Have you ever been flown out to meet the co-founder of a $25B company to pitch your project as a high school student? No? Me neither, but Tehseen has.
Listen to our conversation with Tehseen Dahya - a teenager obsessed with finding 3rd door paths to awesome outcomes.
You can watch on YouTube (or Spotify/Apple) - Like and Subscribe so more people can discover Merge!
Tehseen’s story is unconventional: hustling his way to a paid-for flight to San Francisco, scoring a meeting with the LinkedIn Co-Founder, and landing an internship at BloXroute through some creative hustling as just a few examples.
He shares core learnings from his experiences building ambitious projects at a top STEM accelerator for teens, The Knowledge Society. Such as considering the incentives of the person you’re pitching to better align with their goals, and testing theories with prototypes (or manually) before investing time in building the technology.
This episode offers a variety of gems for listeners, especially those starting out with smaller track records.
In our conversation, we go over:
(02:44) - What questions should you be asking?
(08:31) - How do you decide what to work on?
(11:16) - How Tehseen uses 3rd door hustling
(17:56) - Key takeaways from TKS
(19:46) - Flying to San Francisco for free
(21:44) - First time experiencing SF
(25:14) - How to prep for your first SF trip
(35:10) - What about Toronto he’d like to export to SF
Find Tehseen on the internet:
Twitter: https://x.com/tehseen_0
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tehseen-dahya-jr/
Merge is a club for microgrant recipients working on big ideas. Meet new builder friends and make progress on your project: https://merge.club
Are you looking to apply to grant and fellowship programs? Use our Grant Guide: https://merge.club/guide
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