If You Want To Build A Big Company One Day, Don’t Waste Your 20s.

Use college to get the partying out of your system and spend your 20s working hard, really hard.

I often talk to people who want to get into the entreprenurship game in their 30s or late 20’s and have serious trouble.

Although far from impossible, certain (or many compounded) decisions they took while in college/early 20s are either hindering them or generating serious blocks to them suceeding. Here is a list of the things that I commonly have encountered that fall in to that category and that have the most profound negative effects on their ability to start a startup:

1. They did not learn any hard skills necessary to suceed as an entrepreneur and wasted their time taking useless majors.
2. They never met anyone in college who later could help them in any aspect of building a business. (ie: They hung out with losers).

3. They significantly increased their expenses early in life, didn’t save, and now can’t afford to begin their company.

Here is the advice that they would have given their younger selves, if they could go back in time:

• Learn real hard skills. This doesn’t mean you have to be a Computer Science major. But college offers a great opportunity to learn the basics upon which you can build later in life. Being a programmer, learning how to copywrite, being strong in sales, and knowing the ins and outs of the financial world gives you the ability to work in any industry and start a company in any industry. You don’t have to be the best developer, and you don’t have to write code your entire life if you don’t want to — but knowing how to code, or the basis hard skills needed to crush it today gives you the proverbial golden ticket to the Willy Wonka factory of the startup unicorn industry. The number one barrier to starting a startup is not knowing any hard skills needed to crush it.
• Meet people with real skills. College gives students the opportunity to show their ability across a wide range of useful skills. There are designers, programmers, sales people, scientists, etc., all around you. Take the opportunity to make friends with people who have different skills than your own. It’s very likely that these people could become your cofounders or early employees one day.

Ask yourself, are any of the people that you’re hanging out with that are even remotely capable of making it into a $100M+ net worth list one day? If the answer is no, you’re on the wrong track.

• Take responsibility. College is a great opportunity to learn more about how you operate within a group setting. Join a the leadership group of a club where you are forced to execute on a real world task (organize a conference, create a publication, do volunteer work, play on a sports team, etc.) Learn what you are good and bad at when it comes to working with others.

Be ready to hit the ground running. In American culture today it’s seen as acceptable to use your 20s to find yourself. I firmly disagree with this idea.

Your 20s are your most valuable working years: You often have very few obligations (no family), a very low burn rate (you’re used to living in a dorm), and you are still young enough to meet new people and learn new skills. Use college to to get the partying out of your system and spend your 20s working hard.

• Be your own career counselor. Career counseling at most universities is really really bad. Many students literally have no idea what they want to do when they graduate from college. Instead of putting all your raw effort into your coursework and grades, use some of your time at school to figure out what you want to do when you graduate. You can always change your mind, but having a plan is better than no plan.

It’s okay to ignore your parents. Many folks choose to pursue a certain career because of parental pressure and poor career counseling. The number of doctors and lawyers I know who really don’t love their jobs or their lives is astounding. It’s okay for you to make a career choice on your own — even if your parents are paying for college.

• Be careful with student debt. More and more, student debt is forcing people away from startups and into big companies. Once you make that decision, it is easy to spin up additional expenses (buying a car, renting a nice apartment, etc) and price yourself out of starting a company. Making a choice of a college is hard, but there are many expensive private schools that don’t offer good financial aid. They promise that the logo on your resume will be valuable — but in the end, these schools are probably worth avoiding. The best private schools are generous with financial aid.

If only college dean had given this advice to me during freshman year, instead of whatever “brightcollegeyears” stuff I had to endure. It’s all bullshit, and I’m glad I didn’t listen.

Good luck out there, and remember that if you are between the ages of 22 and 32 you are in your best startup years. Every year you are not doing a startup you are losing 10% of this prime time.

After all, the same people that scratched their heads when I spent hours every night in the library, are the ones who blow up my phone to work with me today.

Strength and Honor,

Prady Tewarie
CEO & Founder
GetAZOTH.com
@seekingazoth

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This Newsletter is brought to you by AZOTH, a productivity-driven nootropic supplement company dedicated to enhancing human productivity, optimizing peak mental performance, and pushing the boundaries of human potential. Find out what sparked it all here.

Advice To 20-Year Olds Trying To Crush it in their 30s: Don’t Listen to Conventional Advice — It’s… was originally published in AZOTH on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.