How I Bootstrapped a Career in Tech And How You Can Too

I never went to university and I'm actually ashamed of it by the way.

Not because I’m anti school or because I think I’m special. Looking back I deeply wish I had a degree in computer science and machine learning. I am less equipped without the knowledge I could have had before innovating. At the time, I was living on my own at 17, and at that point you don’t really get to “figure it out slowly.” You pick something, you commit, and you start stacking days because nobody cares what your long term plan is more than you do. Nor do your bills care.

Without knowing it, I already had some sort of head start.

When I was 11, I started a Minecraft YouTube channel. At the time it felt like a game. I mean it was a game. But it also forced me to learn things most people don’t learn until much later. How to get attention. How to tell a story. How to be consistent even when nobody cares (I got laughed at for years at school, and made fun of for my cringy gaming content). You learn how to deal with hate comments. How to ship on a schedule. How to improve one tiny thing every week.

I learned the business of the internet in a unique way. Thumbnails, hooks, editing, community, momentum, what makes someone click, what makes someone come back. Also in a time before short form content algorithms, it was much harder to grab people attention. All that stuff sounds super “marketing-y” but it’s also part of your product. It’s your user's behavior. It’s psychology. It’s distribution. It’s what founders spend years trying to understand once they finally ship something useful and realize no one is coming to use it. What I realize in 2026 is that distribution is your product more than your product is your product.

I quit content and a community of 180,000 people in 2018. I remember thinking, okay, if I can build something people choose to watch, I can probably build something people choose to use. Turns out, it wasn't that simple. If I "made it" already, I'm not sure I'd be even writing this article in the first place. Turns out I'm still here trying to make it lmao. I miss making YouTube videos a lot. Times were so much simpler. But looking back, I wouldn't have learned everything I did from working for fast-pace tech startups that raise money and that fail over and over again. Anyways, no pitty party.

So I started doing what I always did. I built things. I found people who needed help, and I delivered. I said yes a lot. Sometimes too much. I took projects that scared me. Projects I lost money on. I learned by getting punched in the face by reality, then going back and fixing it for the next time around.

The truth is, tech doesn’t care about your education the way people think it does. It cares if you can produce. Nobody cares about titles. Can you execute? Can you communicate effectively? Can you learn fast? Can you take ownership without being told what to do? That’s mainly the job. Sometimes it feels like more of a research and comms role more that it feels like an actual tech job (if you're not a genius engineer of course).

And if you’re reading this hoping for a secret hack, there is none. Sorry to break it to you. I have zero value to provide you other than this lil story. I'm not special at all. Passion for innovation is nice to have. But day dreaming is not going to do shit for you.

When you don’t have a traditional path, you don’t get the structure for free. You need a sort of autistic obsession.

There were plenty of moments where I felt behind. I still do every single day. I have friends that made millions in front of my eyes at 18-20, whilst I was still concerned about paying rent. Like everyone else in my entrepreneur network had the map and I was guessing the entire time. The upside of being self taught is you become dangerous in a different way that others. You learn how to learn. You get comfortable being bad at something, then getting better fast. You stop protecting your ego. You stop waiting for permission. "Fake it till you make it" is more real that you think.

If you’re on a non-traditional path too, here’s what I’d tell you:

Start building. Anything. Like literally anything. Beez wax. Protein muffins. Homemade shampoo.
The product doesn't matter at all.
Just ship it something you like.
Show people.
Get feedback.
Repeat until you scare yourself with how far you’ve gone.

That’s all, I don't have anything else to say on the topic.

Oh and I made the visual for this post using Midjourney.