[Redacted]: Joining a Startup Two Months Into College

Just two months into my freshman year of college, I attended an entrepreneurship event where student startups and a couple big VC names made a small panel. I was outrageously nervous, going to some large event alone was not my cup of tea.

The beginning portion of the event was listening to a VC partner speak on all sorts of aspects of an early stage business. A comprehensive professional history was given, stories from different facets of his life were told, pretty much what you would expect.

Through the Q&A portion, I was able to clarify some of the regrets, miscalculated risks, and disappointments in the speaker’s experience. I’ll share three things:

1. Try a lot of things, don’t hold yourself back.
2. Timing is really important, but the one thing you can’t force.
3. Don’t dwell on the failures, learn from them and move on quickly.

Believe it or not, this talk inspired me to become more outgoing and talkative during the networking dinner half of the event. (Wow cliche I know) I talked to a variety of students from all grade levels, majors, and plans forward.

Chatting with the founders of each startup, there is palpable brilliance and ambition from each huddle I brush past. I pop myself into a conversation about development troubles and paths forward with two guys from a startup called [redacted].

These gentlemen ( Senior and Sophomore at the time ) were creating a platform where a prospective student can book a one-on-one call with an active student at any school for a raw, honest take. Positioned at students looking into schools a plane flight away, this was a more affordable and less time consuming way to get a feel for an institution.

We talked business. I had just begun development on my own MVP and so had a relevant skillset to assist in their development. One video chat with the whole team later and I was in. I am really disappointed at how important networking is for any professional endeavor, trust me, I am the last person that would network “for fun”.

Working as a technical consultant, my first task was to evaluate their code, designs, and plans. I am unable to go into exhaustive detail, but things were a mess. The backend was set, functionality was essentially done by one member of their team, so I took what was left and ran. There was some semblance of a brand image, they had paid a fiverr artist to make a mockup landing page which I was to improve on. I took the colors, fonts, and one component from that design and redid their entire Figma board. It took me three weeks, but the feedback during and after was overwhelmingly positive. Next came the implementation.

This project had been built using a standard combination of React and Tailwind, making it straightforward to begin refactoring the frontend. (Sorry ai lovers this was when gpt-3.5 was still crap at coding) I started with the global variables and elements, making sure the site was cohesive and remained functional even on the slow dev branch.

The one thing this company had completely omitted from the plan was a responsive design. When one designs a webpage, you have to remember that different devices have different sized screens. Phones, Laptops, Tablets, Desktops, Samsung Smart Refrigerators, you name it. I spent a month fixing this oversight.

Founding team is very happy.

Due to exigent circumstances, (it was kind of funny, wish I could share details) this company has suspended development and operations until some unknown future date (that means shutdown probably forever). Everyone at [redacted] is doing pretty darn well for themselves now, so it all worked out in the end.