American Youth entrepreneur: 11 years old learn programming 14 years old make website make money

Source: Pingwest

With Andrew about a Sunday before Christmas, a Starbucks in the city of San Francisco. Compared to the first time in public, he left me the impression that this time obviously no shyness and restraint, I was familiar with many, I would like to shake hands, the hand has not reached half he gave a warm big bear hug. Andrew has a typical North American male-burly figure, but has a doll face to know that he just turned 21 years old, as Airbnb mobile director has 2.5.

11-Year-old began programming, alone to develop more than 20 app

Andrew is from a small city in Canada with a population of less than 1 million, and his father runs an energy consulting firm with a brother and a younger sister at home. Mother is always expecting him to go home by http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/38582.html ">, although he flies back to Canada every two months to visit his family." 11-Year-old began to write their own software, 14 years old began to work to earn money for the company to develop the Web site, Andrew and I chatted about these when a face cloud light, my heart is undulating, thinking of their 14 years old is locked in the classroom carrying Marxism Mao Zedong Thought, tangled with productivity and production relations who decide who.

When the iphone was released in 2008, Andrew, who was in high school, immediately shifted his vision to mobile apps, "it seemed like everyone was talking about who developed the app, how much time it took to download millions of dollars, and made millions," Andrew found it very interesting. It's also easy to switch from Web technology to mobile, and he started his mobile app development tour with an average of 5 apps a year. His first work, called "Titan GPS," allows users to manage and control their iphones on the web side, and find the iphone's location. I think of Apple's own "Find my IPhone", joked that he should seek Apple for royalties, Andrew not too bashful to bow his head and smiled. Speaking of a special traffic application for his hometown, Andrew's eyes lit up and he said he had been persuaded by many people around him to get out of the bus and persuade the local government to disclose the data for the bus. The most happy is one day to go to school on the road to see someone is using him to do things to check the bus information, he felt that he really for the people around do a good deed.

Andrew has also developed business-to-business applications for some commercial companies, applications in specialty areas such as biopharmaceutical, and applications to solve big and small problems in real life. I asked him to sum up his development experience and share it with his Chinese friends, and he hastened to think very carefully. Andrew said he enjoyed the creative process, but his personal style was cautious, "you only have one chance to impress the user," so the faster the development and release, but also to ensure that the things are done better (simple and good-looking and easy to use) to be published. He says many developers like to post and revise first, but he will not be impatient to take the risk. Indeed, the cost of trial and error, especially for startups, is too high for many to lose.

18-Year-old alone in the Silicon Valley, give up Instagram the third chair chose Airbnb

Andrew, who had not joined the Airbnb, should now have just graduated from the top five of the University of Alberta (University of Alberta), majoring in computer engineering. He said he had seen a lot of technology reports about Silicon Valley from TechCrunch, and he was very cool and yearning, so he came to San Francisco on his own in a 18-year-old holiday. First week in San Francisco, he chose 30 companies (all of which he found interesting new companies, did not choose Google, Facebook, and so on) to cast resumes, soon received 16 interviews, and finally 14 hired, including the later star start-up company Dropbox, Instagram and Airbnb. Andrew said Instagram was a team of just 2 people, but he was moved by Airbnb's concept and founder Brian Chesky's entrepreneurial passion to become Airbnb's 12th employee, a person responsible for the development of mobile applications.

Stayed a holiday, Andrew very contradictory is to go back to school or continue full-time work for Airbnb, while parents do not understand, side is the CEO brain and team retention, finally he chose to stay, the Canadian study suspended. Andrew said his mother was still not very supportive of his practice, when Airbnb in an apartment office when the mother came to see him, found in a corner of less than 10 square meters to squeeze 10 people working day and night, the mother is very unhappy and do not understand. Although his father recognized his work, he has been dissatisfied with his graduation from school. This is a surprise to me, Andrew said that in fact, Western parents are also very concerned about the children's paper certificate, not the imagination of anyone who dares to use their studies casually.

"Airbnb is possible in the future", the implementation of mobile function will be critical

Airbnb team from the summer of 2010 12 people, to 20 people, 150 people, and now 600 people, services covering 192 cities in 30,000 countries, cumulative millions of of registered users and more than tens of thousands of orders, Andrew 2.5 has come to experience the Airbnb's most difficult start-up period and the rapid growth of initial results, and his faith in Airbnb has grown stronger. He said the next thing Airbnb wanted to do was to really build a community platform for users around the world, and to make it easier for users to travel in the process of using Airbnb, rather than just booking a place with Airbnb prior to departure, which is vital to the strategic position and function of mobile. 2012 January CEO Brain traveled to Europe, this year's European market development is very good, January 2013 brain will depart for Asia. Andrew believes that Airbnb will have everything in the future, and he is looking forward to it.

Throughout the conversation, Andrew felt strongly about the identity and passion of Airbnb's team and culture, "can take a puppy to work", "supply delicious and healthy organic food every day", "wear a hoodie to attend a media meeting", "accommodate different special personal preferences", " Colleagues are carefully selected the best talent. Now he works 6 days a week, 10-12 hours a day, although it's easier than the first 14 hours a day, Andrew says he's still working hard. When I asked him if he would go back to school to finish his studies, he smiled and shook his head and said that he would continue to be in Airbnb, and that it was possible to stay for another 10. If he leaves Airbnb in the future, he will travel for a year and then become his own start-up company.