The Day I Took a VC Call During Class

I was 17 years old, halfway through a school day, with one AirPod in and a pitch deck open on my screen.

I wasn’t at an office or a coworking space. I was in the back of a classroom, taking a VC call between lessons. That wasn’t the only one either. I had taken calls in school bathrooms, in empty stairwells, and in hallways with the bell ringing in the background, basically anywhere I could find five minutes of quiet. I wasn’t trying to be dramatic. I was just doing what I had to do.

The reason was that the product I was building, the early version of what would become Kodezi, had started to feel real. It felt real not just to me, but to the people using it.

The Problem That Wouldn’t Let Go

At the time, I was juggling classes, applications, and a prototype I couldn’t stop thinking about. Most of my friends were applying to colleges. I was building an automated debugging engine from scratch, trying to solve a problem I kept seeing over and over again. Developers were spending more time fixing code than writing it.

This wasn’t a theoretical problem for me. It was personal. I had seen my classmates get stuck for hours trying to fix simple bugs, and I had been there too. So I built a system that could explain errors, recommend fixes, and help people get back to building faster. It wasn’t perfect, but it worked, and when I shared it, people responded.

The Call That Changed My Thinking

That VC call during class wasn’t a defining moment because the pitch went perfectly. It mattered because it forced me to face a deeper question about what you do when what you’re building outgrows the role you’re supposed to be playing. I wasn’t skipping school, and I wasn’t avoiding responsibility. I was trying to make room for something the school day wasn’t designed to hold.

In that moment, I stopped seeing myself as just a student who happened to be building a company. I was building a company. That didn’t make me a CEO yet, but it did mean I had to start showing up like one.

What I Learned

Since then, I’ve taken dozens of investor meetings. Some were in offices, some were over coffee, and some still happened while I was technically in school. But I’ll never forget those early ones. That isn’t because of what was said, but because of what they represented.

Those calls weren’t about proving I had all the answers. They were about showing up anyway and making space for something bigger than the environment I was in. They also taught me one of the most important lessons I’ve learned so far, which is that if the system wasn’t built for you, you can build your own.