At 17, I was working at a restaurant in London. Five years later, I became the youngest partner at my company.

I didn’t come from a rich family. I had no prospects, no opportunities.

One night, a guy came into the restaurant wearing a really nice watch. As he left a big, £40 tip, I asked him, “What do you do?”

“I own a startup.”

I had no idea what that meant.

So when I got home later that night, I gave myself a challenge. I’d find every startup in the area that had recently raised funding and ask every single one of them for a job.

I emailed. I showed up at their offices. But nothing worked. I had no experience and no hope.

Finally, after doing this again and again, one company gave me a shot and it changed my life forever.

But that high was short-lived. When my first day in this 2-week long internship ended, my boss came up to me and said,

“Ryan, I’m going to be real with you. I don’t think you’re going to last long here.”

I had spent the day sitting around, with no idea what to do. No one told me anything.

But I needed to make this work. I had no other option. It was either this or I go back to working in the restaurant. I quickly realised startups work differently. I had to figure out how to become as useful as possible.

So I set out to make my colleagues’ lives easier. I took the work they didn’t want to do. By the end of those two weeks, I was offered a full-time job and, at 17, became an early employee at a company that went on to be worth over a billion dollars.

Startups don’t look for experience. They want young, hungry people who are willing to learn along the way.

That was me at 17.

I’ve spent my whole career working in this world and today, at 24, I am a partner at a startup that’s become one of the biggest names in its space. A company I’ve closed tens of millions of dollars for.