I would then engage her in a data science topic and ignore the guy.
If my family had encouraged me and others like me earlier, the numbers of us surely would've been larger.
In my case, I did not get exposed to programming or computers until I was 24 yrs. old, though chance employment.
It has cost me thousands of hours of time when I could've been reading literature, networking, cooking, going to med school, or a hundred other things.
It has been worth every fucking penny and minute and the best joy and highlights of my life have been when I learned about a new idea or created a new algorithm.
We exist. There just aren't that many of us and we don't glamour blog.
Older OLD hackers I know are super optimistic, like to make things, and are always learning.
Optimism from this point on is your challenge. I challenge you to be optimistic and do something with your experience, even if it's a hobby on the weekends and evenings.
I doubt you are a VC but maybe you should start your own firm.
If you accomplish some great work of genius, but no one can understand it, what then?
Throwaway. Partner and I have made verified huge technical breakthrough after 4 yrs. We are 10X outsiders in flyover country. Currently consulting and wish to raise $250K seed from an angel to quit and focus on selling IP to large co. No interest in VC or building a company. No tech angels locally, the few we have are unqualified, would demand terrible terms. We would rather use a SAFE...