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.
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 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.
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.
"[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."
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.
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.
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."
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!)
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.
[+] [-] javajosh|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] joneil|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kamakazizuru|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DontBeTaken|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] sudonim|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dobetaken|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] dools|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] pazimzadeh|13 years ago|reply
http://www.roman-empire.net/republic/caesar-index.html
[+] [-] dbh937|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lachyg|13 years ago|reply
Best of luck to you!
[+] [-] tluyben2|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshu|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] T20120621|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] dakimov|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nchuhoai|13 years ago|reply
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)
[+] [-] nchuhoai|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] patrickod|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qeorge|13 years ago|reply
Glad to see it worked out. Congrats!
[+] [-] mparlane|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raldi|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zacharyvoase|13 years ago|reply
To be honest, I wouldn't mind living on a boat for a while: http://www.blueseed.co/
[+] [-] frontier|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NickRenold|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TimJRobinson|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davidjohnstone|13 years ago|reply
I suppose the startup scene here is nothing like it is in Silicon Valley/New York/etc., but it's not non-existent either.
[+] [-] lachyg|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] petitmiam|13 years ago|reply
"“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."
[+] [-] jc123|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] talmand|13 years ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] no_more_death|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bradfeld|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kamakazizuru|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MatCarpenter|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sean12345|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dools|13 years ago|reply
Whoa O_o
[+] [-] TazeTSchnitzel|13 years ago|reply
And then spent years thinking CSS was a proprietary, evil, non-standard Microsoft technology, for some reason.
[+] [-] dutchbrit|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] lachyg|13 years ago|reply
No other visas are suitable.
[+] [-] dutchbrit|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ccontrast|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dakimov|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davemel37|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] dsolomon|13 years ago|reply