by Jess Villanueva | Vancouver, Canada | documentary studio founder · Third Door Stories · 1517 Medici Grantee · Delta Chapter II Top 20

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Supported by: 1517 Fund (Medici Grant) and The Residency (Delta Chapter II Top 20)

I’m obsessed with how people bet on themselves.

I'm an 18-year-old based in Vancouver, Canada, running a documentary studio full-time called Third Door Stories. I chose a 5-course adult diploma and a self-designed education over the college admissions game. In my free time, you’ll find me peering over the ins and outs of the builder ecosystem rewriting what being “successful” looks like.

I’ve been obsessed with how crazy, whimsical, and impossible this ecosystem really is. It’s the world that opened up to me gradually after buildspace shut down and forced its community to find each other elsewhere. Socratica. Merge Club. The Residency. f.inc. And so much more. I investigate how the spirits of people crazy enough to bet on themselves came to be.

I started on a more conventional builder path designing AI tools for social good and triage. I’m genuinely proud of them. At the same time, I couldn’t help but also feel like I was playing in lanes that would take years of expertise I hadn’t really built yet. Especially against people who shipped software since they were 12.

After last summer, I pivoted over to film while keeping my triage tools as a separate life. It was the most honest call I've ever made.

Right now, my heart is set on investigating the emerging hidden builder underworld: the people and places including microgrants, residencies, and hacker houses that shape young lives outside of school and work.

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Watch the pilot documentary · Support on Patreon

WHAT I’M BUILDING

Third Door Stories is a documentary series and media studio mapping the real infrastructure of creating your own opportunities from lived constraints: microgrants, residencies, hacker houses, and first-client stories.

This is for curious, ambitious people aged 17–25 who feel like the conventional track (degree → job → status) isn't for them and don't have a map of what else exists.

This show is that map.

Right now, if you're 17 and considering leaving college or skipping university entirely, you have three options:

  1. Ask authority figures (parents, teachers, counselors) who are invested in traditional paths and will likely discourage you
  2. **Search "should I drop out of college"**and find either success porn ("I'm rich now!") or fear-exaggerating pessimism ("You'll fail!")
  3. Suffer in silence and hope you figure it out

I believe Option 4 should exist.