I shouldn't be too hard on myself to be good at things - I'm only 17. But part of me wants to be known as someone who's really good at something at a younger than normal age.
This person's story is really cool - it's too bad immigration has him caught up. Startup visas would be nifty.
Could he go to college in the US? Even though he clearly doesn't need a college education (and questionably a bit of those who go to college, but that's another debate), it could serve as a sort of foot in the door for getting settled in America. I'm probably wrong about this but also curious as to what would make this not a viable option.
I'm 30. If I can give you advice to live by: don't measure yourself by others' accomplishments. If you focus on what other people have done, you'll end up chasing your tail trying to compete with an idealized notion of 20 different people. Blaze your own trail. Find the things you do well and double down on them. You'll get to where you want to be. It may not be by 18, so don't be impatient. Just keep doing the things that make you a better person and ideally happy and you'll care less about doing X by age Y.
I'm 37. And if I can give some life advice, it would be to always start from the end. If you're building sites, start with the host. Make sure you understand how to deploy your thing. Then work backwards, and setup your build-test-debug loop with deployment as the final goal. Once you get something working, you can incrementally improve your process - but you need to start with some way to get your stuff online.
Note that you must be very careful to define the scope of your project. "Putting something on the public internet" can be achieved with a blogger blog - no programming necessary. Or a hacker news comment, for that matter. But if you want to do arbitrary things with web browsers on the web then I highly recommend getting a VPS - I like linode, but there's plenty of other options. Another interesting option would be something like Google App Engine, which takes a lot of the pain out of system administration, while still allowing you to serve arbitrary applications (and it's cheaper than linode, too).
You're so right about learning how to deploy your app. I'm using linode myself. I've been investing some time learning to use Chef to provision my servers. And Capistrano for deployment. This is a bottleneck of uncertainty for me, so I just finally decided to forget everything else and focus and figuring this thing out. By the way, if anyone has a good link to a tutorial on provisioning linodes with Chef Server, I'd love to have a link. In the meantime, I'm grinding...
Hm, that does make sense. I see what you're saying. Thanks for the advice.
I think I'll try to blaze my own trail. Though it seems kind of hard. There's lots of external pressure. Mainly having to do with college. Then again, focusing on what other people have done is sort of a way of putting pressure on myself so steering clear of that will help.
Being a teenager is weird.
"What you should not do, I think, is worry about the opinion of anyone beyond your friends. You shouldn't worry about prestige. Prestige is the opinion of the rest of the world. When you can ask the opinions of people whose judgement you respect, what does it add to consider the opinions of people you don't even know? [4]
This is easy advice to give. It's hard to follow, especially when you're young. [5] Prestige is like a powerful magnet that warps even your beliefs about what you enjoy. It causes you to work not on what you like, but what you'd like to like.
That's what leads people to try to write novels, for example. They like reading novels. They notice that people who write them win Nobel prizes. What could be more wonderful, they think, than to be a novelist? But liking the idea of being a novelist is not enough; you have to like the actual work of novel-writing if you're going to be good at it; you have to like making up elaborate lies.
Prestige is just fossilized inspiration. If you do anything well enough, you'll make it prestigious. Plenty of things we now consider prestigious were anything but at first. Jazz comes to mind—though almost any established art form would do. So just do what you like, and let prestige take care of itself.
Prestige is especially dangerous to the ambitious. If you want to make ambitious people waste their time on errands, the way to do it is to bait the hook with prestige. That's the recipe for getting people to give talks, write forewords, serve on committees, be department heads, and so on. It might be a good rule simply to avoid any prestigious task. If it didn't suck, they wouldn't have had to make it prestigious.
Similarly, if you admire two kinds of work equally, but one is more prestigious, you should probably choose the other. Your opinions about what's admirable are always going to be slightly influenced by prestige, so if the two seem equal to you, you probably have more genuine admiration for the less prestigious one."
Let me suggest that a lot of the pressures you feel in high school probably have little to do with "real life." It's amusing to think back to all the things I (and authority figures around me) worried about when I was in high school, because it's all long since irrelevant to me now. I can't really comment on college pressures because I didn't go to college until I was over 30, so I don't know what it's like to be a real college student.
My own experience suggests this: If you've learned to work hard when necessary to meet your own internal standards, and make sure you keep pushing those standards up, you'll probably wake up one day to find you're way more competent than most people in at least one area. That can be really fun (and sometimes lucrative), even if at the same time you're self-aware enough to know you're not a world-class expert that somebody would find interesting enough for an article.
It's better to learn something in your 20s or 30s then say "I should have done that when I was 12" and then never learn anything and become an ignorant 40 year old!
It pains me when people compare themselves to the upper 1% of upwardly mobile people and then lose their self-worth over the whole deal.
I'm approaching 21 in a few weeks and I've been making 6 figures since 19, I could have articles written about me but I choose to remain relatively quiet about my "success", millions of people use the things that I produce. My advice to you would be just do it, just do whatever it is you want. It's probably unique to each individual but I personally find that when someone tweets about my products or the things that I have produced it's the greatest feeling in the world, but when someone says "whoa you're 20 and you've done that?!" it's so hollow. Imagine your achievements being talked about because of your age? The internet is not discriminatory towards age, you can be 15 or 90 and achieve great things, why have them trivialized by an uncontrollable personal attribute.
As an aside I am also a poor programmer, although I can do everything I need to I am not a "rockstar" like a large portion of HNers would lead you to believe you need to be, but you don't, what matters is that you actually do stuff. Sit down, write code and maybe you'll achieve something great, but if you spend your time lamenting about how it's never going to happen then it never will.
I always stay away from the comment section on this type of blog post, but your reply has encouraged me to add my own two cents just this time. Also a throwaway. I have a very similar story to you. I'm a little bit younger than you, and I've been very financially successful for a few years from my own ventures. I like to stay entirely out of the tech blogs for privacy reasons, but at least a few HNers know of my companies.
With all due respect to those involved, these blog posts are usually just linkbait.
The young people I know running the 7 or 8 figure per annum companies like to keep the stories to themselves.
Last week, an old business friend of mine raised an 8 figure round for his already highly profitable B2B software business. At his age he can't even legally drink in the US. The tech bloggers would wet themselves with this story, but he has kept it entirely under wraps for a few reasons. The thing about it is - literally one day after he closed the round, he was back to all-day coding sessions. He always says that if you just have focus, you can have anything. And this is truly evidence to support that.
Don't worry about what bloggers write or what others are doing. Focus on building something of value, experiment, never quit, and in no time you'll be the one deciding whether or not you want the tech blogs to write about you, not the other way around.
"I could have articles written about me but I choose to remain relatively quiet about my "success", millions of people use the things that I produce."
I'm a bit older so let me give you some advice based on my experience and observation. Use your age and accomplishments to your advantage. If you can get something written about yourself and publicity do it. Don't be bashful. No reason not to toot your own horn. Doesn't matter what jealous people might think. In the end the publicity will help you more than any negative effects or what you think someone thinks (because maybe that is what you think when you read about someone).
Hm, interesting points. In particular, the part about age being hollow. Hm. And also, the poor programmer part. HN does sometimes seem to convey a message that if you aren't a good programmer, your code won't succeed in what you make, if that makes sense.
Lamenting isn't good, true. It's just so hard to be motivated sometimes.
Also, I like your name. I have an account on HN but my usual passwords aren't working on it. So this name it was.
"[Julius] Caesar served in 63 BC as a quaestor in Spain, where in Cadiz he is said to have broken down and wept in front of a statue of Alexander the Great, realizing that where Alexander had conquered most of the known world at thirty, Caesar at that age was merely seen as a dandy who had squandered his wife's fortunes as well as his own."
It's such a cliche but worth repeating: there will always be someone more X than you are (rich, skilled, fast at running 100m, skilled at coding, effective at business) whatever it is. If you're attempting to derive your sense of happiness through relative goal posts like that then you'll never stop - you won't ever get to a point at which you have an "absolute" sense of success. The good news is you can get that sense of absolute success now: just focus on what you have and practice being happy (which is both a choice and a skill).
Secondly: don't think about what you can do out of the context of how that helps someone else.
"I can code"
"I can make music"
"I can ride a horse backwards"
All these are fantastic skills - what problems do they solve? You'll notice in each of the cases referenced in the original post, he is picking a very specific problem with a well defined revenue model. These are everywhere. Practice looking for them, and practice releasing anything (there are so many free services out there now you barely even need a backend for your site in order to make money - for example you could create a static site to generate affiliate revenue without a backend, then pay someone to build the backend once you have cashflow).
At any rate, don't focus on what you have to offer, focus on what other people need and eventually you'll see something where you think "you know I can do that - I could solve that problem" then you do it - and it might work or it might not, but you just keep trying.
Also just some context: I'm 31, I was "the kid to started the lemonade stand" etc. etc. I never had any business success, studied engineering at 21, got trapped in technology and emerged about 2 years ago and have been reconnecting with my business/sales self ever since. I currently gross about $200k per year but have a team of 2 people and a wife and child to feed so whilst we're subsisting we're not rich. We are growing, and with each year I find that my focus on solving problems and keeping my clients' and customers' needs at the front of my mind at all times, and not getting wrapped up/absorbed in the technology, not only does the business grow but that rate of growth increases as well.
I'm thirteen, and this person's story has made me feel the need to start a company by the time I turn fourteen, just to match this kid. Also, udacity.com has a great course on backends of webapps (CS263) that I just finished, and it helps a lot!
Go to flippa.com and check out what kind of sites are working; he probably sold his sites mentioned in the article there. In the world of the not venture capital sites, Flippa is a very good way to make your first $100k+. I know plenty of 17-20 year olds who made well over $100k there in a relatively short timespan. If you check there you'll see that backends don't mean so much :) In fact, by some kind of evil universe rule; the sites for sale which mention 'advanced backend' sell for the smallest amounts or not at all. Most sites are just some of Wordpress with a bunch of (commercial) plugins and some bad hacking.
There are plenty of people who complement your skillset perfect. I know--I'm one of them, and there are many others like me who are much better at the backend work than the frontend work. If you do have an idea, finding a partner might help it take off.
You're already 17 and you haven't done at least 7 figure startup yet? Nowadays most people start their business at the age of about 10 and make 8 figures. You should step up.
I'd love to connect with people like lachyg or others who are related to the struggle of finding ways to pursue their dreams in the US without having a college degree.
Im currently enrolled an in US institution and working on CPT, but there is nothing I'd love to do more than quit school in the fall to work full-time, however as the article notes, any ordinary visa does not apply to non-degree holders. After consultation with our lawyers, a marriage or mentioned O1 visa are the only option.
I know several people in a similar situation who went through the O1 route, however they all say its a ridiculously hard process and requires extensive documentation of the "national and international acclaim". Admittance to YC/TS helps a lot (which we are trying right now)
O1s are not impossible but you're right; they require a lot of time and are certainly not trivial to acquire. You'll spend a lot of time documenting things in preparation for your petition.
I can sympathise with the visa situation. I'm 19 and don't have a degree, and I've been in exactly the same situation—you go through the whole interview process and then suddenly the company's lawyers tell them there's no way you can get a visa, and weeks of time have been wasted for both parties. It would be funny if it weren't so tragic.
I want to know how he was able to so easily become an affiliate on Amazon...? (As a fellow Australian) I tried a few years ago and Amazon wouldn't even allow me to purchase advertising (let alone join the affiliate program or sell) without having US tax numbers, bank accounts, etc.. I have an Australian pty ltd company and had to go through a third parties to get my products listed on there.
Yes.. this is an Amazon affiliate program, you will require a US credit card, US bank account and US postal address to join this program. ie. for when they pay you your commissions it needs to be reported.
If you are not from the US, these things are not easy to obtain.
And last I checked they wouldn't even allow me to buy Amazon PPC advertising without these things either!
Usually debit card goes everywhere where credit one is needed. Debit card, US bank acct and a US postal address are easily obtainable for approximately $800-1500 one time payment (couch class ticket to US and tourist visa fee). I walked into the bank (R.I.P Washington Mutual) on Castro st. in MV, CA and left it half an hour later with the bank account. The debit card followed in the mail a week later. I had a address of my friend, but I could have used a PO box. Now you can buy US postal address online and have all spa^H^H^H mail forwarded to your email address scanned.
I then repeated this process in 2008 to incorporate, opened the business account and raised money (and put them on the account).
Now I'm living in the US, on a work visa, having no degree.
Guys, US is a fantastic country for anyone who actually _wants_ something. Put some creativity here and there and it works flawlessly. I laugh when I talk to US citizens (or read them online) who go on endless whining on how police state this country has become, how much burden you have to put up with to open the business, how the school system is in the toilet, etc, etc. They just don't know what they're talking about. Any US system could be ridiculed and laughed upon, and sometimes it deserves it. But it's fucking efficient.
Go open the debit card, bank account, business, whatever in, lets say France (I love this country, I've been there like 30 times and it's never enough). If you succeed you can come back to the US and apply for National Interest Waiver for being a person with extraordinary abilities in science AND arts AND business. Haha.
Interesting.. 26 hrs flying time just to open a bank account is a little extreme.. but next time I am there on vacation I'll definitely be calling into a bank and giving this a go!
I'm an Australian and joined it in 2008 and had no problem joining (didn't even have a company at the time just registered in my own name). Maybe they changed their rules in the past few years.
Currently I don't have an idea I'd REALLY love to work on. Something I'm passionate, knowledgeable and enthusiastic about. So until then, keep gaining skills.
I was going to ask the exact same thing: Why would you want to work for another company, given that you seem to have the knack for doing your own things? Experience?
Hey Lachy, great to hear your story. I'm an ex-Perth guy (CCGS '07) who just moved to SF a few months ago to work at Facebook. Ping me (email in profile) if you want to have a chat, would love to help out if I can.
I was wondering this too. It's a shame to lose talent.
"“Australia has nothing like San Francisco, and Silicon Valley. The tech culture there is insane. The demand for skilled workers is incredible. The creativity and innovation is incredible. It's infectious,” he says."
The competition might also be more fierce in the US and you don't need to be there to be successful. Maybe the lack competition could work in your favour?
Are there any other details available on this young man's actual tech-related talents? The article only really presents him as good at coming up with business ideas and successfully executing them. Why is he a hot property for the tech industry exactly? The only tech skills I see mentioned are HTML and CSS. It would seem to me several different industries might be interested in chatting with him since he appears to be an idea guy worth pursuing.
Is there no tech industry in Australia to court him or that he's interested in? Why does he have to get a visa to move to the US, if the big companies want him why not let him work from Australia? I guess maybe he sees value for him to move there, I get that though.
I'm not discounting his abilities since starting several profitable companies to be sold later is rather impressive, regardless of his age. I'm just interested in what skill sets he has that the tech industry appears to desire so much. Is it because he's a self-starter that gets things done or some other reason the article doesn't state?
yet another loss for the US due to the lack of a startup visa. I'd be curious to see as study that looked at all the startups that tried to make it to the US but failed and ended up being succesful somewhere else - as a result of which the US missed out on the revenues they would've generated. (I know this guy isn't trying to move a startup there - but so far he seems like a pretty strong candidate for being someone to start a potentially succesful one - reminds be a bit of the stripe guys actually!)
If you do move here, stay in San Francisco / Berkeley and not San Jose / Palo Alto. It's better for single people in the SF area vs the San Jose area, where engineers move to raise their families in suburbia. You also wont need a car in SF, which at your young age can help you avoid higher insurance rates or needing to get a licence. Car rental companies will charge you an extra $25/day for being under 25, but they'll be more willing to give you free car upgrades because of the $25/day charge.
No idea what parent poster said (comment deleted), but if you want to work in the US, you can still try for an H1B visa. Your work experience and achievements can be used to demonstrate specialization in the field and serve as the equivalent of a college Bachelors degree. The quota was exhausted for this year, but assuming you are Australian you can shoot for an E3.
Lachy is Australian though, and could almost qualify for the E3, which is a far better visa (I'm still on it seven years on) though it still needs employer sponsorship and some level of university education, which makes it less than suitable for his case.
The dynamics of the H1B run-out will be interesting for Australian tech workers if it means US companies can only hire Canadians (TN) and Australians (E3) for the next 16 months.
The substitute ratio for work experience to college years for H1-B is 3:1. It requires a 4 year degree, so you need 12 years to make the case for this.
But, the reason we are reading about this is likely so he can use it on an O1 application. He's seeded a few of these same stories.
Good luck, Lachy! You're a great guy at your 17, and I'm just an incapable trashbag at my 28 being a skilled experienced software engineer, but haven't done a single startup yet because I cannot figure out how to come up with an idea. You're so much better than me, but I'm not jealous, just keep it up, and you'll become a new Zuckerberg in a few years.
Flaw 1: You imply that no illegal immigrants are talented, or contribute to U.S. society.
Flaw 2: Your argument presupposes that providing legal status, financial aid and work permits to illegal immigrants will prevent talented people from wanting to work in the U.S.
Flaw 3: Providing work permits, financial aid and legal status to illegal immigrants is done for many reasons, and your argument presupposes that it's a bad thing. You need to demonstrate that this is the case before your argument can have any weight.
Flaw 1: I didn't say no illegal immigrants are talented. Let's say odds for an illegal immigrant to be talented is 50/50, while we know skilled workers like this kid is 100% talented (track record proven so far) -- so why makes it easy for the former group but not the latter?
Flaw 2: If there are slots available, they should be allocated to talented individuals. Evidence has shown many entrepreneurs and college graduates (legitimately) have gone back to their countries because of inability to obtain visas here.
Flaw 3: It's a bad thing. If you compare it to how tough it is for a legal, skilled worker to come here. Besides, I personally know countless people are planning to send their kids here illegally before 15 to benefit from this new regulation.
But that's the whole new debate. My only point here is: Why not make it easier for talented individuals instead of illegal immigrants?
For flaw 1 and 2, show me the evidence backing your claim. For flaw 3, your point doesn't respond to my point, in that there are a whole bunch more reasons why Obama allowed through illegal immigrants.
Your reasoning isn't much better than "those skilled immigrants are taking our jobs"
The one quote that I really like in the article was from his "fan" headmaster, David Gee. "I think he’s a great example of someone who has followed his passion, hasn’t let age be a barrier and hasn’t said ‘well I can’t do this because I’m 17’" That's a fantastic sentiment, and I share it. The most tragic reason to fail is because of some delusional belief that failure is tied to some innate quality like age.
Note that these two sentiments are not at odds! It's true that context can prevent your success, but we don't usually know which part of that context is to blame.