10000 followers on linkedin

Author: DidierRLopes

blog/2025-04-09-10000-followers-later-heres-where-it-all-began.md

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+---
+slug: 2025-04-09-10000-followers-later-heres-where-it-all-began
+title: 10,000 Followers Later, Here’s Where It All Began
+date: 2025-04-09
+image: /blog/2025-04-09-10000-followers-later-heres-where-it-all-began
+tags: ['career', 'social media', 'linkedin', 'build in public']
+description: A personal reflection on my 6-year journey to 10,000 LinkedIn followers and how sharing my work publicly led to unexpected opportunities and the creation of OpenBB.
+hideSidebar: true
+unlisted: true
+
+---
+
+<p align="center">
+    <img width="600" src="/blog/2025-04-09-10000-followers-later-heres-where-it-all-began.png" />
+</p>
+
+A personal reflection on my 6-year journey to 10,000 LinkedIn followers and how sharing my work publicly led to unexpected opportunities and the creation of OpenBB.
+
+<!-- truncate -->
+
+I crossed 10,000 followers on LinkedIn.
+
+But.
+
+It took me 6 years to get here.
+
+It's been so long, I forgot what made me start posting on LinkedIn in the first place. So in this post I'm going down that memory lane.
+
+...
+
+During my university years, all I did was pretty much attend classes during the day and then study and do homework once I got home. My weekends were pretty much the same too.
+
+My main objective was to have good grades so I could pursue anything I wanted after.
+
+It wasn't about doing something in particular; it was about having the freedom to not have to do something in particular.
+
+The freedom to pick a path.
+
+After university, I landed a role as a Firmware Engineer where I was working on GNSS receivers. (I wanted to go into self-driving cars, and this role allowed me to work on chips that were used for positioning by self-driving cars—close enough, eh?)
+
+<p align="center">
+    <img width="600" src="/blog/2025-04-09-10000-followers-later-heres-where-it-all-began_1.jpg" />
+    <em style={{fontSize: '0.9em'}}>Presenting my thesis at Imperial, where I selected the topic of "Energy savings from an Eco-Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control: a BEV platoon investigation"</em>
+</p>
+
+During the day, I was working. But in the evenings and on weekends, I didn't have my work laptop, so there wasn't much to do.
+
+In the first few weeks of the job, I was reading books about how GNSS receivers worked (this is the best one btw: **Understanding GPS principles and applications**).
+
+**Note:** GPS technology is so underrated, in my opinion—maybe one of the most impactful inventions of the 20th century. To think that 50 years ago, there wasn't a single satellite in the sky is insane. I think that one of the reasons for this is that it taken for granted because it works seamlessly in the background.
+
+Anyway... There are only so many books you can read on the topic of satellite positioning.
+
+It felt odd to have this much time where there wasn’t a goal, per se, that I could easily use to tell whether I was doing the right thing or not—unlike university, where anything that doesn’t go toward getting good grades is a distraction.
+
+Given I was interested in data, AI and self-driving cars - I decided to keep learning as I did in University, but this time there was no target that others defined for me.
+
+This time, the target was my curiosity.
+
+And I was curious about ML/AI.
+
+But everywhere I looked online was recommending Python instead of MATLAB.
+
+So I bought the **Python Data Science Handbook**, which would allow me to learn Python in a way that was practical.
+
+After reading the first few chapters, I started side projects based on ideas I had that would let me test my skills. More importantly, they would allow me to truly learn by getting my hands dirty.
+
+As I was reading a lot on forums and Stack Overflow (RIP 🪦), I found the community amazing. People were sharing what they were working on, solutions to the problems they had—all in the open.
+
+I loved it.
+
+During my university years, I experienced two very different environments:
+
+- An open community at my Portuguese university, where everyone shared everything—but, in general, people didn’t care that much.
+- A closed community at TU Delft, where no one shared anything and it was extremely competitive.
+
+I liked the competitiveness of TU Delft, but preferred the teamwork of the Portuguese university.
+
+<p align="center">
+    <img width="600" src="/blog/2025-04-09-10000-followers-later-heres-where-it-all-began_2.jpg" />
+    <em style={{fontSize: '0.9em'}}>Picture of me in Delft, back in 2016, where I did an exchange program</em>
+</p>
+
+
+This DS/ML/AI community was that.
+
+And so in that same vein, I decided to do something that I wasn't comfortable doing, I decided to start posting on LinkedIn what I was working on.
+
+Here's that <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/didier-lopes_didierrlopesjobanalysis-activity-6499793502912815104-xa7_?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAABub6aIBaA7HieEI5VizHglQPohLA_Wptag" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">first post</a> 6 years ago.
+
+<p align="center">
+    <img width="600" src="/blog/2025-04-09-10000-followers-later-heres-where-it-all-began_3.png" />
+</p>
+
+
+A bit later I <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/didier-lopes_yesterday-while-being-on-the-gym-i-was-activity-6517111978396393472-aRoe?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAABub6aIBaA7HieEI5VizHglQPohLA_Wptag" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">posted about another mini project I worked on</a>:
+
+<p align="center">
+    <img width="600" src="/blog/2025-04-09-10000-followers-later-heres-where-it-all-began_4.png" />
+</p>
+
+Due to these posts, I got this message in my inbox from my previous Maths teacher.
+
+<p align="center">
+    <img width="600" src="/blog/2025-04-09-10000-followers-later-heres-where-it-all-began_5.png" />
+</p>
+
+That message was about challenging me to help him write the [code behind his thesis](https://github.com/DidierRLopes/UnivariateTimeSeriesForecast), which was about ***Modeling and Forecasting of Financial Time Series.***
+
+This is what ultimately led me to the financial space—and to start [OpenBB](http://openbb.co) in my spare time.
+
+Six years in, and the only thing I regret is not starting to post earlier.
+
+I can’t think of a single negative to posting on socials.
+
+So if you’re on the fence — go to LinkedIn or X and just post what you’re working on, or how you’re thinking about something.
+
+And tell me, so I can like your post to get the ball rolling.
+
+Sharing content is a marathon.
+
+And no one will care—until they do. So the best you can do is be true to yourself and post something you would want to read.
+
+At least, that’s what I do.
+
+And what I’ll keep doing.