Hello Steemit! Recent Grad and Journey navigating College

What's up guys!

My name is Nik and I just graduated from California Polytechnic University in Business this last spring. However, to graduate I did my senior project paper on "Shifting Economics and Psychology in a digitally networked society" and stumbled upon this community during my research (my main talking points were identifying what solutions/work are being valued in relation to the past and how to transfer that value, also in comparison to the past). While at university I realized most of the business principles I had been learning were already outdated practices (outside of software classes in excel/sql), thus I made it a focus to involve myself in entrepreneurial endeavors throughout my 4 years. I tried and failed... a lot.

My journey started with an experience building out and conceptualizing a videogame crowdsourcing platform that became a finalist at our school's pitch competition in 2013. However, it was outpaced to market by itch.io which was pretty much exactly what we envisioned, as well as terribly managed due to a general lack of knowledge on how anything works at 19. We decided it was best to just shelve the project, learn from the failure, and move on.

I then followed that up in assisting an engineer friend setup and market two Kickstarter campaigns, one of which was successfully funded. That process of turning a successfully crowdfunded project into an actual business was such an albatross/headache (lost money to fraudulent Chinese manufacturers, poor order organization by KS) that we decided to envision and ideate a crowdfunding platform that actually caters to the Economics of launching a product instead of just concerning yourself with "how to Finance." We developed it to a point where we became a finalist at our school's entrepreneurship competition called "innovation quest" wherein we got to pitch to 30+ investors. We were roasted, and forced to learn the absolutely crushing lesson that investment pitching is equally, if not more, about selling yourself/the team than your idea (In actuality, I could go into a myriad of lessons learned from 12+ failed pitches to investors).

Finally, I helped my roommate and his girlfriend launch a drop-shipping cosmetics store wherein I focused mostly on sharpening my web analytics skills. The store was/is successful at garnering sustained sales from a month to month basis, however, I disassociated myself with the venture sadly due to conflicts with said roommate.

Anyway, I'm 22 and in that precarious stage of life where every day flushes with pure excitement or absolute dread about the future. Ive been supporting myself as of late by purging all my needless material goods on eBay; that's also servicing as an opportunity in teaching me the basics to merchandising. Watching the bids pour in is mesmerizing to say the least!

I also plan to assist and organize My mother's fashion teaching venture that she's been running in the basement of our house for 10+ years. She believes that people should have the opportunity to cultivate a style in a DIY manner (sewing dresses, creating accessories) for themselves as it serves to formulate a piece of your identity from which you can draw strength from for the rest of your life. She holds a fashion show of her students once a year in our driveway!

In embodying this philosophy, she's been crafting jewelry, handbags, shawls, etc. her whole life and selling anything she has no use for, offline, in various marketplaces. Naturally, Ive suggested to start and help her run an Etsy store of her goods, wherein, I will post the experiences of getting that off the ground here.

Other than figuring out my livelihood and posting various lessons/findings from that, I also plan on actively posting on my interests which includes music, movies, videogames, podcasts, books, NBA, and Fantasy Football; all of which im very passionate about. For example I just wrapped up Yuval Noah Harari's books Sapiens and Homo Deus and have been dying to discuss those with somebody.... anybody.... please :)

If you have any further questions ill gladly answer them and, in general, looking forward to meeting new people and sharing ideas/thoughts within this community.

Thanks if you made it this far and this community rocks! Take care guys.