Since I was little, I had always dreamed of studying abroad. In 2017, after graduating from high school with an academic excellence award, I asked my parents to support me on my decision to study abroad, but they didn’t. Instead, they encouraged me to study in the best university in Peru and once I completed my bachelors I could pursue a masters abroad, a common career route.

During all my life, my parents have been my biggest supporters. They declined the idea of studying abroad because they thought the time I would spend applying to universities and getting accepted would take too long or the tuition fees would be too expensive. Just like me, they were uneducated in this topic, so they didn’t know any better. Now I know that if I was committed to studying abroad I should’ve found a way to do so: figure out every single requirement, be intense with my desire until convincing them, reach out to others for help, etc. Basically, take matters into my own hands. But I didn’t do that, instead I followed their advice: stay in Peru.

My sister is two years younger than me. In 2019, she graduated from high school and convinced my parents to allow her to study abroad. Unlike me, she took the time to investigate all information required: deadlines, evaluations required, tuition fees, etc. When she approached them for their support, it didn’t seem like a far-fetched idea, now it was feasible. As you may imagine, convincing them was easier.

Over the course of two years, she completed all requirements to enroll in university successfully. She did a foundation year at a university in Peru, took the required English test, applied for the F-1 Visa, talked to counselors, and filled a lot of formularies. In January 2022, she moved from Peru to the United States to pursue her undergraduate degree. By then, I was 20 years old and I was still studying in Peru, four years had gone by since I started university*.

Those four years were a very dark period in my life. I hated studying in Peru and contemplated dropping out on countless occasions. I felt extremely depressed and insecure because I was living a life I didn’t want for myself. A couple of semesters, I withdrew from all classes without telling my parents. I went from receiving an academic excellence award in high school to failing almost all courses in a semester. I constantly felt like a misfit and couldn’t stop thinking that was not the right path for me.

But my perspective changed the day I dropped my sister off in the airport. Seeing her leave to pursue her dreams lit a fire in me—I realized that no matter how bad I felt, if I didn’t do something to leave Peru, I would stay there forever. With time, I will regret my lack of decisiveness and the sadness will grow stronger. That day, I decided I was going to take coding seriously.

Prior to that event, I’ve attempted to learn to code but never stick to it. I purchased a web development bootcamp, completed a few modules, and then quitted. I would try to complete the program but I would end up getting bored of the never-ending tutorial hell. Two things happened that day that changed my life:

A couple of weeks later, Alonso, my best friend since middle school, uploaded an Instagram story asking if anyone was interested in working together on figuring out a way to make money with NFTs. I replied to him and said that I was dubious about that venture, but mentioned that I was also looking for someone to work together on a project. We agreed on meeting soon to talk about it.

It’s important to highlight here that although I despised studying for my classes in university, I loved and was obsessed with learning on my own. All the time I should’ve spent studying for my classes I would devote to learning about topics that I was interested in: investing, crypto, personal development, spirituality, etc.

When I went over to his house to brainstorm business ideas I had been reading a lot about crypto, so the first idea I proposed was to build an Ethereum lottery. In an Ethereum lottery, people pay Ethereum to enter, and a computer program picks the winner. It was hard to make this venture profitable because you need many people to join to make enough money, and there are rules and strong competition that make it difficult. We discussed this idea for a week and disregarded it eventually.

In January 2020, three months before the pandemic started, I resigned as a private tutor hire for an agency. Since my freshman year, I tutored high-school students to pay for my personal expenses, mostly focusing on math. During the pandemic, I stopped teaching and focused on moving forward with my degree. The idea Alonso and I decided to pursue was inspired by my experience as a private tutor.

While working at the agency, I recognized a lot of opportunities for improvement in their operations:

A few weeks went by and every day after work I would go to Alonso’s house. I was working at a Colombian scale-up as a Financial Analyst around that time. I explained these three problems to him and presented my solution: We would emulate the agency business model, but incorporate tech in our operations. By using a mobile app, we will hire remotely, reduce communications between tutors and students to the minimum, never lose a class, and pay tutors a fair wage. Alonso liked the idea and we agreed on making it a reality.

But, there was a problem: we didn’t possess the skills to pursue our idea with our main differentiator. In other words, none of us knew how to code a mobile app, which according to us, was the only thing required to succeed with our startup. To us, building a mobile app was as complex as building a rocket in your backyard, something only geniuses could do.

I would love to say that we contemplated multiple paths to solve this problem, but we didn’t. Almost a month had gone by since my sister had left Peru, so I was committed to learning how to code and build a project on my own. Thankfully, now I was not going to pursue this endeavor by myself, my best friend was also enrolled in the mission. We named our startup: Dudda.

Over the course of a year and a half we went into stealth mode. Alonso would design and I would code all day long. At the beginning of our journey we would meet after classes and work, but eventually I stopped going to classes and resigned from my job a few months before Dudda launched. I was obsessed with making Dudda successful and I knew that required my complete focus.

I wish I could say I followed a strategy to learn how to code and build Dudda. Unfortunately, I didn’t. The truth is that I simply sat on my computer every single day at the same time and googled how to solve the bug I was facing at that time. I did this for my first search when I was figuring out what programming language to pick—we built Dudda with React Native—until my last search when I was figuring out how to publish an app on the App Store and Google Play. Patiently, I always found a way to solve the problem I was facing.

I am very proud to say that when I started ChatGPT had not been released, so I had to learn everything by navigating Stack Overflow, joining Discord servers, messaging random people asking for help, watching YouTube videos, reading documentation, etc. This foundation was instrumental in my learning journey because it taught me the importance of understanding the why behind a bug rather than being desperate to find the quickfix. Now, I feel confident that I can tackle any technical problem given an appropriate time frame and with the right set of tools.

Dudda was officially launched on May 26, 2023, the day of my twenty-two birthday; more than three hundred people signed up to our waiting list. You can read more about Dudda’s story here.