I made 10k in two months selling my own piece of software while still beeing in school at age of 17.I lead a small team of developers when I turned 19.I went 100% self-employed while finishing my Master in Computer Science at age of 24.I invested overall 106.300 self-earned Euros in several startups at the age of 27.I lead, together with my partner, a 43 men & women team at age of 29 as CTO of DocsHero GmbH.And currently we are etablishing our holding and expanding upon that, while beeing onto something huge at this moment."So how did you get this good/far this fast?"From time to time I'm asked that question. And it's not an easy question to answer. Partially because it's loaded with a half truth, partially because it's not easy to explain the actual process."I was lucky, I met the right people, even my IT teacher said, that I am blessed, ..."; none of these properly address how I ended up where I am. So let me try to do it one better now.I'm not genius, I'm not unnaturally skilled or hyper-intelligent. Let me instead share an essential part of my very personal story with you.Four times I started learning C/C++ and failed, four times I attempted to get good at it and aborted it. It took the fifth attempt at age 17 to finally grasp the very basics of C/C++.Learning the subject of AI was no different. I started, I failed, I stopped. This one book, I read in chemistry subject in school, will always be in my memory: "An Introduction to Artificial Intelligence for Computer Scientist and Engineers". An entire year I spent absorbing the exact information the book was trying to convey, whereby in the end I still did not fully get it.And this doesn't even touch on the countless side projects I started and lost track in. Side projects that never hit it off. Countless, truly, and I can't even give you names because you won't have heard of any of them.This addresses the half truth presented in that question. I didn't get good "fast". So let's reformulate the question:"How did I develop my competencies without quitting?".The truth is:I kept trying.I kept failing.I kept learning.And whatever I learned I made use of in the next attempt, the next iteration.That's it. That might not have been the glamerous reveal you were hoping for, but that's all there is. I'm but a man who invested a lot of time honing his craftsmanship every day since he was 14.Now, almost 15 years later, a lot has changed. But you know what didn't?I keep trying.I keep failing.I keep learning!