This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Ace Yip He Hua, an 18-year-old founder and final year student at a high school in Singapore. The following has been edited for length and clarity. Business Insider has verified her academic history.
I started building my career tech startup in March, and we launched in July with the initial prototype.
The product was to help with recruitment, which is a big problem in Singapore, the US, and China, where the workforce is saturated. Fresh graduates have difficulties trying to get placements into internships or jobs.
I experienced that because I was looking for a law internship. Sometimes, you have to apply to hundreds of firms just to get one spot.
Juggling school has been crazy, but compartmentalizing helps
I spend long hours in high school. It’s difficult to balance my business commitments because I work with an international team. We have 10 members on the team, and three of them are interns.
Some are based in New York and San Francisco, and I’m calling collaborators, partners, and investors. Sometimes, they’ll ask for a call early in the morning, and I’m supposed to be in a lecture at school.
I make it work by essentially compartmentalizing the two sides. When I’m in school, I focus purely on that unless there are situations where I need to take a call. When I’m working on the startup, I’m 100% thinking about that.
On an ordinary school day, I’ve got to be up by about 6 a.m. The commute to school is about an hour, and I usually spend that hour clearing work communications.
I go to school until 3 or 4 p.m. But every single lunch break of the past year, I’ve spent it working. After I’m home, I’m entirely focused on startup work. I’ll study a bit at night, then I end up sleeping at about 2 or 3 a.m.
I didn’t want to wait on entrepreneurship
I sort of jumped straight into the startup space. It was scary.
I went to my first event, Singapore Tech Week, last year. It taught me that if I could hold my own and be confident in a solid idea, merit speaks louder than any labels like my age, gender, or how much experience I have.
With the AI wave, we’re seeing a lot of younger people make breaks in startup and entrepreneurship.
Many of them are college founders, but I didn’t want to wait. At least in tech, it’s a very open space, more so than traditional sectors like finance, where you have to get your college education.
I’m fortunate to be at the age where I can risk practically everything.
I’m not in a corporate job where I have to quit to start working on a startup, or have a spouse.
I know my age is a large focus point. Whenever I speak to people, they’ll say, “Oh, you look really young.”
You can see the way they speak to you, that they hold certain prejudices. Maybe they see me as someone who’s just young and chasing a hype cycle, versus being someone who seriously wants to do this.
I didn’t want to go about trying to fit in with people who had decades of corporate experience. I was leveraging what unique features I had, what could be things I was quick at learning, being up to date with the latest AI advances, and being able to build fast and scrappy.
Along the way, people noticed, and they could appreciate that I was so bold despite being younger.
It also forced me to learn really quickly on the job because I’ve never studied business or computer science, but I’m surrounded by peers and founders who are more knowledgeable.
I’m 100% going to university
It’s common practice for young founders to drop out or skip university.
There’s this term: NGMI, which means “not going to make it.” They’re always like, “If you don’t drop out, you’re NGMI.” That means you’re not fully committed, you’re not going all in, you’re not taking big risks.
I dislike the common narrative that to be a successful founder, you must look like this, move to San Francisco, or drop out.
What I’m building is for college students and fresh grads, and what better place to be than on campus? I am surrounded by my ideal customer profile.
There is so much room for me to grow personally, not just professionally, and college is a place that will challenge me.
Likewise, working under a structured, larger organization will give me product and management insights that I can bring to my own startup.
I am going to take a gap year before college because I know that it’s important to move at a high speed at the start. After that, I will still go to university.
I applied to universities in the UK to study law. My rationale for pursuing a law degree is less about the content knowledge and more about the skill sets that it imparts and the thinking that it trains.
I’m also applying to universities in the US with a pre-law major and a second major in data science. I’m leaning toward the US programs for their flexibility and openness, as well as the existing startup network.
Do you have a story to share about being a young AI founder? Contact this reporter at [email protected] or Signal at @cmlee.81.
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