Summer
Last summer, I had just completed my sophomore year at Harvard College and was spending the summer working at the Harvard Summer School. This gig was easy, and I had a lot of time to spare, so I was hungry for more opportunities to make money during the summer. That’s when I got some weird texts from my friend asking if I wanted to get paid drawing comics for some “Internet nerd doing bitcoin stuff”.
(Screenshot of me in a video shoot for the Lampoon, a project I helped with during the summer. I played a soldier returning home from war, making a girl fall in love with him immediately.)
I almost turned down the strange offer from my friend, but it was weird enough to get me hooked! So I took a bite, we met up for coffee, and everything changed from there.
Ether-what??
The person I’d be working for wanted to meet up with me to explain to me what I’d be drawing comics for. He worked for a company that was making dApps and protocols atop the Ethereum blockchain, but at the time I had only heard of bitcoin and barely even know about that. He explained that I’d be making funny, promotional comics to post on the company’s reddit whilst they worked towards their ICO.
(The Ethereum logo once meant nothing to me! Now, I check its price every day, along with the other currencies I track...)
This all sounded like alien speech to me, and after meeting with him I had to go back home and do my research on the matter. Was this stuff legit? Did it actually have potentially? Was I getting scammed? Was this a huge mistake? After doing my research on the space and their company, I decided that this was a huge opportunity for me. It could be my breakthrough. These guys offered me a lot, and I could tell that they would deliver what they promised and that the experience would be a wild one. They were rich, startup bros, and they wanted to take me under their wing.
Long story short, I dove into working for this company and into this strange world of blockchain, and I’ve been along for the ride ever since.
Timeout
Because this role they offered me was quite large, I decided that it’d be best to take a semester off from Harvard in order to pursue this. It’s not every day that you get offered stuff like this, and I figured school can always wait. I pulled the trigger and have not regretted it since.
I worked night and day on establishing the company’s brand, solidifying its online presence, and helping make sure the company could reach its goal during the ICO. I drew website drafts, logos, cartoons, graphics… I scrapped, redrew, brainstormed, brainstormed some more, redrew, scrapped again, etc… But finally, the company owners and I settled on a brand vision. And I’d like to consider myself a part of the company’s success during the ICO. It raised over $15 million USD in Ethereum, and this was before Ethereum’s price shot up.
(That’s right. Big bucks...)
These guys were no joke. And more importantly, cryptocurrency was no joke. After this dawned on me, my life has never been the same.
Time to go
Though cryptocurrency was something I wanted to keep an eye on for good, I realized that I had to part ways with the company. I had lots of other things that came up at the time, and I needed to turn my attention to them and put my job on the sideline for a moment.
The thrill was real: there was never a schedule or a plan, and every day I had to be scrappy and think on my feet. The work pushed me and challenged my raw talent in a way that no other opportunity has and no other opportunity will for some time, I imagine. But every party must end at some point, and I decided that I needed to move on to more structure and calmness. Though I’m still only 20-years-old and consider myself energetic and quick, the startup life honestly burnt me out, and I grew tired of the demands from my bosses and higher ups.
(A photo I took one early morning in Medellin, Colombia, one of the wonderful destinations that my job took me...)
This experience changed me forever, though, and I consider this adventure one of the turning points in my life. It’s when I took a step from the beaten path, took time off from school, took a stab at working for a startup, and took a chance on cryptocurrency. I learned that there’s always an adventure to be had, always an alternative path to trot, and always a way to make things happen, a new piece of technology, and a wild west to explore!
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