We all start off with these wild dreams as kids — dreams of who we want to become, what we want to create, and what we want to achieve….. and some of us keep having those dreams.
But for most of us, something happens and we end up not taking the path of fulfilling our dreams. Something gets in the way and instead we end up taking a very traditional path: get a degree, get a job, then keep climbing the career ladder.
The traditional path makes sense because of
- Culture — e.g. “my mom will kill me if I don’t go to college”
- Society — e.g. “You’re working on something and it’s not doing anything?”
- Security — You need money to pay the bills
For some people, the traditional path works and they love it. But for others, they go down the traditional path and they’re left wishing they went down another path.
Enter Farza Majeed, my guest today, and his company, Buildspace. Farza created Buildspace to give an alternate path to the dreamers. They are building the Hogwarts for builders and dreamers. In other words, Buildspace is a school for people that don’t want to just “get a job”.
Buildspace is a place where you can figure out what you’re passionate about, create something you love working on, and then learn how to turn that creation into a financially sustainable path you can pursue full-time. The end goal? people working full-time on their creations sustainably — that means teaching you to figure out how to make money, raise money, get government grants, whatever needed.
The basic way Buildspace works is that they have a collection of “Builds”, which is a sort of guided course / project within a specific domain, such as Web 3 or AI. For example, they have a build on how to use GPT-3 and build a simple website that uses GPT-3.
Buildspace was started in 2019 and they have pivoted 10 times. Now they’ve become extremely prolific — over 125,000 people have built something using Buildpsace, 1000s have attended IRL events, and some have started multi-million $ agencies, found co-founders, and even gotten funded for their own startups.
Buildspace recently raised $10M at a $100M valuation from A16z and many others. The platform is free to use because they’re profitable off of their sponsorship model, which means companies that want more awareness around their tools, such as OpenAI, will sponsor builds.
💬 Discussed in this episode…
- 5:50 What does founder’s inc mean to you?
- 8:35 Being authentic vs emulating others
- 11:20 The danger of wanting to build a billion dollar company
- 13:50 The story of Farza starting his first company at 13
- 17:30 Overcoming extreme parental expectations
- 20:40 What is Buildspace?
- 27:50 How is Buildspace different from regular online courses?
- 29:00 The important of Buildspace culture and how it was built
- 36:30 The most toxic mentality in tech
- 41:15 The Buildspace journey and the 10 pivots along the path
- 57:05 What does “building” mean? What’s the mindset?
- 1:00:50 How did you get your first 1000 users?
- 1:04:40 The Buildspace brand
- 1:09:00 Raising $10M at a $100M valuation
- 1:13:25 Rapid fire questions: favorite color, Naruto, and Chai Recipe
- 1:15:00 What is your mountain?
- 1:18:20 Why Farza wants to be immortal
Follow Farza on Twitter: https://twitter.com/FarzaTV
Check out Buildspace at: https://buildspace.so
🌱 This podcast is sponsored by Mindflow, a personal growth focused social app. Embark on growth journeys that make it fun and easy to take action, become 1% better every day, and share the things that are meaningful to you. Share your growth journey with friends and support them along their journeys, on a social platform that is authentic, raw, vulnerable, and doesn’t have likes or put you in comparison mode. Check out Mindflow on the App Store: https://apple.co/3BY7Nry
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🎙️ This podcast was recorded in a studio provided by Founder’s Inc in San Francisco. F.inc is a community of relentless founders building epic companies: https://f.inc
▶️ You can see the video recording of this episode on our YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/@inventing.the.future
🙋🏻♂️ YOUR HOST: Julian Alvarez is the Co-founder & CEO at Mindflow. Learn more about me through my growth journeys on Mindflow (@infinitejulian) https://apple.co/3BY7Nry
🚀 OUR MISSION: Our mission is to introduce you to the ideas and entrepreneurs that will inspire and empower you to solve the world’s biggest problems.
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