I got into the March 2022 cohort of ZFellows. Just that I would share my application for your reference. I think it got shortlisted based on these three key things:
- I was a college dropout. Shows high agency and risk-appetite.
- I had a working product with some real users and some real revenue. Most products out there die without making a single dollar in revenue.
- I was already full-time on my idea. I had my left my job to go all in on DevKit.
Application
Which cohort would you like to apply for? *
Z Fellows Crypto - running March 2022 and April 2022
Z Fellows General Purpose - running every other month
Either!
Company or project name
DevKit
Birthday
01-01-2002
Are you technical?
Yes
Are you in school or working? Or both? Where at?
None. Dropped out (2019). Quit job last year (Dec 2021).
What is the project that you are currently working on or would like to pursue? Why? (Max: 500 characters - about 100 words) *
Example answer: I’m building relentless, which is a job search service that helps people land the best jobs possible in the shortest amount of time. We do this by coaching people on every step of the job search process, from writing a good resume, to landing interviews, to closing on an offer and negotiating compensation. I started this company after landing 40+ interviews and multiple offers during my job search and realizing that most people struggle to land even 1.
I'm building DevKit, a SuperApp for developers. Boosting productivity and growth of developers by giving them tools and curated content.
Tools include API + Database Clients, Code Generator, and a suite of utilities. These tools will save weeks of dev effort and allow teams to iterate much faster.
Curated content includes listings of courses, boot camps, and tech talks. This content will help students and junior engineers to get out of tutorial hell and get jobs.
What problem are you solving? (Max: 500 characters - about 100 words) *
Example answer: Landing a job requires sales and marketing skills, but most job seekers have not been trained in sales and marketing. This skill gap leads to more time spent searching for a job and lower offer compensation levels.
A) Apart from IDEs, developers depend on multiple desktop apps, CLI tools, and websites. Hits productivity.
B) Developers are still building CRUD Apps from scratch without any automation. Spending weeks in development and reviews.
C) College students and junior engineers get stuck in tutorial hell and are confused about how to learn and get jobs
What expertise do you have to execute on the work that you want to do? (Max: 500 characters - about 100 words)
Example answer: I landed 40+ interviews & several job offers by automating my job search. Since starting a few months ago, I’ve booked $35K in revenue, closed 8 customers for my beta cohort (2 of whom got jobs), and grown to 10K+ followers across a newsletter and my LinkedIn. Prior to starting this, I worked in sales and marketing roles at VC-backed startups across Silicon Valley and New York.
I have insight into dev tools (SDE for 2 years). Recognized what tools colleagues, friends and I use. I have already built out initial versions of few of the ideas and got good feedback on ProductHunt launch and got my first set of paying customers.
I have the necessary expertise to navigate the whole range of developer problems and build solutions for them as in my last job I worked on a range of problems like scraping, big data processing, and full-stack development.
What have you worked on in the past? (Max: 500 characters - about 100 words)
Example answer: A) I worked in sales and marketing roles at first round backed Troops.ai, a16z-backed Atrium, and other early stage startups. B) I built a consumer social company and grew it to thousands of users with 0 CAC. We were featured in the Atlantic. C) I started an Instagram blog to raise awareness for the homeless and grew it to several thousand followers and hundreds of thousands in impressions.
A) Worked as a SDE for Avalara for 2 years. Built a fault-tolerant intuitive scraping engine. Worked on big data pipelines processing terabytes of data.
B) Started a curated learning platform as a side project. ~200 registered users. 500+ IG followers.
What's the nerdiest thing about you? (Max: 250 characters - about 50 words)
Example answer: I once reverse-engineered a dating app's user data api so I could see the profiles of who liked me without paying :/
I love to reverse-engineer beautiful websites and take notes of design and code details
Tell us about a risk youʼve taken or a challenge you've faced. Tell us whether you failed or succeeded, how you behaved, and how you think this reflects your character. (Max: 500 characters - about 100 words)
Example answer: I scraped my school's email server's and cold emailed all 70K people at my school to get the first few thousand users for my previous company. I got sent to the Dean's office and almost got kicked out of school, with 1 semester of college left. I'm here on a visa so getting kicked out of school may have lead to my visa getting revoked. I think this reflects my willingness to break rules and social norms to be successful.
I dropped out of college to be an SDE. Felt scared for the first few months. Then realized it was the best decision I ever took. Learned and networked a lot. Became so confident that I quit my job to start my own startup. And, the anxiety mode came back again. Seeing bits of traction and getting my first set of paying customers helped me overcome it.
These incidents reflect my willingness to try non-mainstream things and take quick and bold decisions.
How are you going to change the world? (Max: 500 characters - about 100 words)
Example answer: By building the most effective job search company in the world. Solving this problem helps the 10 million unemployed people in the US and 200MN unemployed people world-wide. This problem costs the US $100BN a year in benefits and $200BN a year in lost productivity growth.
By building the most comprehensive developer tools and learning platform for 20M+ developers worldwide. The impact can be as large as MacBooks and GitHub have for developers. Companies will be able to iterate much faster on products and aspiring and junior engineers will grow faster in their career.
Personal and/or Project Website and/or Links about you
Please list or describe any achievements and prizes.
A) ~100 upvotes on the ProductHunt launch of v1 of DevKit. Became #6 product of the day.
B) Nominee for the Rookie of the Year award at Avalara
What's the full name of the smartest friend you have?
Ridham Bhagat
Optional: What's 1 thing you need help with? (Max: 500 characters - about 100 words)
Example answer: I'm struggling to meet a technical cofounder. I'd love email introductions to smart technical people.
Have done some user research and have a couple of paid users which are giving consistent feedback. A pre-seed fund and mentorship at this stage will help me to build a world-class product much faster.