So this is our experience as a team at @Sandb0xSchool and a first time tech startup founder of @hulagph at age 17. Read along:

Our entry for @Sandb0xSchool is @hulagph, a fitness app that wants to make workouts more fun and exciting. Our team is one of the top 24 teams that was able to get in, out of the 528 applicants.

We're we lucky? We don't know.

All we know is that we gave it our best. We did what we could do and all that paid off in the end when we got in.

First impressions: an intimidating opportunity (what we like to call it). Well for one, we're young and have no significant experience whatsoever but I guess there was no harm in trying it out and giving it our best.

'Wow' was the first word we used to describe it. We got a look at so many amazing people. They are already software engineers, UX/UI researchers, engineers, or an expert at something.

We got in a community full of people we didn't expect to meet, especially while we're just 17. They're cool and amazing people. They helped us grow so much.

Speaking of which, we could really say that in just the span of 3 weeks, we've grown and learned so much more than what we do at school. Not just the 'hard' skills but the 'soft' skills too - both of which are considered to be very important.

Turning your ideas into a reality is 1000x easier when there's someone on your back and @Sandb0xSchool made it possible through exclusive mentorships and a collaborative community - where we definitely learned a lot of stuff.

We were encouraged to collaborate with one another not compete. We shared ideas on how different teams could improve on theirs. For us especially, as we don't really know a lot of things and lack the experience.

We were basically brought to a whole new world - the startup world. The experience is such a rush. Everything was moving so fast and it already felt like months of work, where in reality it was just 3 weeks!

So yeah, basically our goal there was just to learn as much as possible, gain experience, and apply it to our other business; but all that changed...

While our original goal still stands, we have a new goal:
to really commit in creating our startup, @hulagph.

We were influenced by the people around us, they kept pushing us to be better and to really act on our ideas - "Build. Measure. Learn" as our admin always likes to say.

To end this thread, we'd like to say that we're really not here for the money but rather for the experience and the thrill of it. Passion is our driving force and our passion is to create.

To really end this thread (lol), a big thank you to @Sandb0xSchool for this golden opportunity! We'll use what we learned to do good and share it with others. Thanks!