Favela kid got into Y Combinator.

I grew up in Paraisopolis, one of the largest favelas in São Paulo. My school had 60 kids per classroom. The library had 200 books, most of them damaged. I learned English from American TV shows with subtitles. I learned finance from a secondhand economics textbook I found at a market. I learned to code from free courses on my phone using the wifi at McDonald's. I built PixPay, a tool that helps small vendors in favelas accept digital payments without bank accounts. My first users were the street vendors I grew up buying fruit from. Last week I got an email from Y Combinator. We're in. I read the email six times. Then I walked to my mother's house and showed her. She doesn't know what Y Combinator is. But she knows her son isn't supposed to be getting emails like that. And that's exactly why it matters. Where you're from doesn't define where you're going.