Nicholas Chua: Building a Solution for Meta | E14

Nicholas Chua is a 17-year old entrepreneur and independent business owner. As a product manager living in the LA Metropolitan area, Nicholas is interested in building equitable products and software to solve the world’s biggest problems. Between his interests in product management, assistive technology, and digital marketing, he hopes to bring new developments to people in large numbers. Recently, he finished up a global 4-week challenge sprint against Meta creating a safer algorithm for Instagram reels from a psychological standpoint to quell doomscrolling, which won First Place out of 80 teams across 300+ cities.

In this episode, we discuss product management, mindsets, how he taught himself technical skills, gathering a winning team and the process he went through to lead his team to victory.

Having held internships and started companies while being self-taught all at a young age, today's guest Nicholas shares lessons learned and his mindsets on his approach to work to be successful in projects and generate results.

Topics:

• (00:00) - Intro
• (00:56) - Our guest's introduction
• (01:38) - What inspired you to get into product management and what it means to you
• (02:34) - How you taught yourself product management, assistive technology and digital marketing
• (03:36) - Process from the beginning of the challenge to winning the grand prize globally. Highlights as the Product Manager of your team. Experience pitching to Meta Oversight Board Executives
• (09:26) - How to gather a great team and set a great culture
• (11:13) - Current state of social media platforms. Good or bad?
• (13:01) - Mindsets you have learned or found useful having led multiple teams
• (14:32) - Cinematography and editing for over 600,000+ viewers

• (17:40) - Connections between cinematography and product creation
• (19:40) - Message to like-minded youth peers
• (22:02) - Co-creating products with 3 companies with over $545,000+ raised to date
• (24:35) - Balancing work (internships, businesses and competitions) alongside studies as a young ambitious person building stuff

• (26:59) - Who inspires you?
• (28:12) - What are you working on next?
• (29:59) - Our guest's last question
• (31:42) - Find online

Here are his action items:

1. Look out for grit, communication, adaptability and willingness to be taught and work hard when taking people on board any team.

2. Be willing to pivot 180 on a project so everyone's on the same page if necessary.

3. Communicate is the backbone you should always preach by!

We hope you find value in our discussion and learn useful information!

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Nicholas:

Website - https://nicholaschua.com/

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholas-y-chua/

🎥 Edited by Josh

🗓️ Recorded on March 5th, 2024