nobody showed me how

My parents are Persian immigrants. They came to this country and built an entire life from scratch. My dad is one of the smartest people I know. My mom is one of the hardest working people I've ever met. They sacrificed things I'll probably never fully understand so that I could have options they didn't.

But they couldn't tell me what a startup was.

They didn't know what computer science meant. Not really. They knew I liked computers. They knew I was good at building things on them. But the distance between "our kid likes computers" and "there is a specific career path called software engineering and adjacent to it are these things called startups and within those startups are these roles and here's how you get one" - that distance is enormous. And nobody in my family could cross it for me.

I don't say this for sympathy. My parents gave me everything that mattered. But this one specific thing - the roadmap - they couldn't give me because they never had one themselves.

So I built my own. Out of Reddit threads at 2am and Stack Overflow answers and high school clubs and sheer, terrifying, beautiful ignorance.

Here's the thing nobody tells you about figuring it out alone: you don't know what you don't know, and you don't know that you don't know it.

I didn't know what a "warm intro" was until I was 19. I didn't know that most jobs in tech are filled through referrals, not applications. I didn't know that the reason my 300+ job applications went nowhere wasn't because I was unqualified - it was because I was playing a game whose rules I'd never been told.

My closest friends went into medicine, dentistry, quantitative finance. They were figuring it out for themselves too, don't get me wrong. But at least they could name the thing they were reaching for. There were pre-med advisors. There were MCAT prep courses. There were people in their families or communities who had walked the path before and could say "here's what's next."

I couldn't name it. All I had was a feeling - this itch that I was supposed to build something, but nobody could tell me what, or how, or where to start.

So I did what anyone does when there's no guide: I moved in every direction at once and hoped one of them was right.

At some point in college I heard a line that changed everything. I don't remember where I read it. Might've been Reddit. Might've been a YouTube video at 3am. But the line was:

"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity."

That sentence rewired my brain. Because it meant luck wasn't random. It wasn't something you waited for or hoped for. It was something you could manufacture. If you couldn't control when the opportunity would show up, you could control how prepared you were when it did.

So I started preparing. In every direction. All at once. With no clear plan.

I joined clubs I wasn't sure I belonged in. I took on projects I wasn't sure I could finish. I cold-emailed people I had no reason to email. I built things that didn't have obvious applications. I said yes to conversations that didn't have obvious points. It was chaotic and messy and felt like throwing spaghetti at a wall in the dark.

But the logic was simple: if luck is preparation meeting opportunity, and I can't predict which opportunity will show up next, then I should prepare as broadly and relentlessly as possible. Cast the widest net. Touch the most surfaces. Be ready for doors I don't even know exist yet.

You can never connect the dots going forward. You can only connect them looking backward. Steve Jobs said that. And it's true. But I think there's a corollary nobody talks about: you can't connect the dots backward if you never created any dots to begin with.

So I spent those years just... creating dots. Frantically, without a map.

Here's where I want to be really honest about something. Because people see the resume and they see a line that goes up and to the right. Graduated summa cum laude at 19. AI2 Incubator. Georgia Tech. Moondream. Turing Minds. Four hackathon wins.

But that line is a lie. Or at least, it's a retrospective fiction. It's the story you tell after the fact when you connect the dots looking backward.

Looking forward? There was no line. It was chaos. Pure, directionless, caffeinated chaos.

At 17, I built a course selection tool for UW students because nobody helped me pick my own classes. 14,000 students used it. That sounds impressive, but in the moment I had no idea what it meant or what to do with it. I didn't know you could raise money for things. I didn't know that "14,000 users" was the kind of number that investors would listen to. I just... built it, because it felt like a problem worth solving.

I applied to over 300 internships and jobs during one stretch. Zero responses. Not "a few callbacks that didn't work out." Zero. Three hundred applications into the void. I remember the feeling of having a 3.9 GPA and a product that 14,000 people used and literally not being able to get a single recruiter to respond to an email.

If you've ever been in that position - where you know you're not stupid, and you know you can do real work, but nobody will give you a chance because you don't have the right name on your resume or the right person to make a call - then you know the specific flavor of desperation I'm talking about. It's not laziness. it's not despair. it's this furious confusion. Like, I KNOW I can do this. Why won't anyone let me prove it?

I was angry about it. genuinely angry. Not in a productive way, at least not at first. I avoided my college counselors and academic advisors almost as a protest. They were going to tell me to take more credits, extend my graduation, follow the established path. And every fiber of me was screaming that the established path was wrong. I couldn't explain WHY it felt wrong. I had no data, no framework, no mentor telling me "trust your gut." It just felt unstable. Like the whole structure was built on assumptions that were about to break.

Turns out I was right. With AI's disruption and the mass layoffs rewriting every career playbook in tech, the structures I was being forced through have started unweaving in real time. The traditional path I was protesting doesn't even exist the same way anymore. But back then? Back then I just looked like a stubborn kid who wouldn't meet with his advisor.

Life is tricky like that. You have to be optimistic in your beliefs - radically, stubbornly optimistic, the kind where people think you're delusional - while simultaneously accepting that nobody knows shit about fuck. Not your advisor. Not the career center. Not the LinkedIn influencer with the "5 steps to success" framework. Nobody has the map because the territory keeps changing.

The best you can do is be pragmatic. Be real. And keep moving.

The thing that changed everything wasn't a skill I learned or a class I took.

It was a person.

His name is Varun Puri. I sent him a cold message on LinkedIn. I had no expectation that he'd respond. He did. We talked. He went out of his way to nurture the relationship despite being insanely busy with his own work. And then one day, without me ever asking, he referred me to the AI2 Incubator.

Without me asking.

I need to sit with that for a second because it still kind of breaks my brain. A person I cold-messaged on LinkedIn changed the entire trajectory of my life by doing something generous that I never requested. Because he saw something and decided to act on it.

Was that luck? Or was it the preparation meeting opportunity? I'd sent hundreds of cold messages by that point. Most went nowhere. But I was prepared - I had projects to talk about, I had genuine curiosity, I had done my homework on his work. And the opportunity showed up in the form of a person who was generous enough to respond.

One dot connecting to another. Invisible looking forward. Obvious looking back.

Then there was Jacob Colker, who fought to make my hiring possible at the incubator during our first interaction. Who took a chance on a 19-year-old with no big tech credentials, and in doing so, saved me from the corporate pipeline that had already rejected me 300 times.

Then there was Caleb John, who I met during college, who referred me to Moondream. I went into my first conversation with the CEO Jay Allen with zero plan. Just wanted to pick his brain, and share things that I think they should try. The chat ran long and at one point Jay started taking notes on what I had to say and said "there are hundreds of early-stage startups that would want to hire somebody like you right now." A week later Moondream announced a $4.5M seed round from Felicis and Microsoft's venture fund. A week after that I had an offer to join as Head of Developer Relations.

From a single conversation. With a person who owed me nothing.

I never stopped with the cold outreach.

And then there was Dr. Zvi Galil. The creator of Georgia Tech's Online Master's in Computer Science program. A man who had led the college of computing at one of the best technical universities on the planet. Zack and I cold-emailed him and somehow, somehow, he said yes. He became our advisor and helped us assemble a speaker lineup that shouldn't exist: Donald Knuth, Geoffrey Hinton, Vint Cerf, Barbara Liskov, Leslie Lamport. Twenty-two speakers. Five Turing Award winners and a Nobel Laureate. 10,000 attendees across Stanford, MIT, Yale, ETH Zurich. Free.

A kid who nobody showed how got the founders of computer science to show everyone.

Because one person said yes.

I keep a mental list of the moments that changed my trajectory. Not the skills I learned or the books I read. The moments. And they are almost all the same shape:

One person. One act of generosity. One door that opened because somebody on the other side decided to push.

Varun referring me without being asked. Jacob took a chance on me and saved me from corporate. Jay taking notes in his Apple Notes, in a conversation with a person he had no reason to care about. Zvi saying yes to two random Georgia Tech students cold-emailing him about a speaker series.

Every single inflection point in my career traces back to a specific human being who chose to show up for me when they didn't have to.

And here's the part that terrifies me: what if they hadn't?

What if Varun hadn't responded to the cold message? What if Jacob had decided a 19-year-old wasn't worth the risk? What if Jay had kept our conversation to 30 minutes instead of letting it run long? What if Zvi had deleted the email from two students he'd never heard of?

I'd probably be fine. I'm resourceful. I would have found a different path.

But it would have taken longer. Maybe much longer. And the version of me that exists today - the one building an AI company with 300,000 lines of code and a co-founder and a community behind him - that version might not exist. The version of me that spoke at the last 5 buildspace cohort kickoffs at UW. Or it might exist five years from now instead of right now.

The difference between where you are and where you could be is usually one person who hasn't shown up yet.

There are millions of kids right now who are exactly where I was at 17. Same itch. Same intelligence. Same furious confusion. Scrolling Reddit at 2am, building projects nobody will see, applying to jobs that won't respond, looking for a guide who doesn't exist.

And most of them won't get a Varun. Most of them won't get a Jacob. Not because those people don't exist - they do, clearly - but because the probability that the right person shows up at the right moment with the right generosity is terrifyingly low.

The whole system runs on serendipity. And serendipity doesn't scale.

And I want to say something directly to those people, because somebody should:

There is nothing wrong with you. The confusion you feel isn't a sign that you're lost. it's a sign that the path you're looking for doesn't come pre-built. You have to lay the bricks yourself. And that's terrifying, but it's also the thing that will make you dangerous.

And look - there's nothing wrong with the traditional path either. If your family needs your support, if your circumstances require stability, you go get that corporate job and you work it. You nights-and-weekends your way to wherever you're going. Some of the most impressive people I know built their thing on the side of a full-time job for years before they could go all in. Some could argue that's what I did. Honestly, in a lot of ways, it is.

The point isn't that one path is right. The point is that the paths are being rewritten in real time and nobody has the updated map. The structures that used to feel permanent - the career ladders, the degree requirements, the "put in 10 years and you'll be a senior" conveyor belt - they're cracking. Not because they were bad. Because the world changed faster than they could adapt.

So if you're out there right now feeling like the system isn't built for you, I want you to hear this: it might not be. And that might actually be your advantage.

This is the thing I've been trying to articulate since I was 17 and I think I finally have the words for it.

Every tool I've ever built was an attempt to take the thing that those people did for me and make it not depend on luck.

Course Finder was: "what if a first-gen student could navigate course selection without needing an older student to explain it?" A guide that doesn't require a guide.

Aristotle was: "what if you could practice interviews without needing a career counselor you can't get an appointment with?" A coach that doesn't require a coach.

Turing Minds was: "what if you could learn from the greatest minds in computer science without needing the connections to get in the room?" A mentor who doesn't require a referral.

Each one worked. And each one hit the same wall.

Course Finder was static. It could show you what existed but couldn't understand what you needed. It was a map without a compass.

Aristotle could respond and adapt, but only within one narrow domain. The second you needed something adjacent - not interview prep but career advice, not practice but encouragement - it had nothing. It was a coach who could only run one drill.

Turing Minds was the closest. Real wisdom from real people. But it was bounded by human availability. A Turing Award winner can only give so many hours. A live talk can only reach so many time zones. It was a mentor who existed, but only for 90 minutes on alternate Thursdays.

The wall was always the same: the technology couldn't be what a person could be. It couldn't sit with you in your specific confusion and say "I see what you're trying to do, and here's what I think you should try next." Not generically. Not like a chatbot reciting a knowledge base. Actually understanding YOUR context, YOUR situation, YOUR specific flavor of lost.

That's what Varun did when he referred me. He understood my context well enough to see an opportunity I couldn't see myself.

That's what Jacob did when he hired me. He saw the pattern in the chaos of my resume that I couldn't articulate.

That's what Jay did when he took notes. He was processing my specific experience and matching it to a specific need on his team.

They were doing something that required deep contextual understanding, good judgment, and the willingness to act on behalf of someone else.

For the first time in history, the technology can do most of that.

Not the wisdom. Not the 30 years of lived experience that made Varun generous or Jacob perceptive or Jay intuitive. But the context part. The "understanding your specific situation" part. The synthesis of everything you've done and said and written into a model of who you are and what you might need next.

That part used to require a human relationship built over months or years. Now it requires a few weeks of interaction and a system designed to actually pay attention.

I don't want to oversell this. I really don't.

An AI can't be Varun. It can't make a selfless decision on your behalf out of genuine human generosity. It can't feel the impulse to help someone it barely knows and act on that impulse without being asked.

But it can do something that I think is almost as important and far more scalable: it can make sure you don't fall through the cracks.

Because the thing about the 300 applications that went nowhere? The problem wasn't that I was unqualified. The problem was that nobody was paying attention. Nobody in the system was looking at my specific situation and saying "hey, this kid has a 3.9 and a product with 14,000 users, maybe we should respond to his application."

I fell through the cracks. Millions of people fall through the cracks. Not because they don't have potential. Because the system that's supposed to connect potential to opportunity runs on serendipity and favors people who were born knowing the rules.

What if the system actually paid attention?

What if, instead of sending 300 applications into the void, a 17-year-old could interact with something that understood their specific strengths, their specific gaps, their specific situation - and could proactively connect them to the specific opportunities that match? Not a job board. Not a "career quiz." Something that actually knows you.

That's the thing I'm building. That's what it's always been, through every draft and every failure and every version that hit the wall. A system that pays attention to people who nobody else is paying attention to. A guide for the kids scrolling Reddit at 2am. A navigator for the first-gen student who can't name the thing they're reaching for.

I know it sounds grand. I know it sounds like I'm one of those founders who thinks they're going to save the world. I'm not. I'm a 22-year-old who got lucky enough to have four or five people show up at the right moments, and I'm trying to make luck less of a requirement.

Because the thing about Varun, and Jacob, and Jay, and Zvi is that they were extraordinary. They went out of their way to help someone they barely knew. Most people don't do that. Not because they're bad people. Because they're busy, and distracted, and it's hard to see someone else's potential when you're drowning in your own 275 daily notifications.

The genius of what those four people did for me can't be replicated by a machine.

But the system that made me need them in the first place? The system where a first-gen kid with a 3.9 applies 300 times and hears nothing? The system where your entire career trajectory depends on whether the right person happens to read your cold email on the right day?

That system can be burned to the ground.

And I intend to help burn it.

If any of this resonated with you - if you're one of those people scrolling at 2am looking for the thing you can't name - I want to hear from you. I don't know exactly what shape it'll take yet. But I'm building a space for the people who never had a roadmap. For the ones who figured it out on their own and for the ones who are still figuring it out.

Because nobody showed us how. And that's exactly why we're the ones who have to show each other.

-parsa