Elvis was "just a village boy from Nigeria who had nothing but a dream and a Nokia J2ME feature phone." Today, he's a 19 year old Android developer who has worked on over 50 apps and currently works for an MIT startup. This is his story. Written by Elvis Chidera: https://twitter.com/elvisnchidera Read by Quincy Larson: https://twitter.com/ossia Original article: https://fcc.im/2Bwp50Y Learn to code for free at: https://www.freecodecamp.org Intro music by Vangough: https://fcc.im/2APOG02 Transcript:  In 2012, I was just a village boy from Nigeria who had nothing but a dream and a Nokia feature (J2ME) phone. Today, I’m a 19 year old Android developer who has worked on over 50 apps and currently works for an MIT startup. My name is Elvis Chidera and this is my story. My journey began with my curiosity about how to build a website. Growing up, I spent a lot of time online as I loved downloading games and reading Society Of Robots. I would save for weeks to buy a 10 MB internet bundle for 100 Naira ($0.28), and back in 2012, that could last for a month. When learning to code, I took the first and simple step of doing a Google search about how to build a website. I got millions of results. Not knowing where to start, I clicked on the first link I saw, which was from W3CSchools. The article explained that I need to learn some languages (HTML and CSS) to be able to build a website. I checked some other resources to confirm that I actually needed to learn these things. Then I started the W3CSchools HTML and CSS course. Each day after school I would head over to the website to study. Initially, the code examples and explanations didn’t make much sense to me. But I kept studying regardless. I referred to various tutorials when I was stuck. This helped me view the problems I encountered from many different angles. When I was younger, I struggled with my reading and writing skills in school. I was only able to get better at them through continuous practice. So I already had this model in my head: if I continue to practice — no matter how long it takes — I will ultimately be able to understand these programming languages. A few months of intensive learning got me acquainted with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. While I was still learning, a friend showed me the movie “The Social Network.” And after watching it, I was super motivated to build the next big thing. Thank you, Hollywood. I had a eureka moment a few days later. The idea was to build a better version of Facebook. At that time, you couldn’t see your Facebook friends that were online. Also, Facebook was built to connect with people you already knew in real life. So that was my billion dollar startup idea: build a social network with all the features Facebook didn’t have. Mark Zuckerberg - I’m coming for you - or so I thought. I spent the next few months building a better social network by adding any feature I could even think of using. I was naively confident that I was going to win. After completing the project, I did what anybody without an advertising budget would do. I spammed the internet for days and days. After several days of marketing, reality slapped me hard in the face. I only got 200 users, which I had to keep begging to come back to the site. I was depressed! A few months of hard work spent in vain. This taught me two important lessons the hard way: I needed to recognize the cold start AKA chicken and egg problem that new platforms face early on. I was building something I thought people needed. But I ended up building just another feature factory. While it’s okay to be motivated by a project, you also need to know when you’re headed down a dead end. I spent a few more months trying to see if I could get more people on my site, but retention numbers kept dancing toward 0%, and I eventually gave up on the project. But I was motivated by the motto of Lewis in Meet the Robinsons, “Keep moving forward.” Seeking inspiration for my next project, I reflected on the needs of my local