Here I come! September 15, 2007
Posted by sdpurtill in : Life, Noodle , trackbackIt’s official… I have joined YouNoodle and I’m moving to San Francisco to work, and boy, am I excited!
I’m taking a gap year (or 10 hehe) from university to join the founding team of YouNoodle, a startup in San Francisco. I heard some advice the other day from Max Levchin on the GigaOm Show about how VCs invest their money. VCs don’t invest in ideas, they invest in people. I feel the same way about the people I choose to work alongside; YouNoodle has put together a team of superstars who can execute like no one’s business (think PayPal). I would do anything to work with these guys — heck, I’d even work for free just to be around them (wouldn’t be possible in SF though hehe). I will be starting as a Ruby on Rails engineer. I’ve had to learn Rails these last few weeks and let go of Django, but it has been so hard! I will also have a lot of input on the product and hopefully dabble in whatever else I can so I can learn everything possible.
So I’m 18 years old, moving to San Francisco… crazy, right? I know I’m not ready for everything that is going to happen in these next few months/years. Good — you have to step outside of your comfort zone to do amazing things. It’s sort of like what people says about having children — there is never a “right” time to have kids, the best time is to start having them now. The same goes for startups; I would venture to say that there are no people in the world who are ready and prepared to start a startup, and that’s the beauty of it — you learn as you go, adapting to the situations and opportunities that arise. Though I am not one of the two co-founders of YouNoodle, I am already very attached with the product and the team behind it (my second startup family, MonVia counts as first :p).
I still intend on attending university after this, even though I don’t know exactly how many months/years that will be. I have confirmed my deferment at Santa Clara, and I heard that I can be held on deferment there for up to five years. Please don’t ask me when I am going to university or try to make me feel guilty for not being “normal”. I’m not normal, get used to it. I also intend on trying to get into Stanford again (after being rejected last year), and will be applying to other schools (Oxford and MIT so far) for the Fall of 2009, but who knows what is going to happen from now until then. Maybe I’ll end up going to Harvard in 10 years and then getting my MBA from Stanford right after, but seriously, I have no idea what my future holds at this point.
To all the friends I will make, the people I will meet, the experiences I will take with me, the knowledge I will attain, the good judgment that I will gain through the bad judgment that I will make, the amazing city of San Francisco, and everything else that I will get out of this journey… Here I come!
There are many ways to die, you have to find the one way to live.
Comments»
Here’s to the crazy ones…
Best of luck, mate.
we’ll miss you at home. :-( …watch out SF!! I know that success will follow you as you go!
Way to go, Sam!! I’m sooooo proud! — and so is Mr. B! He sends his blessings your way too.
Keep in touch, please… although I have Dan and Katie helping me do that!
Buena suerte, m’ijo!
Sra. B
Dude, sober up. San Francisco is cake. You just need to learn how to be the knife dipped in warm water to gently cut each succulent slice. Or something like that. Best of luck, little cousin. I should be around if you need anything.
Godspeed
Congrats, Sam. You have jumped into your adult life headfirst…forget dipping your toes into the water’s edge! As long as you continue to be a learner while being a do-er, there will be no issue on my end with foregoing university. And you’re obviously doing that! God bless you as you pursue excellence in your job and life; I can’t wait to hear the next chapter–
Hey Sam,
I was a hacker my first couple years of college, hardly EVER went
to class, got D’s most of the time, but the skills I learned hacking
has made me successful enough to have a lot of choices and opportunities for the rest of my life.
My advice nuggets:
1) Take a bath and put on clean clothes every day
–non-hackers notice
2) Let your hacking run a natural course
–move on when it gets easy and predictable
3) Do a vocabulary check, ask people if they understand
–if they say “no” a lot, you are too far in to your world
4) Go outside one morning a week
–for hackers, it’s kinda like taking a mental bath
5) The world of hackers contains good guys and bad guys
–weird opportunities to be a bad guy come up, RESIST!
I am very jealous. I remember with great fondness my hacker
years.
I look foward to what you will produce in the future. I know that you will get to your goals because you will be willing to work hard enough to get there. That is what makes you a special person. You have a desire that I have rarely seen. Gook Luck! but you don’t need it.