Who made it
Sreejeeth Ramprasad
- Years of building products
- Former CTO, Mentoria
- Hundreds mentored, for free
For years, alongside my day job, I mentored hundreds of people for free, one at a time, because I enjoyed it.
Along the way, I kept seeing the same thing. Too many people were unhappy in work they had fallen into, not chosen. So often, it went back to one choice at fifteen: Science, Commerce or Arts. And the children I met were still making it the same way. Good marks meant Science; otherwise, Commerce or Arts. Or it came down to what an uncle did, what a cousin or friend took, or what a senior called easy to score in. Hardly any of them had seen the work it led to. There are over 6,800 documented occupations. Most children have seen six.
I knew that world from the inside. I was a product manager, then VP of Product, and finally Chief Technology Officer at Mentoria, an established career-guidance company that has been in the field for over ten years. When I left Mentoria to work on that problem, I didn't jump straight to a solution. I spent six months with over 50 people and ran 19 tests to find what would actually help. The answer kept coming back the same: children need to see the work before they choose it.
So I built them a town where they can walk into the work first.