This is the stuff your business class will never teach you.

Let’s be real for a second.

If you think the early days of a company look like clean strategy decks, fancy frameworks, and aesthetically pleasing Notion pages… you’ve never built anything in the real world.

The truth?
You have to be a little bit hood, a little bit unhinged, and a whole lot scrappy to create something meaningful. Real builders move faster, hustle harder, and take risks professors wouldn’t dare put on a syllabus.

When I first started building the OCE community, it wasn’t cute.
No plan.
No team.
Just Excel sheets, Google Docs, free Canva trials, a vision, and absolute balls of steel.

So I did what any rational person trying to build something from scratch would do:

But FIRST

If you are new, welcome to OCE’s weekly newsletter curated for the ambitious youth…here are some articles you missed from previous weeks:

📈

Why No One Successful Wants to Mentor You

Best tools for building your passion project

The Future Belongs to Borderless Thinkers

1. Poster Warfare

I printed homemade posters and snuck into youth conferences that I crashed.
Handed them out to anyone with a heartbeat.
Covered bathroom stalls.
(Shoutout to the conference god for letting me walk out free)

2. DM Domination

I joined what felt like every Facebook and Instagram community for youth, changemakers, and students.
I sent hundreds of personal DMs.
I converted strangers → followers → community members.
I sent so many messages that Facebook AND IG suspended me for a week.
Honestly? Worth it.

3. Email Blitz Ops

I scraped the internet for program directors, nonprofit leads, founders, educators — anyone who might listen — using Apollo.io.
Then I mass emailed what felt like the entire planet.

Was any of this sustainable?
Absolutely not.

But did it work?
Yes.
Because momentum > perfection.
Scrappiness > theory.
Data points > hypothetical slide decks.

Your professor?
Probably still thinking about the “right framework.”
Real builders?
We’re out here creating frameworks from chaos.

Move fast. Move fearlessly. Move like a gangster.

Like what you read? Share with friends!

PS. This summer, we are going to tackle pressing global issues and drive innovation in regions (such as your own community) where it is needed the most. Want in?

We run a summer cohort for ambitious youth (high school and undergrads) to work directly with world-class founders while learning from Silicon Valley leaders.

OCE Summer Cohort

You can also explore purposeful opportunities through our Impact Internship Opportunities Database.

Get Curious.

Lena

https://www.openclassroomexperience.com/