Interview with Elliot Choy
From a Photography Instagram to YouTube Sensation
Welcome to the first edition of Kairos Founders! Our first founder is Elliot Choy. Elliot is a good friend and fellow student at Vanderbilt. Let’s kick this off.
Elliot is a current junior at Vanderbilt studying business. He’s been passionate about social media since he started growing Instagram accounts in high school. He also started flipping products (e-commerce arbitrage) then. Over the past 6 months, he decided to start a YouTube channel and has grown it to over 150k subscribers.
Q: What got you interested in entrepreneurship?
EC: Gary Vaynerchuck. He’s very good at getting people onto the entrepreneurship train. He’s showing people that there’s another way to do life. Having that role model inspired me to start reselling and flipping in high school. I made 5 figures in high school, and I was like “Holy crap, I can make money doing this.”
Q: Why did you start pursuing social media aggressively?
EC: In high school, I didn't. With YouTube, I’ve discovered how you can monetize attention. It was eye-opening to see how you can leverage attention. Brands pay for ads to get audience attention. Recently, I realized this could be big. I also realized early how many cool people you can meet through social media.
Q: What are some the unique struggles you face as a student entrepreneur?
EC: After trying a lot of businesses, I realized that energy is a limiting factor, not time as most people assume. You can easily prioritize time, but it’s hard to spend the energy required to move multiple aspects of your life forward. The thing you think about falling asleep is what you should be focusing on. Pursue projects in waves; focus each semester on specific projects and intentionally prioritize those things.
Q: What’s the hardest lesson you’ve learned?
EC: You can’t have everything. I thought I could be an A student with a great social life and build a business. Recently, I’ve learned how limited your energy is, and it was difficult to realize that sacrifices are necessary to obtain your goals.
Q: What resources did you use to navigate your entrepreneurial journey?
EC: All online resources. All the answers are on your computer or phone. I heavily relied on YouTube videos and Reddit threads. Peers and unofficial mentors were an excellent resource. I found people that have gone through similar experiences.
Q: What are the advantages of being such a young entrepreneur?
EC: Nothing you do matters. You can fail, and it doesn’t matter. No one else is doing what you’re doing. Even if you fail, you’ve learned from that experience, and most of your peers haven’t. The upside relative to the risk is insane. There are so many opportunities, and even failure puts you ahead of the game. You can experiment like no other time in your life.
Q: Any other advice?
EC: I can’t give one piece of advice that will help everyone. You have to consider advice from your context. You may be in a different position from the person giving you advice. Just try things, and see what happens. You only have upside. Learn as much as possible; experiment, try new things. If you put it off, a day, a year, years will go by and suddenly you never tried that thing you wanted to.
I loved chatting with Elliot. He’s such a positive force in the Vanderbilt and online community. If you haven’t go ahead and check out his channel at YouTube/ElliotChoy or his Instagram. Like he said, college is the perfect time to experiment and start a business. If you need more convincing, check out my article Why You Should Start a Business in College. Yes You.
If you have any guest recommendations or want to be a guest yourself, drop me a line here or on Twitter.
See you next week,
Jonathan
Kairos Founders is a weekly newsletter with interviews of student founders. We find high school and college students doing awesome things and highlight their journeys to inspire and educate aspiring and current founders. Subscribe to follow along 👇👇