I’ve been asked to do a mentoring session at my old school today. I prepared a list of advice/thoughts and probably won’t get to cover much of it as the format is a sort of speed dating Q&A session, so I’m posting the list here for posterity:

My name is Robin Hilliard and I graduated from Fort Street in 1988. I got just enough in the HSC to get into Computer Science and Maths at Sydney Uni, failed one and a half years of it because I was in six choirs at once and supporting myself working part time in bookshops, and eventually got my BSc in 1995.

I worked for dot coms, consulting and software companies and founded a tech company in 2004 that’s now listed on the Australian stock exchange. I’m not particularly special and have also benefited from some good luck.

I only have six minutes so I’ve prepared a list of hopefully useful advice, and I’ll be staying afterwards if you want to come back to me with any questions.

Continuing education

Use your curiosity and enthusiasm when it hits you. It’s precious. Use it to learn, stay open, and collect interests. Read a book, do a short course, talk to someone about it. Don’t wait.

If you’re continuing your education, remember education is a business, you are a customer, and you are going to be marketed at like crazy. If in doubt stick to the “core” subjects, the super specialised cool ones are probably there to get you in the door.

Don’t come out the other end of whatever you did a twenty-something school student. Your course will end and everything else in your life will keep going. At uni, the clubs, the societies, a job, and the extra-curricular stuff are at least half of what you get out of being there. I probably overdid it but that’s adulting. Don’t miss it.

At the consulting firm I joined it was easy to tell which new hires had worked in a customer-facing job while doing Uni. They were always great. It’s public-speaking-lite.

Joining the workforce

Being a decent person and a good communicator goes a looong way. Employers know you got the qualification, what they care about is how you will fit with the team.

People wearing suits are just people who went to a suit shop.

Always be honest. Admit when you don’t know something, then learn it. It’s not the Hunger Games. If it is, change jobs.

Starting your own business

You can start your own business. It doesn’t have to be cut-throat, or mysteriously difficult.

By the time you finish your education, you have been inside learning institutions your whole life. Don’t make the mistake of only imagining your career as one institution after another. Looking back, a lot of people do exactly that. It isn’t the only way.

Use the window before you have big commitments to take risks with your income.

Don’t give up on starting a business because you think it can’t work with a family. In fact it can be easier. You can afford help with child care, and paying for that help is investing in your career.

Everyone struggles to have business ideas from the outside.

If they’ve already made blockbuster movies about it that ship has sailed.

Get close enough to the detail of an industry — that’s what your previous jobs are for — and you’ll find lots of low-hanging fruit problems, so low you can’t believe they’re problems people actually have. We call them “potatoes”.

Buy someone a coffee. A potential client, or an industry expert, to bounce an idea off. Or someone who recently left a competitor and has tea to spill. LinkedIn is how you find them.

Find a potato. Fix it for someone. Get paid. Do it again. Then ask: how many people have that problem? What did it cost you to fix it? What did they pay you? Get that far, and getting funding to grow is much easier than you might think.

Asking for money is terrifying the first few times. Everyone feels this. Get over it as quickly as you can.

Value your time, and your knowledge. Being available costs money too.

The key skill is to be optimistic and realistic at the same time. The rest is luck and hard work.

About AI

For all the AI slop, creatives, engineers, and scientists are doing miraculous things with it. For me and my team it’s like being given an Iron Man suit. Saying AI is replacing software engineers is like saying typewriters are replacing authors. It’s much, much more than coding.

AI capability is changing monthly. You really are living in interesting times. Don’t underestimate what AI can do. There’s a huge gap, right now, between the free models and the frontier ones.

There’s a real skill to using AI well. You have to learn it and practice it, like anything else.

When my board asks what we’re doing about AI, I say we keep hiring the best people and giving them access to the best AI. A rising tide lifts all boats.

The main concern is how your generation is going to learn and develop expertise. That said, expertise ages very quickly, and most of the things you’ll need expertise in are yet to be invented. Go invent them.