What Led You to Start a Company

I always had a plan to start my own company. It was simply to get a degree in a growth field. So I did half computer science and half business. Then the plan was to get a job at a big company so I'd learn how large organizations worked. I got a job my junior year of college working as an engineer for Hewlett Packard. From here I had an opportunity to go work for a startup as a very early employee as a manager. I thought at 24 years old, that this was more responsibility than I should have, therefore, I should go for it. It wasn't part of my original plan, but I thought this exta experience was just what I needed. At the time, I fully expected the company to fail. It turns out it didn't. As the bubble was popping, Microsoft bought the company. For the next several years I worked at Microsoft. Once I had reaped the financial rewards, I felt that the time was right to try it myself.

In retrospect, the only thing that wasn't part of my plan was going to work for a startup before starting my own company. If I knew then what I know now, I'd recommend diving into a startup and don't overthink it. When I was graduating from college I had several business ideas. Everything from online recruiting to dating. In hindsight, I would have probably been better off going for one of those early ideas. Every-time I hear someone say they want to start a company, but want to get experience first, I always tell them that they should start the company and forget the other part.

So, in short, it was always part of my plan to start a company, if not several of them.