Looking outside the “box”
High school is a bit like a box that you live in. You’re trapped inside, doing the music, the sports, the academics that are in the box. But there’s a world outside that box. And moreover, you have all the power to live outside that box.
At the tail end of my senior year of high school, I decided to live outside the box.
I was interested in entrepreneurship, venture capital, and business, so I went to a youth business conference at a local high school (It’s called The Harker School, maybe you’ve heard of it).
I had recently read “Ready Player One,” a novel about a virtual reality metaverse. At the conference, they had an HTC Vive. I played Fruit Ninja VR. This was my first ever experience with VR. I was blown away.
At the same conference, I met Adam Draper, who was running the “Startups 101” workshop. Adam was a venture capitalist who ran an early-stage accelerator for virtual reality and blockchain startups. The lunch had the mentors sit with the kids, so I asked Adam all sorts of questions about VR and VC. After lunch, I went to his workshop. Again.
The closing speaker at the conference was Tiffany Zhong. She was one of Forbes’ Most Influential Teens or something, but I only remember one thing she said. “Just reach out.”
I looked up Adam’s fund, Boost VC, on Google. Their website was down. So rationally, I said, “I’m going to make Boost VC a new website.” I had never made a website before.
I spent 5 hours learning HTML and CSS. Just enough to spit this out.
(those buttons are not actually text with cool CSS effects, I used a website called “text to image” and then used GIMP — free Photoshop — to make the orange reflections. Hacky solutions always look clean from the front.)
Reaching out
I sent Adam an email. This is that exact email:
Dear Mr. Adam Draper,
This is Khoi Le. I talked to you yesterday during lunch at BEcon at Harker. I loved the fantastic workshops about Modular Peer Teaching, and learned so much!
I am contacting you about an internship for this summer. Talking to you and researching VR has cemented my passion for pursuing VR, entrepreneurship, or venture capital. I would love the opportunity to gain experience in all three at once.
This is how I could add value at boostVC:
- I have a direct link to the kids / teens who will be using VR and Bitcoin in the next 10 years, so I understand what they want, and I can conduct market research for you.
- I am resourceful, take initiative, and work hard. As a testament to these traits, I took your advice about engineering and set out to build you a website. I tried to visit your website at www.boost.vc, but there was an error. I decided create a website for boostVC. It’s pretty basic, since I whipped it up quickly. Please tell me what you think! (It isn’t optimized for mobile yet, so use a laptop)
Again, thank you so much for the awesome workshops and I hope you consider offering me an internship.
Thank you so much,
Khoi Le
What the email says doesn’t really matter. The quality of the website doesn’t really matter. What mattered was that I offered value before I was asked in a realm they needed help with. Turns out, they were just switching to Squarespace and didn’t need a web developer. But they needed someone who would be able to take initiative and learn on the job. I researched more about the company, and I saw that they had a small team of three, invested in a niche technology, and hadn’t tweeted anything in 4 months. I offered manual labor, market research with the young generation, and social media management. I asked Adam what type of value Boost VC needed.
After that, Adam graciously tasked me with a project, a trial to see if I would be able to contribute to the company in a space that Boost needed. I was supposed to create a social media campaign plan for the company, which I did. (Before this, I had only used Twitter, superficially, and I had never touched Facebook or Reddit). I did an enormous amount of research about social media management (turns out it is a MASSIVE industry), and put together a slide deck for Adam.
Again. Before I even got the job, I was providing value. After weeks of going back and forth with Adam (and waiting and pestering — you should always pester), he finally called me in for an interview. My resume consisted of my experience at a hackathon, playing water polo, and tutoring. But in my interview, I made sure to emphasize that I was a quick learner and that I would be willing to fill in for free. Anywhere they needed me, I would be able to quickly learn and fill in.
By identifying the needs of the company, and aligning what little skills I had to match those needs, I was able to get my first internship! A lot of kids usually do very little research about what a company needs, and how they can contribute to those needs. Do that, and provide value before being asked, and you’ll increase your chances.
So go live outside the box.
(Brayton, Me, Adam, and Maddie)
