I don't normally share much personal information for the same reason I post with a pseudonym, but I'd like to share a story with you about someone far less qualified than you with far less going for them than you that made something out of nothing. The short version of all this will be "If a jackass like me can get where I've gotten, then anyone can get anywhere.".

I dropped out of the ninth grade and by the time most of my peer group was packing for college, I was flying a thousand miles from home, to SF, with only the clothes on my back to sign a contract with Netscape. I had no formal education, no college, no diploma, and no family connections of any sort. Just an interest, ambition, work-ethic, and minor experience that I was able to cull from limited resources (an underfunded public school that still used Apple IIs, a single mom with three kids a low paying job and no child support, and a history of being a real legitimate troublemaker).

Through the iPlanet Alliance of the late 90s, I was able to parlay that into a career at Sun and I've made great money, worked with incredible people, made valuable contacts, and had the satisfaction of helping big companies and organizations around the planet do some pretty sweet stuff that, while meaningless to most of the world, makes me feel like I'm doing something important.

I don't have any specific steps that I can list out to take you from where you are now to where you want to be. Only a tale of my own path and what I found important and not so important along my way which will hopefully dispel many of your fears and self-criticism. I also don't want people to take my story as bragging. Seriously, please understand that I was the family's trouble making black sheep with little ahead of me as a teenager. I just want to convey to young people out there that you can do what you want, despite perceived hurdles. An expensive college education is valuable; not necessary. Connections and a well-off family are valuable; not necessary. Even something as simple as a high school diploma is valuable, but not necessary.

If I can get where I am (a good position to be in life, though nowhere near as awesome as most of the people reading this, I suspect) with all of those strikes against me, then you -- with some college and some startup experience -- can get where you want to be. You just have to build on your best traits, like having a strong work-ethic. Find something you enjoy doing and do it so well and with such obsessive gusto that people can't help but notice you. Even if it's in writing opinion pieces, writing code, advising startups on technical issues, helping in popular forums. Whatever gets some people to notice you. Get your foot in as many doors as possible. Even if it's only networking, for now. And when you get an opportunity, exploit the hell out of it.

Oh, and have balls. Seriously, it can pay to take brash and bold actions, in life. Especially when you're younger and the older folk can see you as a real bundle of potential just waiting for a nudge and a chance. (I think that when you're outside of your 20s, people start to react to that attitude with "if you were going to do something, you'd have already made your grand moves by now").

By brashness and exploiting opportunities, let me give a real brief example:

Before I went to SF, my only experience was - believe it or not - call center work. People called up and I helped them fix stuff. Mostly end users, even. Nothing complex and nothing that special. It paid less than $10/hr, had fairly high churn, and for a lot of people was a position they were filling because they had to fall back on something (that is, a lot of people working around me were in their 40s and 50s while I was not even drinking age and this was something they had fallen back on from something else).

For many, an apparently going-nowhere hole. For me? I worked hard. The job was very 9-5, but I worked well into the night as well as weekends and holidays. I took on jobs and tasks and projects that I didn't have to. I put out enough fires that I became the go-to guy when you wanted things done right. Some contacts I'd made through the job saw this pattern of behavior and after a year in this position, offered me an interview. Overnight, I dropped everything to take the interview away from home. Two weeks after that, I had emptied my apartment and left my town, family, and friends with literally nothing except the clothes on my back and $900 to my name. I moved to the bay area, where at the time getting a place to live was impossible. There were actually bidding wars for low end crappy apartments in average or worse areas of town. And there was me, with no real rental or credit history just getting started.

I was too focused on work to fight through the tape of getting someone to finally rent to me, so I lived at work, instead. I worked sixteen hour days plus weekends and holidays. I slept under my desk and lived out of the free vending machines and soda machines. I used the employee showers and since I didn't have a place nearby to wash clothes, I just kept buying more so I always had fresh clothes in the morning. Hell, there was a mixup with my first few checks, so for two of those first months, I didn't even have money. I remember one time I actually had to borrow $20 from a coworker just so I could get a cab to go to the DMV and get my ID.

Anyway, the point is - your lack of degree or resume doesn't have to stop you. None of what you listed has to. Put together a good resume that emphasizes your strengths (read up on writing a resume - there are ways to focus your resume if you have experience but no education or education but no experience and so on). Shop it around. Talk to as many people as possible. Build up a portfolio and reputation online that people can refer to and become familiar with you through. If there's a project you really dig, participate in it (you've probably seen recent articles on HN about how you can leverage your github records and open source experience on your resume). And if there's a place you really want to work or a particular project you really want to be part of, reach out to them.

Seriously. Read up on Twilio if that is an interest. Check out their rules and requirements so you can avoid hitting an obvious speed bump and get disregarded for ignoring something in their process -- but contact people there and tell them of your situation and ambition. Startup-ish companies are even more likely, I think, to appreciate ambition and work-ethic and enthusiasm over "but how many companies have you founded?" or "when did you get your degree?". Bigger companies are often far harder to approach, because they have rigid processes and discard applications over any minor deviation quickly. Frankly, I'm a bit lucky that I skirted that problem in my case, since I went to well established big companies with more corporate culture than startup culture.

Also, as jasonlotito points out in his comment here, the smartest people seem to have the least appreciation for themselves. That isn't just in this field. It's like that in all fields. The best people most often are the most self critical. Musicians, actors, writers, programmers, CEOs. Part of what makes these people the greatest is the fear that they're not. The fear that they are defrauding everyone and they've merely lucked into their situation and any day, someone is going to discover it and call them out on it. So they work hard to stay ahead.

This was long. I said I had a good work-ethic; not a sense of brevity. :D