Get To Know Sigma School's CTO, Ming!

The Origins With The Hacker Collective

I once read a famous quote. If you want to be average, do average things. But if you want to be extraordinary, you have to do extraordinary things. This is the mindset of a hacker. 

A hacker is unlike the traditional term you hear about in the news. Computer hackers? No. A hacker is really a mindset. To hack anything, be it computers, or cars, or food or life is really to figure out a new idea, to think outside the box, to be different and try things differently, often just for the fun of it or for profit. 

It really stems from this mindset that I started The Hacker Collective together with an awesome team. It was this vision that we could create a community of individuals who wanted to be different, and weren't willing to conform to society. Where people saw problems, they saw challenges and business opportunities waiting to be solved by them. 

The Vision of The Hacker Collective

We seek to gather individuals together to work on challenges together, to think up new ideas and dream big for the future of our society, country and even the world. It is our generation that will shape the future to come and we must do something different. 

When groups of hackers come together, they can do great stuff. 

My Background was one from finance. I was like any other who studied in uni and worked my way up through corporate companies, working in banks, marketing and sales roles. But deep inside me, I realised that I wanted something more. I wanted the freedom to be able to explore new ideas that was constantly popping up in my head. I didn’t just want to be another number in a company but wanted to make a change. Thus I took the plunge into technology, where I realised all innovation stems from. Where if I wanted a chance to disrupt the world, it would come from this superpower. 

Technology is what allowed me to “change the world at my fingertips” to quote a friend. Thus I spent a whole year locked up in my room learning the arts of software, coding and technology, devouring any book I could find. It was my natural habitat and my clear direction to be involved in tech and always be at the forefront of innovation, or at least try to. 

Life as a startup founder

I love the freedom entrepreneurship brings. Building your own startup with a clear goal and vision that you are passionate about gives one ungodly energy to work non-stop and be laser focused. 13 hour days 7 days a week is normal. I’ve never had a weekend in my life for the past 5 years, constantly working and building up the next big idea. 

Yet I’ve also seen the dark side to entrepreneurship, with friends and startup founders going into depressions especially when the going gets tough. When the results don’t come and when things are not looking up. The fear and ultimately realisation of failure hits people hard. 

To truly survive in entrepreneurship, I realise one needs to become like a cockroach. An animal that can live in the dirtiest of places and still survive, and even thrive. Because eventually, only through failures can one learn from their mistakes and be better. I strongly believe in eventual success. If you just keep persisting, you will get there. And you will ultimately succeed. You just need to survive the journey.

That’s why I launched EpicStartups. A company aimed at co-founding startups with entrepreneurs together. We focus on speeding up the entrepreneurial success timeline down to months by providing the frameworks and ideas to what works in business. We have our learnings and ecosystem that will assist any entrepreneur that works with us. From digital marketing to tech to fundraising, we journey with the individual to ensure they hit all their milestones and ultimately fundraise the startup. 

Right now, I'm constantly juggling between the roles of business and tech, having to manage both at the same time whilst the startups I manage grow to realise their full potential. 

Developing the mindset

Developing this mindset required the ability to 

1. Constantly be learning
2. Always be thinking up new ways to do something different
3. Be willing to problem solve

My business partner and I realised that learning to code was a great way to develop this Hacker Mindset. When you build software, you are constantly learning and solving problems, albeit at the code level. But it trains the mind to always be thinking up new ways to do something, to try and find a better way to do it and ultimately create better, faster code. This translates very well into real life and the thinking process trained up during coding ripples throughout the way the individual thinks in just about any problem they will face. Giving them the power of technology allows them to see the world in a different lens. Every problem is something to be solved with technology. And if it can’t be solved, they will figure out a way to solve it. It really does give the individual super powers.

The future of education 

Sigma School was the brainchild of my business partner Deric, who believed and saw the same vision I saw in education. That ultimately if we are to build up more hackers in this world, we need more techies and people with this hacker mindset. 

I was an outcome of an individual without a formal university education in software, but yet I managed to secure a great paying junior software developer job with just 1 year of learning, a far cry from the 3-4 years required of current software degrees. 

We felt that education in the traditional education setting failed to keep up with the current trends in software. It was outdated and needed remodelling. There was a lack of practicality and too much theory.

Thus Sigma School is our attempt at changing the way education is done. No longer do people learn in classes from a teacher, but ultimately they learn from each other. The peer to peer learning model promised to lower costs, make learning fun and instil the confidence for students to teach each other. 

As the famous saying goes, “we learn best from teaching others”. So when students of Sigma School teach each other, they gain greater understanding of the concepts and deeper mastery. You truly understand a topic only if you teach another person and are able to answer their questions. 

How would Sigma School be different from traditional education

1. A teacherless model. There’s no concept of teachers, but fundamentally mentors and jumpstarters. These individuals are more like guides who help the group if they get stuck and set the direction for where learning is going. Setting this roadmap is important to give students a clarity of mind to where they are headed and not make the mistakes that most would make if they were just going into software blind. I’m not saying that it’s bad to get lost. On the contrary it’s good to just wonder and explore. However, with a clear roadmap, the learner would save lots of time exploring deadends that do not advance their career or tech skills.
   
2. Always on the cutting edge of learning. Because the school is never fixed to a particular syllabus, there’s always going to be new learning content and materials. Students are free to suggest and learn up new topics in tech. The school releases new materials on a frequent basis to ensure that we are always pushing the boundaries of new ideas.
   
3. Practicals over theory. There’s nothing wrong with theory, but learning by doing is the best way to learn something. There’s a fine balance between doing something and understanding something. We veer towards being able to do first and get practical results. Only then does the theory come into play for individuals to gain a better appreciation of the underlying theory behind their work.
   
   Practicals also make it faster for students to know the usefulness of their learning, thus motivating them to learn faster due to the practical nature of the skill.

My goals and journey

I’ve made the decision a long time ago that I wanted to be the guy that was at the forefront of innovation. I didn't just want to be the spectator but the participant in the field. Someone that could shape the future, not let the future shape me. Thus, I'm fully invested in fields of tech, software, engineering and maths. It’s these fields that I believe would give us the tools needed to make radical changes in the future. 

Nevertheless, my passion and love for business still remains. For without business and entrepreneurship, we would all just be researchers, unable to commercialise and bring these innovations to the market. Thus it’s a fine line between the two worlds. With my other venture Epic Startups, we are fully focused on building up this capability to be both business and tech at the same time. To help startup founders and researchers to commercialise their tech, business ideas and go to market fast with fundraising grants. 

The grand vision: Combining Education, Startups and Community together

With the three companies coming together to build a solid ecosystem of innovation and disruption for the generations to come, I believe together we can change this world and shape the future for the betterment of humanity. For those of us who dream of reaching for the stars, let it be known that those who dare to dream, are the ones who will make it happen. 

So let’s dare to dream, my friends, and let’s build this future together.

Thanks for reading till the end

If you like what you’re seeing and connect with my vision, join me at Sigma School, we’re at the forefront of this journey to innovate, rethink and reinvent the way education is done.

Here’s to redefining education. Cheers!

Email us directly at hello@sigmaschool.co!

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