How to build a knowledge machine | #DailyBlink79
I was learning about the habits of some of the first-time founders, Drew Houston, the founder of Dropbox has something unique to share about learning.
For Houston, learning new things became an addiction — one he actually systematized.
As per him “I was living in Boston, working for a startup during the summer, living in my fraternity house. But every weekend, I would take this folding chair up to the roof with all these books I got on Amazon. I would just sit there and read all of them. I would spend the whole weekend just reading, reading, reading.”
On discovering new books:
His process wasn’t complicated, but he did keep a list of target topics in his head. “I’d be like, alright, I don’t know anything about sales. So I would search for sales on Amazon, get the three top-rated books and just go at it. I did that for marketing, finance, product, engineering. If there was one thing that was really important for me, that was it.”
The never-ending conveyor belt of challenges.
If you’ve never started a company or worked at a smaller company, you’ll run into a vertical learning curve, Houston says. There’s no way to know everything you need to from the start, so you need to a) gain as much knowledge as you can as fast as you can, and b) plan ahead to learn what you’ll need months down the line. You have to be prepared for a never-ending conveyor belt of challenges.
“You have to adopt a mindset that says, ‘Okay, in three months, I’ll need to know all this stuff, and then in six months there’s going to be a whole other set of things to know — again in a year, in five years.’ The tools will change, the knowledge will change, the worries will change.”
You have to get good at preparing yourself to understand what’s on the horizon.
Doing things you ain’t even ready for
This is especially important for the skills and habits that you can’t internalize overnight. “You’re not going to become a great manager overnight. You’re not going to become a great public speaker or figure out how to raise money,” he says. “These are the things you want to start the clock on as early as possible.”
As a founder, this goes for both you and your employees. This can be a huge advantage when it comes to recruiting the best talent, too. One young engineer comes to mind for Houston, who was swayed by the opportunity to be thrown into the deep end right away.
“We had this enormous infrastructure project where we were spending millions of dollars and he was in charge of it — and he was like 20 at the time. He just wouldn’t have gotten that opportunity if he had been employee 20,000 at Google or something,” he says. “This engineer even said to him at some point, ‘Dropbox let me do things that I wasn’t ready for.’”
The difference in working with Startups vs Company
This chance, to work on real things and move the needle at a company serving millions, is rare and extremely valuable. “I look at the interns we have at Dropbox, and they’re shipping real stuff every day,” Houston says. “In contrast, I had a friend who worked at Microsoft for a summer, and he spent the entire time working on the back button on Internet Explorer.”
The upshot: Making learning central to your company’s culture pays serious dividends.
Most of us know about this popular slogan from code.org:
Learn computer science, Change the world.
Time has passed, yet we are still seeing STEM education stats like by 2018, 2.4 million STEM jobs will go unfilled. And others like 71% of all new jobs in STEM are in computing, but only 8% of STEM graduates are in Computer Science. People are still wondering if coding is hard to learn.
but, why kids should learn to code because:
Coders are in high demand
Coding provides a competitive advantage
Coding knowledge allows students to better understand the world
Coding is fun and satisfying
Coding improves creativity
Coding improves problem-solving
Coding improves persistence
Coding improves collaboration
Coding improves communication
Do we have enough initiatives in India?
So, today, I came across a YC backed startup in India that is putting in efforts to teach coding to the kids.
StayQrious is a Bangalore based ed-tech company that focusses on essential 21st-century skills through live online coding classes. Started by two of the most loved teacher in the country:
Aanand Srinivas (Ex-Content Head Khan Academy, Ex-Content Head BYJU’S)
Avinash Anand (Ex Content Head @ BYJUS)
StayQrious helps kids in India learn through online group classes, starting with coding. They focus on essential 21st-century skills such as coding, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity through small virtual classrooms with discussions, group activities, videos, and more.
Currently, they are teaching in two ways:
- Through Weekly Classes
- Summer Bootcamps
