When was still studying finance and venture capital at Lancaster 糖心vlog官网, he caught what’s known as the “startup-founder” bug.
He was inspired by his peers, watching founders passionately pitch their visions, build their companies, and brainstorm new ideas.聽
At one point, Yee was no longer content to be an observer. Perhaps, he thought, perhaps he too can build something.
And he wasn’t just seeking to land a tech job with no experience; he wanted to create tech jobs for others.
So much so that even found himself helping to run a student venture capital firm to help support startups in Northern England.
Soon after Yee graduated in 2019 with First Class Honours and returned to his home country, Malaysia, he found himself working in venture capital.聽
Not building startups, but crunching numbers and compiling market research reports.
The shift was subtle — yet highly dissatisfying.
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How to find a calling, brutally
This was when Yee discovered how founders were almost frantic in their search for tech talent.聽
In most of the networking events he joined, founders said the same thing: We need coders. We need developers. Where are they?
But they weren’t willing to list any tech job with no experience.
Yet, despite this disheartening outlook, Yee decided to code. The prospect of becoming a talent was promising.
The journey to get there, however, was nothing short of brutal.
鈥淚t was probably the most demoralising point in my life,鈥� Yee wrote on . 鈥淟earning through online tutorials, building projects on my own, locking myself in my room and doing coding-related stuff from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day for at least six months.鈥�
In 2020, Yee left his first job, learned to code and develop full-stack web applications, and even tried pitching several startup ideas.聽
All of them failed.
But in 2022, his efforts finally paid off.聽
Pivoting from finance to freelance tech work to building a bootcamp
It started with picking up small projects.
He helped his Computer Science and IT friends with technical interviews and began teaching them for 100 Malaysian Ringgit (US$22.32) an hour. Within the next few months, he was closing projects worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Suddenly, his dream of building his own tech startup seemed achievable again.
But another problem arose — it was a struggle to hire the right developers to work with for his projects.
鈥淲hen I finally broke into the industry and started building projects for clients, the gap between what traditional education taught and what the industry actually needed became painfully clear,鈥� he said.
鈥淢any of the junior developers I met, even those with degrees, struggled with real-world problem-solving. They could recite theories, but when it came to debugging complex issues or working on scalable applications, they were lost.鈥�
Yee was frustrated. How was it that he, someone who didn鈥檛 take the traditional university route for tech, ended up being better prepared for real-world software development than actual graduates?聽
Then it clicked. Yee hypothesised that the current system wasn鈥檛 broken because students weren鈥檛 capable 鈥� it was broken because it didn鈥檛 prepare them the right way.
That鈥檚 when he