I am a doctor by training and it’s pretty unusual for a doctor to jump into the world of blockchain without any prior knowledge. I moved across the world with my partner for his work, so here I am in Silicon Valley working as a tech blogger for a start-up during the day.
Picking up skills fast — the start-up way
Tip #1: Read up on the basics: You don’t need to go to school to get a very in-depth knowledge on blockchain, unless you’re going to start working as a start-up developer from day one. The day before my first day of work, I googled blockchain and just spent about two-three hours learning about the technical aspects of things, like what is a smart contract and what is Ethereum. Wikipedia and YouTube were my best friend in getting up to speed with things.
Image Credit: IMDb
Before my move to the sunny California, I was already somewhat interested in understanding the craze behind cryptocurrency. I recommend the 2016 Netflix documentary “Banking on Bitcoin” to get a quick and dirty history of bitcoin. The documentary does a fantastic job of describing the regulation uncertainties that the crypto exchanges on Wall Street faced in the early phases of cryptocurrency development.
I googled the people/companies mentioned in the documentary to gain a better understanding of what is going on. For example, Mt. Gox, the infamous Japanese exchange that was hacked in 2014.
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Tip #2: Know what your company is doing/what is the game plan: Ideally, this should have been done before you started your job. Sometimes, startups don’t necessary have all the answers. The best thing you can do is to find out the game plan so you can read up on relevant things accordingly. During my first week on the job, I read about blog writing, SEO, and optimising Twitter & Reddit growth.
In a way, blockchain is kind of like medicine in that there are “specializations” (e.g. cardiology, general surgery, family medicine). My company focuses on building a decentralized IoT platform. There are other companies focusing on collecting informations about bounty and ICOs and even merging AI or data with blockchain. Don’t go barking up the wrong tree by comparing your company with a competitor that is not related to the field.
Photo by Giulia Bertelli on Unsplash
Tip #3: Active listening/reading: What are people talking about at work? What is the biggest news today on Twitter (e.g. another company getting hacked)? What are the trending topics on Reddit? Write those down and start researching these topics in your spare time. I subscribed to a bunch of newsletters like CB insights after it came up in during one of our team’s conversation. This may sound like information overload, but this is how to build a solid foundation at the start. As a blogger, I have to keep my audience in mind. Without good research, I cannot write about something that people would be interested in reading.
Photo by Giulia Bertelli on Unsplash
Tip #4: Have the courage to try something new: I dabble in graphic design in my spare time. It has always been a hobby of mine. I picked up the bare minimum of Photoshop and Illustrator skills when I designed logos, invitations, and the backdrop for my wedding. Most of these skills sharpened overtime because I would come up with an idea and try to learn how to achieve the effect (e.g. making something look like gold foil) by watching YouTube. To be honest, I was pretty scared of using Sketch at the start, but because that was what our graphic designer was using, I had no choice but to jump straight in. What I am trying to say is that you should “step out of your comfort zone” and learn something new on the job! I use Sketch pretty much every day now and I do most of the graphic design required in the blog myself or source it from copyright free resources if I am short on time.
Photo by Chris Liverani on Unsplash
Tip #5: Stay on brand: This is not your own company. I think what many millennials have mistaken is that they can post whatever they want on the company Twitter/Reddit/Medium. Unfortunately, I’ve seen a few bad examples. Maintaining a professional tone is always necessary. Be courteous to your readers. It is important to have a little bit of a personality in content creation, but don’t go overboard. If your intended readers are male techies, then you need to spend some time learning the tone and vocab commonly used on popular blogposts. Speak their language and you will attract readers.
The advice that I’ve given is applicable to any tech field. The best hustlers that I have met all put in a significant amount of work and time to get to where they are today. One of my friends spends his Sunday meeting with his start-up teams one after another. There is no such thing as an easy side hustle.
Hustle hard and smart!
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