This is a brief study of how people made it in their life.

My definition of "made it" is this: "became famous through their own craft + earned money + contributed to society."

Let's start with case study:

1) Divyansh Mundra:

Most Indians on Instagram might already know him... if you don’t know him, at least you might have seen his work.

Those Mahabharata AI-generated clips. Yeah. At first glance, it might seem like, *duh*, anyone could make those clips, so *whyyyy* is he special? Lemme tell you why.

So, here is how he started. I was in 8th or 9th grade at that time; I just found this new platform called Quora. Divyansh was beginning college at that time.

He wrote an answer to a question: "What if Sherlock Holmes met Iron Man?" The writing was so good. It became so viral. So he started writing more... stuff like "What if Character X meets Character Y." All his writings started getting viral because people like that... there was no ChatGPT or anything at that time. He wrote for fun... but seeing people liked it made him realize that he is good at the craft of writing. So he started writing more.

Like, brother explored every niche... but he focused more on fiction and storytelling. And those worked.

If my memory is correct, he was studying to be a CA. It was his final year, but he decided he wanted to go into writing full-time. He asked his dad, and his dad told him to give it a try for one year, but if it fails, he should go back to college.

I know all this because he wrote about literally everything that happened, and people read it. And so he dropped out. And began writing his first novel. I don’t know if it is *The Bombay Diaries* or *The Secrets of the Himalayan Treasure*. I haven't read it, but after he released it, it became a #1 bestseller on Amazon.

This was because he already had an audience on Quora, and the audience knew he is good at this. So, when he wrote the book and finally launched it, people bought it.

Then the Quora algorithm changed. Previously, if a user made a post, it would reach every one of his followers. He had thousands of followers, but with the new algorithm, it didn't reach anyone. During this time, he also started making videos on Instagram... like he would record his fictional stories and post them on Insta... and he used to get a lot of views from that.

So he made the pivot... instead of posting on Quora, post on Instagram. He told many stories... rebuilt the following starting from scratch once again. Through his videos, he was approached by Netflix screenwriters and all. He wrote for web series. His strategy is this: identify the niche that gets the most views and double down on that. So in Instagram, he initially posted about various types of stories... but a particular one got more views... that was Mahabharata stories. He had a way of telling each story in one minute that will get you hooked. So he did...

And then AI video generation became good. So he started a page called *MahabharatwithDivyansh* and began making AI videos of the actions while he narrated the thing himself.

And now that page has millions of followers... hell yeah, even many of my college mates follow him.

Bro came from zero to 1.

2) Huyen Chip:

She is a popular figure in the AI/ML space. I don't really remember how I knew about her. Probably because I was exploring machine learning at that time, and she wrote guides about how to learn ML on her blog. She provided guides on what tutorials to take to become an expert in ML, so I always used to come to her blog. In fact, I made my own blog because of her. She is an avid reader... when I want to read any book, I will probably browse through her Goodreads catalogue and read the highest-rated one. Nowadays, most ratings on the internet are bot reviews... so reading books that are rated by people that you know is better.

She wrote two books called *AI Engineering* and *ML Interview Guide*. So everyone who is into AI automatically reads these books... and now she is one of the main figures in this field.

It's not like she launched these books into the void. Just like Divyansh, she already had her own audience, and she built this audience by offering value to the community.

When I used Archive.org to sift through what her blog looked like in the past, I saw that it is different from the current version. She started blogging when she was a college student. She used to write about everything daily. But now, since she is a well-known figure in the AI space, her writings are rare. I believe that's because she has reached a level where people expect all her new content to be at that level...

Also, she might be busy with her family and job. However, I bet that every article she is gonna write is gonna be gold. Cuz every article she has written so far is.

3) Varun Mayya:

He runs the channel Aevy TV. Indians active on YT must have probably seen this channel.

He started out long before, uploading content on YouTube. He started initially by posting audio vlogs on YouTube (audio vlog = audio + one image as video). So he had been doing this for some time, and it was slowly getting views... he had good enough subscribers, but not that big.

So at this time, his wife was exploring a business. She poured her heart and soul into making a children's book startup, but it didn't really make any [impact].

After pivoting, his wife decided to collab with her husband and make a YouTube channel. Since her earlier startup failed, she put more effort into this channel as she didn't want another failure. They hired a video editor friend and partnered up and started making videos related to how companies were built... they had a specific way of making videos, and their videos got hits. Slowly they started putting full time into that. They realized that video editors were needed and there were no good video editors at that time because video editors were paid meager money... so they started tutoring people to make videos like their channel can... and soon many companies wanted to hire video editors with the skills they had. So they started this video editing marketplace.

Today, Varun Mayya runs a monopoly over these channels. When he started, he didn't know how things would go. But he took a big risk, and now he is successful.

4) Alexandra Fasulo:

She was a content writer freelancer (before ChatGPT) and now a farm owner. Before ChatGPT became a thing, people used to hire freelance writers. Now it's very hard to become a freelancer, but Alexandra Fasulo stood out by making videos, telling people how to do freelancing and all... all these made her a prominent figure in the space. She earned like 1 million dollars through freelance writing.

And when ChatGPT came out, she knew she had to pivot cuz the freelance business was getting replaced by that. So she bought acres of land using her money... and is now doing her dream, which is farming.

I like her because she is a self-made person, and she knew how to adapt to changes.