Last week, I celebrated my 40th birthday with my family (which is pretty amusing since my birthday is in November).
When I think back about the last few decades, a few stories from my professional life come to mind that I thought I would share here.
1) Serendipity and luck trump everything.
Certainly hard work and skills are important, but luck and being at the right place at the right time is so critical.
I wasn’t born into a family of entrepreneurs or even tech. I got into startups, because of a couple of key events that happened to me. One event that got me into startups happened in 1996 growing up in the SF Bay Area during my freshman year of high school. My best friend Jennifer told me one day that her cousin Tony was starting an internet company. And she asked me if I wanted to help him and their startup out over winter break. I didn’t know what a startup was, but I also had nothing major going on during winter break. So, we took the Caltrain up to San Francisco to “help” Tony. When we showed up, the place was honestly a bit of a mess and chaotic. But it was exciting! Tony and his friends were working together on all kinds of projects. They didn’t have to dress up in “grownup-work-clothing”. And they could eat all the pizza they wanted. It was the dream.
I wasn’t any help at all to their company. But (Read more…)