What are the best ways to become a successful computer engineering entrepreneur?

This is a real challenge when you are starting, because the software world is huge and very deep per niche. In one side you will find several areas more interesting for creative people such as frontend, UX/UI or QA. On the other hand, you will faced more structured niches such as backend or DB development; if you are someone more analytical it should be your first bet.

As an ethical hacker since the age of 13 years old, I have always known that, should I want my reach to expand significantly, I was forced to equally learn AI to help me digest largest amounts of user data. Throughout my 6+ year entrepreneurial journey, cybersecurity and AI have always been my expert focus. In fact, my previous venture automated the ethical hacking process, using SaaS as a business model. Upon exiting such venture, I co-founded another company which went ever deeper into my niche, as I was already getting client requests to jump right in. That was the beginning of my leading the development of an automated smart contract security vulnerability detection solution, which went viral in the space.

A common stumbling block to validation is to believe your own assumptions. It should be paramount that you verify that you know what your Customers value and why. Picking a look, feel or function that you like is not what matters. It's about finding what your Customers value. Yes, this can be difficult to do because what they won't always speak clearly in terms you understand. As Henry Ford said "if I had asked them what they wanted they would have said a faster horse". He clearly had a vision that brought more value to them beyond just another type of horse. You can have vision and be passionate but validation must be about critically determining what value you can bring and showing that it pencils out into a potentially viable business.

I am happy to share value on what I believe is one of the hardest parts of any product which is deep-tech, as both the startups that I have created have been in this category. First of all, deep-tech is generally regarded as a product category for a startup that is developing a software solution that requires significant time, investment, hard skills and complexity to even create the MVP, fundamental to showcase talent and product-market-fit. Here are some advices that I always recommend: 1. Do not raise money before MVP creation unless you absolutely need to. Even forcing yourself not to raise at first (pre-seed), will allow you to truly become a valuable founder. 2. Have your tech team in-house, as small as it may be. 3. Get mentors

I have a rather strong opinion in this matter, as it has been fundamental to driving my success and next steps in my entrepreneurial journey. "It is only through exposing yourself to hardship and tough situations that you truly become the person you need to become to take your company to the next level". For this reason, I can't stress enough the importance of self-building yourself, and being able to listen to the noise. Some lessons that I have learned to build your skills: 1. Expose yourself to hard situation on purpose. 2. Fail fast and one day success will happen fast. 3. Ask for feedback constantly from people that don't have anything for or against you as bias. 4. Do not pay for a professional network, build it yourself.

In the internet era, you can learn from many places with world class mentors and experts. Something that can set you apart of the average are the hackathons, contests and marathons; there are several of them around and you can build huge things while learning and growing.

It is one of the most fundamental parts of becoming an entrepreneur: building a strong network. In fact, it is much more different than how your professional network generally in big corporate works. Here are some tips and lessons that I have learned to build a strong network: 1. Albeit there being many “services” out there to assist to build your own network, it is however not something you can pay for, but rather create and nourish yourself. Be wary of many accelerators that dilute equity to share their own network with you. 2. Be authentic - lying will only most likely get closer to people that are in the same boat as you are. 3. Be empowering above all, it always comes back multiplied.

Did you know that, in order to apply to Y Combinator (one of the world's best startup incubators in the world), you have to share with them another alternative idea that you would like to pursue? This is because your brand should not be purely tied to your startup, but rather to the authenticity of your character. The only important game that is worth playing is the long-term game, and, in order to succeed in this game, it is generally not recommended to take shortcuts. Your brand should be something that defines not only where your uniqueness as a person and as a professional lies, but also represent a hard competitive, hard set of skills that attract people to you.

Creating your personal portfolio with your own interesting projects is a valuable exercise for your professional career as Software Engineer. From my experience, I started creating selling products and founding a startup in the same way, it helped me with soft and hard skills as well.