I'm a delusional 16 yrs old high schooler who wants to build a tech-startup in the future.
Well, you heard that right.
I'm a current high school junior who discovered a passion for both tech and entrepreneurship over the summer. I just love how entrepreneurship involves risk-taking and the fact that I get to develop a product or a service that can improve the lives of thousands of people. Tech is just fascinating, and I developed an interest in it through AI.
I really want to build things on my own, I mean, I know there is stuff like vibe coding which can be good, but I do feel like completing a project on your own can be meaningful, especially with users, you know that your effort is paying off, where users are being benefited of.
I want to build a meaningful project to start my journey in a start-up before I graduate. So I have roughly a year and a half (maybe a year) to complete a project.
The thing is... I don't know how to code, so I am trying to learn while building. I want to establish meaningful relationships and step outside the box for once, so I'm trying to build in public and document my journey either every day or every week (every week, I suppose) in platforms such as Producthunt, X, or even Reddit (I posted something like this on Reddit and I got downvoted a lot so maybe a no).
Follow me through this journey as I try to build and scale, and get some users in the next 365 days.
I have some rules too in this challenge:
No quitting
Post something to document; weekly progress checks
By the end of the challenge, I must have a tangible output (or would already have).
Any advice or tips would be appreciated, and this community is so lovely and which inspired me to join it today.
9/28/2025.
Replies
@ryan_ahn1 Hey Ryan! 👋 First off, I love your energy and ambition, it’s exactly the mindset that turns ideas into real products. A few tips from someone who’s seen early-stage journeys:
1️⃣ Start small, ship fast – Don’t wait to build the perfect product. Even a simple MVP that solves a tiny problem can teach you more than months of learning alone.
2️⃣ Learn by doing – You don’t need to master coding before starting. Build simple prototypes, experiment with no-code tools, and learn coding along the way.
3️⃣ Document authentically – Weekly updates on your progress, lessons learned, and failures are gold. It’s less about attention and more about creating a record of growth.
4️⃣ Engage early – Share your journey with peers, mentors, or online communities (like Product Hunt, X, or indie hack forums). Feedback is invaluable.
5️⃣ Focus on users, not perfection – Even one person benefiting from your project is a success. Learn, iterate, and scale from there.
You’ve got a year+, that’s enough to create something meaningful if you stay consistent. Excited to follow your journey! 🚀
Creatium
My thoughts:
(1) You're not delusional! You've got incredible clarity as a 16-year old. Gosh, when I was 16, I wasn't thinking much of anything in regards to career.... was just thinking about hanging out with my friends and how I could get good grades.
(2) A career happens when your natural talents (and interests/inclinations!) are powered by hard work -- and magic happens when your well-honed skills are used to solve problems the world needs.
(3) What's cool about tech is that sometimes the world doesn't quite know what they need until you invent it. But at the core of anything you do, you do need to be solving a problem.
For example, not to toot my own horn, but our product Creatium (which launches today, show us some love if you will, nudge nudg) only came into existence because we saw that online learning was terrible, and frankly sucked. The idea gained momentum when we found out that less than 90% of online courses are finished—on some of the most popular platforms yet. (Udemy, Coursera, Khan Academy... all of them have dismal completion rates, because online learning is terrible.)
We saw an opportunity to fixing a real problem. And thought: what if we made it easier for creators to make lessons that were interactive ... and that the interactivity was more than a lame multiple choice question?
So think about it this way -- what problems do you see in the world that need to be solved? Sometimes they're not obvious. And sometimes the sneakiest problems are only discovered after you've been in a field for a little bit... and you know what works and what doesn't.
So to summarize: (1) You're not delusional (2) Focus on what you're good at and hone those skills (3) Then... find those problems that your talents have the ability to solve.
Whoa, I didn't really mean to write this much! Hopefully it wasnt overwhelming. Good luck @ryan_ahn1