Santino Buttazzoni

While I was studying a degree I hated — and knew would never give me what I was actually looking for in the startup world — I was offered a unique opportunity: a scholarship at the best university in Argentina.

I turned it down to move to San Francisco.

No plan. No backup. Just an idea: knock on as many doors as necessary until I found someone who'd let me learn in exchange for free work. My search started from Argentina, and among the startups I found was Bytespace.

I watched their demo and thought: this technology — capable of taking full control of a browser — is going to change the world. And it is, now more than ever alongside platforms like Claude.

32 follow-ups

Getting to Bytespace meant getting through to the founders first.

I reached out and didn't hear back. So I followed up. Then again. Then again. I sent at least 32 follow-up messages to each founder before I got a call — and that call was where I convinced them to let me be part of the team.

At first: unpaid intern, no guaranteed role. No salary, no title, no certainty of anything.

Then I decided to fly to San Francisco to live with them — people I had never met — and work alongside them for six months.

The best six months of my life

I worked sixteen-plus hours a day. Not because anyone asked me to. Because there was too much to learn and I didn't want to waste a single hour.

Those were the best six months of my life.

I learned that good things come if you go after them. That everything requires hours of work where the outcome is never guaranteed. That the gap between people who make things happen and people who wait for things to happen is almost entirely about willingness to show up before it's comfortable.

My recommendation

If you want to change your life — jump.

Play the card the rest aren't willing to play. While you're young, build and learn as much as you possibly can. The outcome is never guaranteed. But neither is anything worth having.