Five days ago, I launched thesweetcut.com.
I’ve done “startups” before, but I they ever haven’t ever gone anywhere. Although this went against popular opinion in the startup scene, I was still a little hesitant to just jump into an area of immense technical difficulty. Here’s a few reasons I started and lessons I’ve learned from it.
1. Reason 1: I wanted to practice writing scalable code.
Yeah, I know that has nothing to do with cookies. But let me bake (haha).
My goal in looking for a SWE summer internship, the single sentence I wrote in the tell us why you want to work at our company section of every single one of my applications this year was:
“I want to learn how to write production-level code with great engineers.”
At the startup I’m interning at, I am overjoyed to be doing exactly that. I can honestly say that I am currently twice the developer I was before I started this internship. Everything, from a deeper understanding of databases, to figuring out what testing is and why it’s necessary, to the chokehold that AWS has over the tech scene, is finally coming together.
For the past year, I felt like a Chinese guy in a fraternity at the University of Alabama when reading tech jokes — hopelessly left out and desperately trying to fit in. I never understood what people found so funny when they joked about Git issues or AWS. As a largely solo-developer who’d never worked on a group project before, if I ever had a Git issue, I had two options:
git push --force
hey stack overflow, how do i delete a repo on git?
Turns out when you’re working with other people, these are no longer realistic options.
Everything was coming at me so quickly, and I felt like I needed an outlet to practice. So I started developing the cookie website initially, as a way to document the amazing practices and lessons I’ve been learning at this startup.
2. I wanted to try making real internet money
I’ve actually never made a real dollar online. That is, until five days ago. Now I’m at $50.
In high school, I ran an SAT tutoring “company” for other high schoolers, which wasn’t really a company at all. I flaunted my SAT score on the internet and essentially extorted beer money from a couple rich, hopeful parents. Insanely lucrative for an 18-year-old (about $20,000 over a summer), but not exactly what I hope to be doing in my future.
Although I’d always fancied myself someone who would be making money with technology in the future, it never really turned out that way. I desperately felt like I needed to make my first internet dollar to
And while this cookie company isn’t exactly Google, making my first internet dollar has, in my opinion, given me the boost of confidence I needed to realize that this making money on the internet thing is actually possible.
3. I wanted to try building in public.
If you’re reading this blog, you’ve probably heard this phrase a million times. Build in public!
In all of the projects I’ve attempted in the past, I’ve NEVER built in public, or even told any of my friends about them. I had a giant sense of insecurity about my technical skills and was so overwhelmingly embarrassed about it that I didn’t want to share it with anyone.
I very recently decided that I’d start taking more initiative in my life, though, and as a result, I decided to launch The Sweet Cut on my LinkedIn and Instagram, a project that was technically less challenging than anything I’ve attempted in the past. Yet, to my absolute delight, I got three sales. 1 from a friend and 2 from completely random people. Building in public even just for a few days has genuinely taught me so much, to the point that I’ll likely make a separate post about it in the future, but here’s the TLDR: building in public lets you be known, which gives you users and motivation to build more. Also, it’s not that embarrassing to show off a project. No one cares if it’s really bad.
4. I wanted to practice everything else I learned at our startup
Although I was hired as a software engineering intern, I very quickly am beginning to realize that I have potential to be an “everything” intern. I’m surrounded by a chief of design from USC who, in my opinion, is the best designer I’ve seen in my life. We have a marketer who’s maybe the most charming person I’ve met in my life. Our chief of operations is genuinely cool as fuck (and a Wharton grad), and of course, the CEO dropped out of Penn and raised 20 million dollars. Although I’ve signed up for a tech role, I have access to some of the brightest minds in my generation. I decided it’d be a waste to come to intern at a startup and only learn the technical side of business.
In accordance with my newfound belief that everything is learnable, I’ve decided to try and learn everything. Well, as it relates to startups. With The Sweet Cut, I’m hoping to improve my design, marketing, and sales skills alongside my growing technical ability. And, of course, learn how to bake a really fucking tasty cookie.
5. Finally, a lesson instead of a reason: you can actually just jump in.
Remember how I said at the beginning how I still felt intimidated by the prospect of just jumping in and building something? After less than a week of The Sweet Cut, that initial apprehension has completely faded.
I am now of the opinion that I can truly build anything if I really put my mind to it. At my internship, I feel like I am learning so much that I cannot possibly give it up, at least for these next two months. Which is okay in my book — after all, I’m building here, too. And I’ll keep working on The Sweet Cut over nights and weekends. I’m in a period right now where I feel like I’m learning more and faster than ever before in my life. Life’s crazy.
Choong 