Joël Heil Escobar

Joël Heil Escobar
joël heil escobar

i'm a software engineer and love building communities.

a little background

i started a yt channel at 10. minecraft mods and tech reviews, mostly.
at 14, i started a web dev and video agency.

then i got bored did ecom and pretty much everything else to make money online.

i studied computer science at CODE University and Stanford

yfn

at 16, i ran a podcast interviewing founders about what went wrong building their companies. while doing distribution on linkedin, i met other 16y olds who were building startups.

together we started the Young Founders Network , germany's largest community for founders under 25.

today we have over 2,200+ members, 100+ volunteers and €250k+ raised for entrepreneurial education.

work

2026
2025
2024
2023
earlier

Problem
What I built
Result
    Live project ↗ Source ↗

    notes

    Essays
    Beliefs
    • Every day life
      • have a bias towards action
      • if you're the smartest person in the room, switch the room
      • you can't control what happens, only how you react to it
      • we overestimate one year and underestimate five
      • no success without focus
      • avoid luxury, play the long financial game
      • prioritize sleep
      • be minimalistic
    • Building products
      • sell before you build
      • get very close to your customers: work in their office if you can, talk to them daily if not
      • build something a few users love, not something many users like
      • if it takes more than a sentence to explain, it's too complicated
      • work on the idea you think about when you're not trying to think about work
      • deciding what not to do matters as much as deciding what to do
      • telling people your idea isn't dangerous, good ideas don't sound worth stealing
      • fail fast and often
      • if everything seems under control, you're not going fast enough
      • stay optimistic when your world is melting down
      • acknowledge luck and risk in achievements, yours and others'
      • in the beginning of a company there is no management
    • Learning
      • being a student is easy, learning takes actual work
      • build projects to learn a topic, don't just read about it
      • understand instead of memorizing
      • active recall and spaced repetition beat rereading
      • don't copy knowledge you haven't grasped
      • take breaks (pomodoro) and move during them
    • Work and growth
      • shipping fast beats the best strategy
      • rely on systems, not willpower
      • be ruthlessly truth-seeking
      • guard each yes
      • make progress that makes future progress easier
      • ask boldly, revise beliefs quickly
    Resources

    if you're building something interesting, i'd like to hear about it :)

    x linkedin github email