Discovering Startups & How It All Started

When I graduated from UC Riverside around the early summer of 1996, as an undergrad in Business Administration, I was unclear about what I wanted to do next. At that time, near the area of the university, the only corporate jobs I was made aware of were companies in food and beverage like Taco Bell Corporate, or traditional ones such as Avis Rental Car. None of these inspired me, having come from an exciting technology filled upbringing. So I packed my bags and headed home to the San Francisco Bay Area, Silicon Valley, to move in with my parents. There the Internet was in its infancy and only a few knew about it (Netscape launched the first mass consumer web browser called Navigator in 1995). I started looking for corporate tech jobs at the time and remember applying for a customer support role at HP, Roseville. That never came through and again I couldn’t seem to break in since I didn’t have an engineering degree. 

In the Fall, I decided to make a six-week European adventure with six other friends of mine.  We rented a Eurail unlimited pass for one month and backpacked around, visiting London, France, Amsterdam, Germany, Prague, Italy and Spain.  I highly recommended that everyone finds time for a trip like that in their life! It was more than an adventure having six 20-something guys backing around Europe in the mid 90’s! 

Upon my return, I knew I had to find something.  I remember meeting a friend in San Franciso one day.  I mentioned I was searching for a job, and she asked me to come interview at an Internet startup company in Redwood City.  ‘What’s a startup?’, I wondered! No harm in a meeting, I thought to myself.

I remember the day of the Interview.  It was a small office and at the reception area, the VP of Marketing at the time sat on a table informally and started asking me questions.  “So what is it that you want to do?”… I never had a solid answer for that question so I just referenced my business degree from UCR and my sales experience starting in high school working at various retail stores such as Fry’s Electronics….I remember her saying, “well, it looks like you can talk to customers, how about you create a sales script and start trying to sell our flagship web authoring software product?”… I was hired as an Inside Sales Representative and that led to the beginning of my journey in Technology Sales, a skill I developed over the next twenty years of my life.

We were the “darling of the valley” at the time.  An internet-based Silicon Valley startup, with a revolutionary web authoring product, that was covered by Forbes, Fortune, and many other press releases.   Everything was looking very rosy for us from the outside, but little did I understand or know the dynamics inside the organization… It was my second day on the job that I quickly found out. That day, our passionate CEO, an immigrant from New Delhi, India, who worked formerly for a decade at Apple under Scully, called all the employees into the conference room.  I remember being excited and curious about what this was all about. When we were all seated, he went on to tell us that the investors were not going to continue funding the company on the needed next round, unless the CEO stepped down, which he absolutely refused to do.  He continued to tell us about his passion and belief for this company that he wanted to continue to lead and would find a way to secure a bridge loan.  In the interim, until he succeeded, every employee’s payroll could be impacted, but he “would take this company to the ground before resigning as the CEO”.  It was that moment that I knew I had signed up for a wild ride, and understood what a startup was all about.  It was this passion and strong stomach that exuded from the CEO that I fell in love with. The passion of finding an idea and making something great from nothing, no matter what it took. Not only was this the beginning of my sales career, but an entry into the world of startups.  I never looked back.