Today marks the end of my first week at my summer internship at a tech startup in NYC. There’s a lot I’ve learned, but here I’ll share what I’ve learned specifically as it relates to startups.
1) Founders have guts.
Yesterday, the CEO/Founder invited both interns to join him at a VC meeting. Incredibleee experience. We were in a room of around 50 people, roughly 40 founders and maybe 10 potential investors. Something that really stood out to me was how young the founders were. These people were 25-30 years old looking for funding from a top venture capital firm in NYC to back their app, riddled with bugs and issues. Two possibly contradictory insights: having a buggy app is not nearly as embarrassing as I thought. Founding a real company takes guts.
It’s difficult to imagine being my age and starting a company. Even more so dropping out of school to do it. And even more than that having this be your first job ever. It takes a shocking amount of courage to pull this off, an amount I’m not yet sure that I have myself.
But perhaps this, like all things, grows only when you work on it.
2) Finance bros/broettes have monetized their social skills.
It’s an overly espoused aphorism that finance folk do nothing but make powerpoints, get drunk, and schmooze their bosses.
But when I spoke to the VC’s at this mixer, that wasn’t at all the impression I got. The questions they asked were intense. Almost every investor asked these incredibly serious questions with a tone so conversational it lulled you into thinking you were making friends. It was almost magical the way they would charm you into thinking the conversation was all fun and games while they were really extracting information from you.
The VC’s were an attractive bunch. They were extremely put together and the way they spoke was incredible eloquent. Beyond anything though, it was shocking how good they were at their jobs, at talking to people and wriggling information out of them. It felt almost as if their appearances weren’t some genetic blessing, but a specific ability they’d honed over time. Simply put, their people skills were great. Yet another trait that I am beginning to suspect comes more from effort than talent.
3) Startup founders are not dopey
Zuckerberg, Gates, Altman, and every new YC-alum inspired by them seem to universally share this aura of “are they on the spectrum?” I’d always known this sort of startup founder “dopiness” to be a sign of social ineptitude. A community of weirdos who could code operating systems from scratch blindfolded in assembly but wouldn’t be able to make a single friend at a college party. My heroes.
While that idea might hold some truth at a bar, it certainly didn’t seem so at this mixer.
Although not quite as eloquent as the VC’s, the founders at this event were well-spoken. Curiously well-spoken, but not in the way you’d expect.
While the VC’s certainly had them beat in terms of ‘flourish,’ the founders spoke with clarity, more so than almost anyone I’d ever met. We had a brief period in the middle of the mixer where we had an open-floor discussion, and while everyone was sharing their thoughts on some topic, the one thing I could think was ‘Jesus fucking christ. These people know how to talk.‘
In school, I was always the biggest contributor in class discussions. I loved to talk and thought myself good at it (I actually captained my school debate team my senior year). To toot my own horn a touch, I would spin circles around my classmates in discussions over books I’d never even read. Talking was a strength of mine, or so I thought.
In this discussion, for the first time in a long time, I felt hopelessly outclassed. In communication. By the same weirdos I once thought were good at everything but communication.
Startup founders are not nearly as dopey as I thought. It takes a very impressive amount of social finesse to be able to stand your own against these VC’s. Something else to admire.
4) Technically, you can do anything
Technically as in tech-related things. Haha.
This is something that really struck me this week. I met a founder at this venue who was building a really technically impressive social media app, a previous engineer at Meta.
I remember asking him “So, when do you think you felt technically ready to build this app?”
He responded, “I don’t know, I don’t like to put arbitrary limits on myself. I’m sure if I had this idea earlier, I would’ve managed to make it work somehow.”
I didn’t really take this comment that seriously right then, but it came back today. I was showing my immediate supervisor something I had built and found myself saying “I’d like to implement an additional feature, but I don’t think I have the technical prowess to pull this off yet.”
But immediately after saying that, I caught myself mentally and recalled this random interaction I’d had. I thought about the problem and realized that I probably could figure this out if I just sat and bashed my head against a wall for long enough.
Which led to this broader, perhaps naive, but certainly optimistic conclusion about technical challenges. You can do almost anything.
Update: the day after I wrote this post, I did actually implement that feature. The dildo that is AWS rarely comes lubed, but thanks to my newfound appreciation for mental tenacity, I overcame.
5) Best time to build is now
Finally, I realized how important it is to start building something, anything. Although I was one of the younger people in this crowd, it wasn’t by much. And the founders around me had all started building when they were close to my age. Introducing myself as an intern felt … embarrassing. It was particularly motivating seeing how urgently and quickly people were building. There were people looking for funding for an idea they had six weeks ago and had just started building, barely more than a vision.
I went into this mixer thinking “these people are incredible. I hope to be like them someday.”
And now, I am beginning to think that the only thing separating me from being exactly like these people is simply starting.
My idea is VR-integrated stationary bikes. I’m off to build!
Choong 