As a freshman, I was interning in cybersecurity. My bosses were ex Citadel quantitative finance, one of the most elite jobs in the industry. And they left to build a startup.
Watching them leave one of the top roles in the field made me question being a software engineer for the rest of my career; suddenly, it didn't look as appealing. But building something from scratch? That looked fulfilling.
I started studying AI automation, got good at it quickly, and then stumbled onto a file with 150,000 leads. I built a Google Maps scraper to find their emails, then an automated email bot to reach out at scale.
That closed my first client and launched my automation business.
Sometimes all it takes is watching the right person make the right move.