This writing is a recollection of the most significant events that led to my current position, mainly as a way for me to have a record.

I was born and raised in Cape Town, South Africa, where there weren't many opportunities for young people to do interesting work.

My parents decided we would move to Australia at the end of 2019. If you know a bit about South Africa, this decision will make sense. Incredible country, but it's moving in an unfortunate direction.

Sunshine Coast (2019-2021)

My brother and I did grades 11 and 12 on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland.

Our first job was an eight-month stint at Domino's doing e-bike delivery. I remember how incredible it felt to be paid $11 an hour compared to the $2 minimum wage back home.

During this time, I started having coffees with people doing cool stuff in business, mainly those I met through church.

Noting that even further back in my life, the reason I was even interested in business, was the appeal of financial freedom. I think this started when my dad said I should read Rich Dad Poor Dad sometime in 2017 or 2018.

My dad also introduced my brother and I to a local co-working space, the Digital Hub in Peregian.

It was there that I first heard about Startmate from Vinko Grgic.

This was also around the time when I met a good friend of mine, Wilson Symonds, who shared similar ambition to my brother and I.

I remember the three of us sitting in my room together, deciding which skills we would need to move away from retail and hospitality. My brother went into digital marketing, I started with web development, and Wilson pursued property.

A combination of these things led to the first wave of opportunities for me:

(1) Freelance web development for a local copywriter who blogged & work experience at an agency called Social Tap → the local copywriter was a friend's mom, and the work experience was through school at the end of grade 11.

(2) Interning as a drafter at a local real estate design & construction firm, Paul Clout Design → following a coffee chat with the founder from church. I did this for 8 months after school.

(3) Interning, and eventually working in sales, at a local apparel startup called Abide → this was also an introduction through church and connections from South Africa.

All of this got me hooked to the opportunities Australia had to offer. Even though I had no idea what I was doing.

Another significant event during this time was my school's career counselor, Natasha Purcell, encouraging two friends, my brother, and I to enter a pitch competition, UQ Ventures gen[in].

With some hesitation, we decided to do it, and the school drove us to UQ over that weekend for pitches. Our idea was Travelator, an affiliate marketing tourism tech company connecting local tourism influencers to adventure businesses.

We ended up working through the night on the pitch deck and won $1,000. It was likely the moment I fell in love with the chaos of working on a project with close friends.

Shortly after, we participated in another competition, Generation Innovation, and were about to trial our MVP with Queensland's largest tourism provider.

Momentum died off when grade 12 exams hit.

Brisbane (2022-2023)

After graduating high school, my brother and I moved to a college on the UQ campus in Brisbane for university. I decided to do a Bachelor of Advanced Business (Hons). Not for any particular reason, but because it seemed broad enough, and I knew I liked business.

Through the first Travelator pitch competition, we knew about UQ's Innovation & Entrepreneurship Society (UQIES), and some of the execs already knew us. We became execs straight away, where I was vice-president of sponsorship.

During this time, I was having probably 3-4 coffees and calls with interesting people every week. Compared to the coast, so much more was happening in Brisbane and at UQ. It felt much more real.

Here, I was introduced to EarlyWork by Felix Hall, where my excitement for the ecosystem continued to grow.

The second wave of events:

(1) Co-founding Flaming Galahs with my brother and building a team with the support of the Digital Hub director, Chris Boden, and a few investors.

(2) Participating in Blackbird Protostars and their first Sales Academy.

(3) Joining the Winter22 cohort of the Startmate Student Fellowship.

(4) Becoming Brisbane's first community advisor for Earlywork and running some events.

(5) Organizing a Sydney trip for UQIES where ~15 students had the opportunity to visit BlackBird, Airtree, Canva, Atlassian, Folklore, Immutable, and more.

(6) Co-organizing a similar trip to Singapore where we had the chance to explore equivalent startups and VCs.

Flaming Galahs gained some traction, but ultimately, I didn't have the drive to pursue it long-term. I didn't want to be tied down so early. Lots of great lessons learnt.

Towards the end of the year, a conversation with Darcy, one of the UQIES execs planning to move to Sydney, made me realize that nothing was holding me back from doing the same. Especially considering I had only done a year of university.

I enjoyed the Student Fellowship so much that I pitched some ideas to the Startmate team afterward to join them as a "Student In Residence". No luck.

Protostars meant I had office hours with Joel, Blackbird's creative director. Our conversation left me with a key takeaway: "go where the energy is" when you are young. This tipped me over, and I made the decision to defer university and start applying for more positions in Sydney.

I applied for maybe 10 roles, trying to keep all my applications in areas I genuinely cared about, and I received rejection messages every few days. This became the norm into my holiday break.

The growth role at Startmate came up and moved to the top of my wish list. Cam on the team encouraged me to apply, even though I didn't feel I had enough experience.

Over this time, I was doing some contract work for EntryLevel, a gig I was referred to through the Student Fellowship. It was probably my first real experience at a tech startup with a great team.

Sydney (2023-present)

I convinced my parents that, to make this work, even though I didn't have any offers or accommodation yet, I needed to be in Sydney to take interviews in person.

They supported this, and I flew to Sydney in late January. That first weekend, I received a call from Phoebe congratulating me on my role with Startmate.

Accommodation was a separate issue.

A spot opened up but had a lot of interest. It was with a group of other startup people. I knew one of them through a series of Twitter intros, Anubhav, and another, Alisa, through Flaming Galahs. Even though they had already received many applicants, they put everything on hold and let me to check out the room. The rest is history!

In hindsight, very little in this journey was intentional. I'll borrow a line from Paul Graham's "How To Do Great Work": "If you're interested, you're not astray." I can credit this, with some risk taking and providing opportunities for luck to strike, to what brought me here today :))