Learning as I go

Learning as I Go (25 things I learned)

Last year I left High School and jumped into the working world, going full-time at [Dispatch](dispatch.io). This month, most of my peers from High School are wrapping up their freshman year. My goal has always been to learn as I go (hence the title of this blog). I wanted to take a look back at the last year and see how I've been doing on the learning front. I'm by no means an expert at any of things but, these are the things that stand out as things I've gotten better at.

Building up momentum for a blog
Never eating alone
Winning friends and influence people
Launching a partnership
Craft a pitch
Empathizing with users and doing support
Thinking about positioning a SaaS product
Sucking a little less at programming
Thinking about business development (pipelines and what not)
Writing cold-emails
Applying negotiation tactics to correspondence
Engaging with influencers
Networking at conferences
Thinking about understand Acquisition, Engagement, Retention and KPIs (thanks to Nabeel's excellent talk at Techstars founder con)
Finding a NYC apartment
Cooking (especially pork products, my 7 hour carnitas are pretty freakin' good)
Meeting friends (way harder than in high school)
Sitting down and focusing on work (I've got pretty bad ADD)
Interviewing software engineers
Talking to the press (I've had a few major slip-ups this year. Getting better)