Without College

I tried college twice. I couldn't continue either time. This is what I did instead, and what it cost me.

I never went to college.

That's not entirely true. I tried. Twice.

And both times, I couldn't continue.

I'm not going to write one of those posts that says college is a scam and you should drop out. I don't believe that. College gives people things I had to find the hard way: structure, credibility, a network, and depth.

This is just my story. What I did without it, and what not having it cost me.

A guava tree and the rain

I grew up in a rural area of Costa Rica. Outside the city. Far from anything that looked like Silicon Valley.

As a kid I loved archaeology, dinosaurs and sharks. I was really good at drawing.

I built a mini fort in a guava tree. Just a rope and two branches. That's where I went to think.

When it rained, that was my focus time. Rain meant staying inside. And staying inside meant learning or creating something.

I spent hours, days, learning PHP, HTML and JavaScript.

I felt limited. Where I lived, the opportunities didn't come to you. So I compensated with the internet. Tools like Atom and After Effects. Philosophy, too. Nietzsche, Socrates. Hours on Quora.

And in tenth grade, I got third place in Costa Rica's national Lego Robotics competition.

None of that came with a diploma. But looking back, that's where my education really started.

First lesson: you don't need to live where the opportunities are. You need to find where the knowledge is.

My first tuition: $100 a month

At 16, I learned WordPress in less than two weeks.

I got my first client: the owner of a shopping center with more than 50 stores. I built him an e-commerce site and charged $100 a month.

I undercharged. Badly. Out of fear and not knowing better.

But here's what I did with that money: I paid for Platzi.

That was my college. My tuition was a WordPress client.

And I did something I think matters more than the platform itself. I started planning. What to learn, in what order, and why.

There's a quote from Eisenhower I love: plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.

Nobody gave me a curriculum. So I built one. I'd ask myself: what do I need to know right now to build the next thing? Then I'd learn exactly that.

Since then I've completed more than 70 courses on Platzi. MasterClass courses too, like Alexis Ohanian's on building a startup, and one on rebuilding focus. A sales course. Paul Graham's essays are still on my reading list.

Second lesson: if nobody gives you a curriculum, you have to design one. And you have to know why each piece is there.

Learn it, then sell it

The difference between my education and a classroom was simple: I monetized almost everything I learned, almost immediately.

Learned WordPress? Sold it within weeks.

Learned Figma? Prototyped Studently, an all-in-one platform for teachers, from idea to MVP in less than three weeks. Validated it with six teachers.

Learned to build products? Built Hoosling, a crypto fundraising platform. Got interest from VCs.

That loop, learn, build, sell, reinvest, was faster than any semester. And the feedback was real. When a client pays you, you know it worked. When a client doesn't, you know it didn't.

Third lesson: learning sticks when there's money or users on the other side of it.

Who I got to work with

Without a degree, I've worked with people I never imagined I'd meet.

Stefan Rust, former CEO of bitcoin.com, on Index Fun. I built around 80% of the app, and it was listed among the 10 most revolutionary web3 apps in Asia.

Fleming Shi, CTO of Nitel, on a telecom platform migration for Comcast Business.

A former NASA employee, on AI crypto trading systems.

The former director of Microsoft Latam.

Products with more than 500K users, backed by Sequoia.

Nobody in those rooms asked me where I studied. They asked what I had built.

At 20, I was making around $120,000 a year. In Costa Rica. Without a degree.

The part people don't talk about

Here's where I have to be honest, because most "no college" stories skip this.

At 19, I got fired.

The reason: lack of knowledge in development and project management.

That's the cost of learning on your own. You learn what you need to build the next thing. But you skip what you don't know you need. Gaps nobody points out until they cost you something.

A university forces you through the boring fundamentals. Self-learning lets you skip them. And sometimes, you shouldn't.

There's another one. I lost about two years as an employee without really learning. Without a curriculum, without a professor, without exams, nobody tells you that you've stopped growing. You have to notice it yourself. I didn't, until it was too late.

Fourth lesson: self-learning gives you speed. It also gives you blind spots. You need someone, a mentor, a client, a failure, to show you where they are.

Mentors as my professors

That's why I've always looked for mentors.

If you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room.

After Hoosling died because we couldn't sell, I found Alexander Guevara, a former VP at Open English. I got 1:1 coaching from a VP of Sales at WeWork. In 2026, I'm working with Nicholas DeMarinis as a mentor in go-to-market.

They are my professors. They don't give grades. They give feedback. And feedback from people who've already done it is worth more than any exam I could have taken.

Today I'd put it a little differently: I'm not the smartest in the room, and I know how to bring together the ones who are.

Now: learning something hard

Here's where the story gets interesting again.

I'm 22. I'm building Rosvelt. And on the side, I'm learning robotics, because I think that's where the ball is going.

And for the first time, "learn just enough to build the next thing" might not be enough.

Robotics means math. Physics. Probability and statistics. Reading research papers from the frontier and actually understanding them. Knowing how things run on real hardware, not just inside a library.

That's exactly the kind of depth college gives you and I skipped.

So I'm doing it my way, but more seriously. Hands and theory at the same time. A robotic arm kit on my desk.

I'm not trying to become a researcher. That's not my story. My story is putting the right people together and making it happen. But to do that well, I need enough depth to hire and evaluate the people who really know, to have credibility with VCs and talent, and to smell what's real and what's hype.

And the goal is what Naval calls specific knowledge: knowledge that can't easily be trained into someone else. That's not something you get from a diploma. It's something you get from a weird path.

Fifth lesson: without college, you get to choose what to learn. That also means you have to choose the hard things on purpose.

Would I do it again?

People ask me if I regret not finishing college.

Honestly? I don't regret the path. It gave me speed, real clients, real money, and real failures early. It forced me to learn how to learn.

But I don't romanticize it either. It cost me a job. It left gaps I'm still filling. It made some doors harder to open.

If you're thinking about skipping college, here's what I'd say:

You're not skipping education. You're becoming responsible for it.

Nobody will design your curriculum. Nobody will tell you when you're behind. Nobody will force you through the boring parts.

That has to be you.

If I'm scared of something, I compensate for it with knowledge.

I didn't have college. I had a guava tree, the rain, an internet connection, and $100 a month.

It turned out to be enough to start.

It's never enough to stop.