The Golden Lesson Before Sarahah

I learned programming when I was 13. My first project was a tool to remove the infamous ILOVEYOU virus. I downloaded code for a tool that did exactly this from a famous website then called Planet-Source-Code and modified it a bit thinking now I have built an application, excuse my ignorance.
Fast forward to my last year in high school: Inspired by a famous website at the time, I created a blog using WordPress to explain how stuff works. It even got coverage from a local newspaper.

But it wasn’t until college that I actually built a real project—a platform where you could place a circle on any location on a map and pull social content from Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter. I still think that idea has potential…
The social networks continued to modify, limit, or remove functionalities from the API, essentially killing the project, lessons learned.

Back then, my marketing strategy was simple: advertise on Google AdWords and target a global audience. One day, I received a message from Michael Rusignola, Twitter's ecosystem manager at the time. Over a Skype call, he asked me what my goal was. I told him I wanted to reach a global audience. He said, “I told a French person, if you want to reach the United States, start in France.” That was a golden lesson: start where you are.

Think about it—you have more connections locally, you speak the language, and you know the culture. It’s easier to market your product nearby. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t dream big, but always start where you are.

I used that project in several university courses (web development, databases, and even added an AI element in my AI course). I kept changing partners, and one of them became Sarahah’s CTO later on.

After college, while job hunting, I kept building small projects. One thing that helped me a lot in my "mini entrepreneurial endeavors" was sticking with the same development framework. Focusing on shipping projects rather than jumping to the latest hot framework was key. Not to say I didn’t experiment, but being able to quickly develop a prototype and release it to the market, reusing the same code snippets, was a huge advantage.

I took my first job at a tech firm, and surprisingly, my entrepreneurial spirit went dormant—until I joined an oil company in a non-tech role. That's when I started Sarahah, my entrepreneurial rollercoaster ride…