Building a career using the internet — King Sidharth's speech at PSG College Tech, Coimbatore

Anamorphic by @kingsidharth

While each one of us is born naturally curious, the education system & our mental-models, that our society runs on, train it out of us. Owning and honing this curiosity can change our lives — especially in the age of the internet.

With the internet, education yourself and building a career & wealth has become the easiest it has ever been. You can pick-up any soft-skill, learn a language, learn to design, build an app, learn programing, find jobs and freelance gigs across the world, collaborate with folks, or even network and build a brand. We can either use the internet to stalk our crushes and ex-s or use to our advantage.

My journey with curiosity & internet led me to try out my hands at the business starting at the age of 12, and then being a part of Indian startup ecosystem with Instamojo (2012-2019) and now across the world with Headout. Working startups & building industry-changing products is my calling.

Startups create wealth — and wealth is better than selling time to get money. However, wealth & success both are subjective — for some, it can be owning shares, IPs, or degrees, for others, it can be a stable relationship, living a healthy & natural life. So how do you find and define your criteria of success? How do you #findyourpassion?

The first step is to expose yourself to various ideas until you start getting interested in something. You can use the internet to do this — Wikipedia & YouTube is your friend here. (both free!)

The second step is to try and invest effort into your interest and gain some skill & experience — you can find tutorials & people online to help you with this.

Once we start putting effort and see the results — that's when half the "interest" drop from viable options. Some that stick will turn into a passion as you continue to invest focus & time in it. In the world where most mundane jobs will be taken over by AI, just a college degree won't be enough.

More and more startups & jobs will revolve around multi-disciplinary people. Don't wait for a sign form the universe — skills & learnings compound over time — startup today.

--- Speech by King Sidharth at PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore on 22 Feb 2020.

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Sidharth has been part of several startups in the Indian startup ecosystem — from Cleartax & Instamojo to now at Headout solving product & design problems. He's given talks at 40+ colleges and events talking about future careers, startups, self-learning, and design, including at two TEDx events. Invite Sidharth to your college: @kingsidharth on Instagram or Google "King Sidharth speaker" -- Check out the video on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmRlPl_Ljh8 (or search for "King Sidharth internet career" on YouTube)