Earlier this summer, I heard from Ojal Kulkarni, a local high school student who found Planet Argon through the Portland Startup Community Slack. Her summer project was interviewing local business owners and entrepreneurs.
We’d never met before, but a few weeks later we spent an hour on a Saturday morning talking about how Planet Argon got started, what I’ve learned from running a business for 24 years, and how AI is changing the way I think about software and experimentation.
One part I especially enjoyed was revisiting how I learned to build software in the first place. I wasn’t trying to become a programmer. I wanted to sell stickers on the internet, so I kept learning whatever I needed to make the next part work.
That led us into debugging, pattern recognition, learning by doing, and the value of struggling with a problem long enough to actually understand it.
At one point the interview briefly flipped around and I found myself asking Ojal about some of her own projects.
She did a great job keeping the conversation moving. More than anything, I appreciated the initiative… she had an idea for a summer project, found people she wanted to talk to, and started reaching out.
Check out the full interview on YouTube. Smash that subscribe button while you’re there, and if you have a high school student in your life who wants to learn about entrepreneurship, send them Ojal’s way.
