the neodev league was established overnight through one random discord voice call in may of 2024.

here's the truth: the boys and i just attended a poorly ran hackathon and we felt that we could do better, even as high school students.

the blueprint we cooked up was unique: a competition between all high schools in our region. we essentially pioneered a never-seen-before format:

our excitement died quickly faded when we realized how difficult it actually was to start a tech event from scratch. in reality, we were just unexperienced high school students with zero connections ☠️.

it went stale for a few months. all our cold emails were being ghosted and we were lowkey giving up hope. until we hit a breakthrough in early september.

as summer vacation rolled to an end, the team mutually decided to spend a weekend at uwaterloo to lock in.

as we discussed our lack of progress, we collectively knew that we were missing something. as we spent the day applying to grants, shooting some promotional reels for instagram, and working on our website, it clicked.

our event was unconventional—we were not just trying to run another ordinary hackathon, but rather, a vision to inspire the next generation of builders. we aspired to craft an experience that people would never forget.

new plan: we had to pitch to startup founders. if anybody would see eye-to-eye with our vision, it would be ceos.

the pieces started falling together. in mid september, we secured a $1k grant from ycf and secured a partnership with the wrdsb, our school board—they reposted neodev on all their mediums.

we also received sponsorship from both domino's and best buy—but the best was yet to come.

as we continued sending tailored emails to startup founders, balancing the workload from senior year of high school, we came into contact with roger kirkness. this man single-handedly saved neodev.

his response:

roger didn't attend university and is the ceo of a succesful startup—convictional, here in the waterloo region. he fully believed in our vision.

not only did he give us $1k , but he offered us the den1880 co-working space in uptown waterloo—a costly $8k+ state-of-the-arc venue if were to pay upfront.

and to realize that if the stars didn't line up, perhaps if roger decided not to check his sales inbox, or if he thought that it was spam, neodev might not have happened at all. goes to show that luck is required for success, but you have to put yourself in the position to get lucky.

october 26, the big day finally arrived. 100+ high school students showed up bright and early. it honestly felt special to see people lining up outside the entrance. making an impact on the community is an unbelievable feeling, would highly recommend.

there were many ups and downs, but neodev ran smoothly overall. many things cannot be put into words, and this experience was one of them. go watch the vlog.

neodev blossomed from a random idea at 3am to one of the most valuable experiences of my high school journey. the software side of neodev was minimal, but the social impact made neodev my most meaningful project yet.

neodev serves as a reminder to differentiate. we would not have caught roger's eye if our vision wasn't unique.

again, i focused more on the story of neodev rather than the actual event. genuinely watch the vlog if you're invested, it's tuff.

aspire to be different.