#046 - Ben Awad: Becoming the Internet's Most Impactful Programmer

rational vc

Ben Awad is a YouTuber, software engineer, and the founder of VoidPet.com. He has 500k YouTube subscribers, 800k TikTok followers, and is known for his legendary coding tutorials and humorous and authentic videos. We discussed numerous topics. Check the timestamps below for topics and enjoy the audio, or you can watch the video over on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/BKhV-kPavnk

Ben's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bawad Ben's TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@benawad Ben's Twitter: https://twitter.com/benawad Ben's startup: https://voidpet.com/ Ben's GitHub: https://github.com/benawad Ben's Discord: https://discord.gg/benawad Ben's programmer outfit: https://youtube.com/shorts/-P418Qerexs?feature=share

00:00 Teaser 00:40 Intro (Guest & Co-host) 03:40 Ben's first line of code 06:00 Turning down FAANG and Leetcode 11:33 Layoffs / Finding jobs 13:15 Skin in the game 13:58 Interviews are broken 16:44 Advice to technical content creators 22:05 Being authentic online 27:57 Coding on Twitch vs YouTube 30:10 Why you should create on TikTok 33:25 Hating Android development / Loving React 36:00 Tech stack 38:18 GitHub Copilot 39:35 Tech stack again 40:39 Deno 42:30 The AI discussion 44:10 VoidPet (Ben's startup) 49:40 Rejected by YC / fundraise vs bootstrap 56:29 Career advice to newbies 1:00:09 Ben's drip 1:01:42 Saffron App 1:04:29 Ben's mentors 1:06:25 Wrap up - Get in touch with us: Our website (all essays and podcasts): https://rationalvc.com Our investment fund: https://rational.fund Cyrus' Twitter: https://twitter.com/CyrusYari Parsa's Twitter: https://twitter.com/pzrsaa Parsa's website: https://parsam.io Iman's Twitter: https://twitter.com/iman_olya - Disclaimer: The materials provided are solely for informational or entertainment purposes and do not constitute investment or legal advice. All opinions expressed by hosts and guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of their employer(s). No copyright infringement intended. #benawad #coding #programmer