“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”
That quote got me to drop out of university. It sounds dramatic, and it was. But every decision I’ve made since has proven it right. Here’s the story of how drawing battles on Ikea paper at age seven led to building real software.
The early years
When I was seven, I was obsessed with drawing. Huge rolls of paper from Ikea covered in battles, starships, warships, you name it. I loved designing things.
By my early teens, skateboarding took over. My dream was to go pro. I’d watch YouTube tutorials to learn new tricks, then film myself landing them and post the videos online. That introduced me to video and photo editing. I’d get back from school at 4pm, skate until dark, edit the footage, and upload it. Pretty much every single day.
Then I discovered the first generation of famous YouTubers. The Syndicate Project, Ali-A, KYR SP33DY. The dream shifted from Professional Skateboarder to YouTuber. I started making weekly videos, a show called “Topic Tuesday”, gaming content, the lot. I was learning to be in front of the camera. Still not great at it now, but not terrible either. The problem was it didn’t leave much time for anything else, and important exams were around the corner.
Taking it seriously
Year 11 got serious. Everyone was talking about university, A-levels, and career paths. I started to take my peers more seriously and eased off the YouTube ambition in favour of “University Graduate London Banker”. To get there I needed grades, which wasn’t going to be easy being dyslexic.
My solution was brute force. Up at 5:30am to study before school, working late into the evenings. It worked. A* in Graphics at both GCSE and A-level, and strong results across the board. I secured a place at Loughborough University to study International Business. More importantly, it showed me that if I set my mind fully to a goal, with a sustainable plan, I could get there.
The gap year that changed everything
I deferred my place for a gap year.
I went back to making YouTube videos. Three a week, on a strict schedule. Then in October I got a message from my friend Josh. His dad wanted to chat about a social media role at a startup called SAMSystems. They needed help with content, social media, and their website. Everything I’d been doing for myself, except now someone would pay me for it.
At 18, I became their Social Media & Website Manager. Their existing web designers wanted £2,000 for a redesign the startup couldn’t afford. I offered to do it for £8 an hour. That was my first paid design work. It felt amazing. The directors recommended me to friends, and I started freelancing under Jacob Sargent Media.
During this time I met a few people who changed my perspective. Alex, a freelancer in his late 20s who’d been Head of Department at a London design agency and given it all up because he wasn’t happy. And the Holt Twins, who’d left corporate London to become Instagram influencers. Both had achieved exactly what I was aiming for, and both had walked away from it. That stuck with me.
University & dropping out
I went to Loughborough anyway. I felt I owed it to the version of myself who’d worked so hard for those grades. But sitting in lectures watching poorly designed PowerPoints load, I kept thinking: “Is this really my life for the next four years? £50k in debt for a piece of paper?”
I asked myself one question: if I finish the degree in four years, what am I going to do? Start a business. So why wait four years to do something I could start now?
The more I thought about it, the less sense it made. I was 19 with no mortgage, no kids, no real obligations. If there was ever a time to take a risk, it was now. And yet I was sitting in a lecture hall, waiting to be 23 so I could do the thing I could already do now. It didn’t make sense anymore.
I dropped out and started Beue Media, affordable subscription-based website design and hosting. I’m not saying university isn’t worth it. It is, for the right people. I’m still glad I went, if only for the people I met. But I knew it wasn’t the right path for me to stay on.
Learning to code
Running Beue Media taught me more than design. I learned how to sell, deal with clients, and run a business. But it also showed me that I didn’t just want to design things. I wanted to build them. There was a gap between having an idea and shipping it, and I knew I’d have to work to close it.
Then one day a client called me. “Jacob, can you build an app?” Of course I said. I couldn’t. But I bought an £11.99 bootcamp and taught myself while I delivered the first design phase of the project, so that by the time it came to build, I could do that too. They never knew, or needed to. The project was delivered on time.
Building real things
As I picked up more Beue Media customers, one in particular stood out. A tax consultancy that needed help with their website. I built it for them, and the relationship grew. The founder slowly got me more and more involved. First the website, then internal tools, then client portals. Eventually he gave me the choice: you’re on the bus or you’re not. So I got on the bus.
Beue Media is still going today. I still have customers paying me for their websites, but I stopped growing it. I spent four years at the consultancy leading engineering, building the internal tools and software behind over £100m in R&D tax claims. I learned what it meant to build software that actually mattered. Software that people relied on every day, that moved real money.
The dots connected
None of it made sense at the time. A dyslexic kid drawing on paper rolls, learning to do kickflips from YouTube, making gaming videos. None of that looks like a career path to building software. But every single dot has connected so far.
If there’s something you want to do and you’re in a position to take the risk, do it. Trust yourself. Everything in this world was designed and built by someone no smarter than you. Or at least by someone who learned how to do it, which means you can too.