“You can’t ever give up. You have to keep climbing higher, over the snakes, and, you know, the f***ing falcons, that are all around you!”
Call me a philistine, but I had never met a CEO before—Jeff Immelt obviously didn’t attend Dad’s office GE Family Picnics. Yet, I was now in a room with at least four CEOs and innumerable potential CEOs, who were staring at one another with a rabid curiosity and a glint of shared passion too intense to concern the pizza.
There was no Immelt-like snifter of brandy-I was alarmed to find these CEOs as much older to me as I am to my sister. They are young, iPhone toting, and clever; they let the f-bomb and its four letter relatives fly with abandon.
How was I there, hobnobbing with the savvy and businesslike? I was lucky enough to be a participant in the 2011 Startup-Roots program.
In the program’s own words, “Startup Roots is a Fellowship program that places the country’s most elite students in innovative startups. [The] goal is to provide intelligent and aspirational students with a summer internship program that introduces them to the San Francisco / Silicon Valley startup scene. Fellows will be placed in a high-potential startup as an intern in either business or engineering. Additionally, students have the opportunity to attend a weekly speaker series featuring elite techpreneurs and venture capitalists.” I was at the first of these speaker series.
This series featured four CEOs of tech startups-all of who had started their own companies within one year of graduating college. Despite their different backgrounds and companies, they all share an almost tangible energy, love of risk, and drive. They’ve had similar experiences cutting through the metaphorical “snakes and falcons,” working harder than they once thought possible, feeling like “the smartest people in the world”, and building the relationships necessary to transform a pipe dream into a multimillion dollar reality. How can I find the words to describe their attitude? One of them said it best: “No f’ing rules.”
These 4 CEOs were:
After graduating from Columbia in 2009, Andrew wanted to solve the quintessential problem for every college student -the difficulty and altogether impossibility of the internship search. Andrew, his childhood friend Nathan, and their technical cofounder Kyle raised 100k and moved to Seattle to launch their company, InternMatch. After learning and growing in Seattle, they relocated to the Valley/San Francisco .
Matt’s previous jobs as a forest-fire fighter, an EMT, and a journalist taught him how to how to treat people, how to make difficult decisions quickly, and how to lead. He was inspired to found Speaker Text by his career in journalism (“I thought I was the smartest person in the world”). With no prior experience, he headed to the Valley, courted the right investors, and founded his company.
Murti “never had a real job and hopes [he] never will.” After his freshman year at Williams, he dropped out to start his first company, funded by whomever he could find in his school’s alumni directory. After coming to the Valley, he then created a social networking site, sold his company called “Peanut Labs”, and finally started his newest venture, “HiGear.”
Gagan was an intern at Microsoft and a consultant at Accenture before he realized he “wasn’t the type of person who could just do nothing.” Therefore, he began blogging for TechCrunch while working for Accenture. He “hacked his way to the Valley”, and founded his company, Udemy, with two other cofounders.
These CEOs and founders gave advice on the most significant challenges associated with starting and running a company. Ready for the inside information?
According to these founders, a team is the hardest and most important component of a company: “If someone isn’t in it for the long haul, leave them really fast.” Can this be accomplished without the Winklevoss Brothers in hot pursuit for all of eternity? “Figure out equity later-and never, ever promise your flaky cofounder a part of a company.”
Establishing a CEO and including a CTO in the cofounders is essential, as it’s necessary to have a final decision maker and a programmer.
Apparently, every idea I could ever have is currently whizzing around in the brains of seventy other individuals and all of their relations. That’s why a company is “99% execution, and 1% about ideation.” It’s important to focus on a business model and move on if it doesn’t succeed. The ideal is to “fail fast”-if a company does not have the potential to work, failure should occur as quickly as possible.
When pitching to investors, “ask for advice, rather than money” as what you’ll receive is almost always the opposite. While pitching, adhere to the law of numbers-if you pitch to 300, at least one should respond! Knowing your audience while pitching is also essential-if there’s a trend in the Valley that investors have been enamored with, engage it however superficially into a presentation. Never be afraid to go again and again to an investor, the founders state. Even if they do not invest, you will improve your presentation tone, cadence, and content for the next investor.
If you’ve hooked one fish, it’s infinitely more likely that you’ll hook others-once you have “precious and hard sought” momentum, “sell the sh*t out of it.” Capitalizing on a success breeds more success-whether with investors, new team members, or others.
Each of these CEOs manage tons of interns; who better to get intern advice from?
a) Accelerate your learning curve as fast as possible-learn as much as you can, as quickly as you can.
b) Meet and build relationships, as much as possible-building your relationships is the key to the startup world.
c) “Hack your environment”-find “get arounds” and make it work.
d) Meet other interns-once again; they’re the future CEOs.
e) Stock up on knowledge-what you don’t have to learn through experience can be your catalyst to success.
f) “Say yes every single time!” Whenever asked to do something, you should be willing to do it-within some reason.
g) “Don’t make excuses, and deal with your priorities: just get it all done.” This no-nonsense statement needs no clarification.
h) Have one supervisor. You should have one person to whom you are responsible for deliverables.
i) Become the master of something at your office-learn how to be “indispensable.”
Lastly?
Starting a company is a struggle. It undoubtedly requires determination and confidence to succeed. “They’re going to say you suck, everything sucks,” Matt warned. “You need to turn [the negativity] around and go for it.”
Yet, these founders love what they do. They’re energized, genuinely interested, and hungry–for knowledge, for success, and for more risk. (I’ve also never heard so much swearing in my life, and I’ve been to a truck stop in West Virginia.) They’re self-described as “dudes in crazy situations, running around,” are passionate, and driven with a sense of purpose and confidence. Is there any doubt that they have fun? Is there any uncertainty that they’re enthusiastic about what they do?
Don’t die-and that might be you, too.
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