December Newsletter | 0 to 0.1
The Process | December Recap
What happens when the most driven, hardworking, and high-standard teenager—me (according to myself and hopefully my parents)—sets out to achieve their dream of launching a startup while balancing university applications, maintaining a 95%+ average in school with exams upcoming, juggling not one, but two internships, diving deep into entrepreneurship, and constantly getting lost in rabbit holes because of curiosity?
Incase you couldn’t tell, I’m trying to do A LOT. But I’m not gonna cry about having a lot on my plate when my goal was to eat. Recently, I was talking to someone about everything I’ve got going on, and they hit me with that common saying: “If you chase two rabbits, you won’t catch either one.”
Guess what I said,
“I have a gun”
And my gun? A lot of it comes from my ignorance being a teenager haha, but also my curiosity to learn a ton. This isn’t impossible by any means. This next month is going to be a lot, but quite frankly I’m excited for all of this to come at me, I want to see where I am after January. A lot can happen in a month.
Let me introduce myself! 👋
Hey! I’m Noah. I’m a huge “figure it out” enthusiast. I firmly believe that anyone can find a way to solve anything if the incentive and/or desire is strong enough.
Speaking of realizations, last month I had a big one. I discovered that entrepreneurship isn’t some straight, predictable path where everyone already knows the answers. Instead… it’s so much better.
It’s messy and unconventional—nobody knows what’ll happen from let alone a month, but a week from now. Something awful like a 2007 recession could pop up and flip this economy upside down, whereas on the flip side, some crazy underground AI startup could go viral and… honestly, who knows? Maybe it would do something revolutionary—or maybe it’ll flop. And that’s the best part: I don’t know. Nobody knows.
In entrepreneurship, uncertainty is the norm, nobody really knows what they’re doing. Most of the time, it feels like we’re navigating uncharted territory, figuring things out as we go. And that’s what I love about it.
Welcome to my 0 to 0.1 newsletter (and incase your wondering.. yes it’s a play on Zero to One by Peter Thiel & Blake Masters haha). This newsletter is my space to share the process of my journey: the wins, the lessons, and everything in between, as I work toward my ultimate goal—becoming a unicorn and “figuring it out”.
Here’s my unconventional and messy way of “figuring it out”, month by month.
Getting Started | Highlights of the Month
I feels like it’s been a while, so let’s catch up and get on the same page. Here’s a quick rundown of what’s been happening and what to expect moving forward. These are just brief summaries for now, but don’t worry—I’ll dive deeper into the important topics later:
This month was packed:
Kicked Off Two Internships 🚀
Armilla AI: A Y Combinator-backed startup and the world’s first AI insurance company. My assigned project is to boost SEO.
Built For Impact (BFI): A promising startup supported by UofT’s Rotman School of Management and Western Ivey Business School. Working with them to outreach and work towards our upcoming pilot launch.
Worked on a Project Alongside IKEA 🇸🇪
In Innovate, we tackle two major challenges throughout the year, and this was our first one—a two-week opportunity. It was a chance to train on solving real-world unstructured problems, where there isn’t a definite answer. For this challenge, we worked with IKEA, focusing on finding ways to attract more Gen Z customers.
Beginning of a Super Exciting Project 👀🦄
Can’t wait for this one, tune back in next month and check it out.
Finding a Way to Make Learning Addictive & Getting Into Rabbit Holes 💡🐇
I’ve become obsessed with learning and even more obsessed with falling into rabbit holes while doing so.
Attended The GenAI Collective’s First Event in Toronto 🤖
Became the youngest person ever to attend one of these events. Awesome opportunity to connect with people who have already jumpstarted their careers.
Worked on and Submitted University Applications 🤞
Stressful. The timed interviews and essays preparation kill me.
AI Improvements 🧑💻
I built some really cool AI programs, I’ll go into these later.
AI Marketing Consulting
Who would’ve thought this. I’m beginning to do marketing consulting with small businesses, keep on reading to find out more about this—I can’t wait to see where this goes.
Turned 17 🎂
Crazy. I feel wiser haha.
Kicking Off Two Internships! (Guess Who’s Adulting Now)
I’m going to break this down into two:
Armilla AI:
At Armilla AI I’m addressing our website’s SEO to improve visibility for terms like “Insurance for AI.” My focus is on assessing current performance, identifying relevant search terms, optimizing content and technical elements, and implementing automated monitoring for sustainable growth.
I'll be completely transparent: I had never worked with SEO before this internship—honestly, I only learned what it the term “SEO” actually meant a month ago. But that’s not going to stop me.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my past projects, it’s this: to succeed, you figure it out. So it doesn’t matter that many might not find me “prepared” for this. What I’m doing right now is the best way of learning. Learning by action.
This internship just started, so I don’t have too much to share, but tune back in a month from now and I’ll be able to speak on it a lot more.
Built for Impact:
At Built for Impact I’ve been focused on executing our outreach to high school students, strategically finding ways to engage them and identify potential partner organizations for growth. In just two weeks, I successfully reached out to well over 10,000 students and sparked interest from two non-profit organizations that foster high school communities eager to collaborate with us.
I’m happy to say I’ve been offered a contract extension! This time however, in various fields for whichever I find interesting and want to get better at. I’m debating between dev or marketing.
Hej! - Working on a Project for IKEA
In TKS Innovate they do two major challenges throughout the year.
This was the first one.
I got the awesome opportunity to work on a project for IKEA!
To sum it up: our prompt was to figure out a way to attract more people from Gen Z. Everyone in TKS was in a group and competing against over 4000 TKS students globally, learning unstructured problem solving.
I’ve never wanted to win more.
TKS is filled with the most critical thinking, and innovative teenagers across the world, AKA: My top competition.
This was one of the very few opportunities that I will ever get, to compete, and prove that I’m the best at what I do. I needed to win.
In this project, everyone was given two weeks to develop an idea, business plan, pitch deck, and prototype. I was part of a team of three, including myself.
Here are the most important things I learnt:
Never be afraid to ask for help—iteration, and repetition is crucial for success
You should seek failure and problems in your work—don’t hide from them, because they’re what differentiate the good from the great.
First principle thinking is key. Break things down and rebuild them, you can find so many more opportunities and answers that way.
Love winning. Hate losing.
So, what was our idea? Reinventing IKEA As-Is to Capture Gen Z’s $360 Billion Market through Recommerce.
If you’re unfamiliar with the IKEA As-Is Marketplace, it’s a section where customers can purchase slightly damaged products at a discount. With the massive push toward recommerce among Gen Z, this platform represents an untapped opportunity to make used products more accessible and appealing.
Here’s the twist, and our competitive edge: The biggest issue with current recommerce platforms—like Facebook Marketplace or Kijiji—is the risk of scams, broken items, or unreliable sellers. But if IKEA could step in, offering authentication and verification for products, it would gain a significant competitive edge in this booming market.
In my group my role was to evaluate the factors contributing to the success of recommerce, explore its growth as an emerging trend, and analyze case studies and reports from successful platforms like Facebook Marketplace and eBay.
However my main role? To make a fully interactive prototype. This prototype would serve to be the core of our pitch, our competitive edge. I made a fully interactive frontend user interface website, so the judges could understand how impactful our product and idea was, from our perspective.
Check it out yourself:
Click it… 👀👆
I’m super happy to say that me and my team have been selected as a semi-finalist for the IKEA Challenge! When I found out I fell out of my seat in class I kid you not.
Me and my team have ranked in the top 35 out of over 4000 TKS students! Locally, we made it to the Top 7 out of 200+ students.
We’re one of the six Toronto teams out of 200+ students moving forward to represent TKS Toronto, as well as 1/19 that IKEA executives are currently reviewing in detail based on our slideshow & prototype we submitted (that you should really check out! 👆)
We’re going to find out soon whether or not we made it to the finals!
Make sure to subscribe so you can stay updated! I’m more determined than ever to win.
Attending The First GenAI Collective Event in Canada!
Had such an awesome time at the first ever GenAI Collective Event in Toronto! It was an amazing event hosted and held by Chappy Asel, and Radical Ventures.
As you might be able to tell, I was the youngest person there—but that was the best part. I got to speak with so many people who are so much further into their career.
I made so many amazing connections! I learnt some awesome insights on AI and entrepreneurship, it was so much fun and an awesome way to put myself out there and network.
When AI Projects Take Over My To-Do List
Let me start off by saying: by no means am I a developer.
Up until a month ago, my coding experience with programming was limited to basic scripting—the furthest I’d gone was a step by step YouTube tutorial to put it into perspective.
Yet somehow I managed to develop and code a Twitter Sentiment Analyzer that can:
Fetch real-time tweets based on user-defined queries
Clean and preprocess tweet text for analysis
Analyze sentiments using natural language processing
Visualize sentiment distribution with intuitive charts
Save and debug processed data for future reference?
How’d I do it? Just utilizing the right mindset! I know I’ve said it a lot, I should honestly make it my motto. But I’m really passionate about figuring things out, finding a way to make ends meet no matter my skillset.
If your interested about it, you can check out my step by step tutorial here:
I also made an article about it that you can check out:
Feel free to check out my GitHub repo as well:
AI Marketing Consulting
If you haven’t read my last newsletter for November, then let me update you:
Last month, I got bored. And I wanted to do something cool, and something none of my friends had done. I wanted to create an opportunity rather than sit around and wait.
I cold-pitched 11 clothing brands on Instagram that I found cool. Offering to develop an AI program to analyze their pages for common patterns of success. Along with this, I proposed marketing their brand using display ads and providing consulting services. Out of the 11, only one responded—but that was all I needed. With that response, I landed my first real-world coding project, along with an awesome marketing & consulting project.
Everything was going great, I was in contact with the brand, getting all the information I needed, and then suddenly they cut communication. Randomly they stopped replying and I was ghosted two weeks into the project.
I wasn’t going to stop, and I wanted this so bad, so I sent a few follow up messages, nothing. I went back to the outreach stage.
Now I’ve confirmed a project with a growing clothing brand that I’m going to take on post exams—subscribe so you can stay updated!
I’ll share all the details of the project when it’s finished (I plan to write an article about it here, so follow my account to stay updated).
For now, all I can say is this: the fear of starting is so much bigger than the task itself. Once you take that first unconventional step, a whole new world opens up.
What’s Next? 💭
Action! (Then learn)—I’m going to be taking on everything I can, and just learn on the way.
TKS Challenge updates.
Wrapping up the pilot launch at BFI.
Finishing up SEO work with Armilla AI.
Begin the consulting project.
Release my MVP for my project, I can’t even explain how excited I am for this—it’s all I think about.
Wrap up semester 1 at school + wrap up exams.
Finish university applications.
And lastly, a ton of learning and research about entrepreneurship. It’s gone to the point where I can’t picture myself doing anything different. I don’t want anything more.
I want all of you to hold me to a high standard too. So if next month, or any other month, you expected more from me, let me know.
Thank you so much for reading! Feel free to reach out on my LinkedIn if you’d like to have a chat on anything and everything entrepreneurship!
See you next month with even more to share and compounded growth toward 0.1! 👋