We all tend to imagine that life as a high school dropout is doomed to go badly, with very few career opportunities seemingly presenting themselves. However, this isn’t always the case. A lot of the time, all that’s needed is determination, confidence, and passion.

With this thought in mind, it’s always uplifting to hear of other people who’ve had a rough start in life but who have made a success of things for themselves – and that’s undeniably been true for the incredibly talented Josh Fabian.

Now, Fabian’s always been the sort of person who’s found his position in life to hold him back – and in line with this, he’s lived for three decades feeling as if he constantly has something to prove. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s not the nicest feeling to experience, which has definitely contributed to his overall determination.

A Rough Early Life

Things weren’t always looking rosy for Fabian. Growing up just outside of Pittsburgh, Fabian lived in a foster household that regularly welcomed new, troubled children into the home. Raised by white parents in a primarily white community, he constantly felt alone and isolated due to his black skin color. This would instil in him feelings of being invisible and not fitting in – which certainly didn’t help when it came to his achievements at school. And, from a very young age, he found himself living as a high school dropout without qualifications to back up his career prospects.

By the time Fabian was 20 years old, he’d already been emancipated from his adoptive family, and he was expecting his own child with his girlfriend at the time. Together, they often lived off of food stamps, occasionally even resorting to theft just to get by with their child. 

However, during this time, Fabian would discover the basic skills he needed to pursue his new career. At the time, his only source of income came from developing small websites for around $100. However, while this wasn’t an overly lucrative opportunity in its own right, Fabian knew he could take it further, and he put his all into learning as much coding knowledge as possible. 

Despite being self-taught, he quickly developed a hugely valuable skillset, and this would slowly begin to set him on the path to success.

A Life-Changing Career Opportunity

We often assume that, in order to achieve the best career opportunities, grades are everything. However, this is something that Josh Fabian has certainly disproved – starting when he received an offer for a six-figure salaried job role at Obaz. Not only did this allow him to further hone and refine his skills, but it allowed him the chance to grow his career and find financial stability, the likes of which he’d never previously known.

In 2014, Groupon acquired Obaz, and this would be yet more good news for Josh Fabian. Indeed, this would further stabilize his job role, and this gave him new chances to grow his success. However, after working for Groupon for several years, he decided to take a step back from the coding world and do things a little differently – and so, he embraced his old love for gaming again instead.

As a teenager, Fabian undeniably made his mark by establishing himself as a nationally ranked Yu Gi Oh! player and this is undeniably something that will have tied into his modern goals and aspirations. As such, he decided to transition his time to a slightly different focus, beginning as a Twist streamer and YouTuber. He also began offering one-on-one coaching sessions for other players looking to improve their skills and earned a very comfortable $40,000 within the first six months.

However, despite the fact that he’d made a good income, this was nowhere near enough to justify his leaving his job at Groupon. However, old habits and worries would soon begin to return, and very quickly, Fabian found himself feeling like he should be doing more, achieving more. And, in his mind, the best way to go about this had to be through entrepreneurship.

A Variety of Ideas

Upon realizing the need to do more and prove himself once again, Fabian began throwing himself at different things – but at first, they just didn’t seem to work out. His first plan was to launch Kitsu, an anime and manga focused social networking platform. However, the site struggled to turn a profit, and with its eventual failure, he found himself returning to what he knew best: gaming.

However, his dream of game coaching seemed like an impossible goal to get off the ground. While researching this field, however, he stumbled across something truly shocking to him: many other game content creators in a similar position to him struggled to make a fair rate for their work. And, of course, this comes with a unique challenge and struggle: feeling as if you’re great at something but without numbers to back that up.

As such, alongside Tom McNiven (whom he’d worked with while launching Kitsu), he set out to make a change. Together, they came up with the idea for Metafy, which received additional funding from Project Club to get the project off the ground. This would provide an all-in-one solution to help other games learn from some of the best professionals in the world; perhaps the brand’s biggest strength is Josh Fabian himself. Indeed, as a game lover himself, he offers a unique combination of business and web development knowledge with gaming expertise and an understanding of what gamers really want – making him one of the most well-rounded individuals to lead this exciting new change.

Metafy has already begun to grow into one of the hottest up-and-coming firms, and it is hoped that it will continue to grow over the coming years. Fabian strongly believes that Metafy will one day become a multi-billion-dollar startup – it’s just a matter of time to see whether or not it will get there! With top-ranking players from big titles such as League of Legends and Super Smash Bros, as well as a huge community of over 50,000 coaches and users, it doesn’t look like things will be slowing down any time soon.