How to break into Big Tech as a recent college graduate

During her senior year at UCLA, Riley Rojas decided she wanted to break into Big Tech post grad. Now, at 23-years-old, Rojas is one of the youngest product managers at Meta.

How did she earn her spot??

By the time Rojas applied to Meta (formerly known as Facebook), she had formed three startups — from a college clothing brand to a textbook return service. Having entrepreneurial experience on her resume made the California-native confident that she would land an initial interview. But with a political science background, Rojas knew she needed to study up for the technical interviews.

“I completely stopped everything,” she said. “I studied for about two to three months. My main focus was, after I get this first interview, how am I going to actually close this deal? That was me learning everything that I needed to perform well.”?

Rojas’ dedication paid off. She secured a job offer and began her role at Meta in January 2021, just months after graduating early from college. Looking back almost two years later, Rojas attributes her success to believing in herself from day one.?

“My first step was believing that I was worthy and capable of getting this PM [product manager] job at the biggest tech company in the whole world,” she said.?

I spoke to Rojas to learn more about why she decided to pursue product management over going all in on her startup ventures. (Note: All quotes are Riley Rojas’ own opinion and do not reflect those of her employer.)

Did you always want to become an entrepreneur?

When I was little, my big goal was to be a CEO one day. I never thought something like that would be possible at such a young age. When I was a freshman in college, working at a law firm and studying political science, I was so unhappy. I knew that it wasn't my passion. Political science was a major that allowed me to have a lot of free time to explore other hobbies and interests. So while I was working at the law firm, I sat down and was like, 'If I'm going to have a different plan, I need to do it all on my own.' Then I thought, 'Let me just start a business,' and that's how I started thinking of my first startup.

What was the inspiration behind your three startups?

Izzy & Riley (founded Dec. 2017): I was making college tailgate t-shirts for myself because I'm really into fashion. My friends started asking me, 'Riley, can we start borrowing your clothes? I'll pay you to make one for me.' And I was like, 'Wow, if people are going to pay me to make t-shirts for them, why don't I just do this as my business?' That's how I initially got the idea and started doing it on a really small scale. It got to a point where so many people were asking me. My co-founder Izzy, she was like, ‘We should make this a business. I can do more of the business side.’ She was studying entrepreneurship. She's a year older than me, and I was just a freshman in college. I had no idea what to do. I knew that I had talent, so I said, 'Let's do this together.'

We started by DMing girls on Instagram at our college. We would pick girls in sororities that had a lot of following, and they would start wearing our clothes. Then we started to scale even faster, so we started working with a manufacturer. We'd have a drop for each football game, and we started selling out. Within our first year of launching, we raised $125,000. Our investors said, 'The reason why I'm investing in you guys is because of the name.' It was a name that really captured two girls in college, being entrepreneurs, wanting to support female empowerment, doing something that's important to us, but also making a business out of it.

Textbook Dibs (founded Oct. 2018): While I was making my first startup, I also was working part time at the bookstore because I was paying for college on my own. One day I thought, 'Why are there so many students buying textbooks and no one is coming back to resell them?' I started doing my own customer research. I asked students, 'Why aren't you reselling your textbook to the bookstore?' Over 80% of students said they didn't resell their textbooks to the student store because they were too lazy. I was like, 'Can I dip into this pain point?' I started walking around the dorms at the end of every quarter. I'd offer students, I would knock on their doors, 'I'll give you $5 if you resell me your textbook.’ 'Every single student that had textbooks in their dorm would sell me their textbook, no questions asked. I would walk from the dorms with as many bags as I could carry all the way to the textbook store. I'd resell those textbooks and make $500 to $1,000 each time.

I set up a whole email system where people would email me and they'd say, 'Hey Riley, I have textbooks. Come pick them up.' Once I started doing that, I was scaling. Then I ran into another roadblock. I was like, 'Why are we reselling to the textbook store?' I looked online and I realized that you can sell directly back to the publisher. So I reached out to all the publishers I was getting the textbooks from. They had to make me a business account so I could communicate with them, so I was pretty much my own entity. This totally increased our margins. I then applied for an accelerator because I realized this is an idea I can scale. I got a $5,000 grant, and I then thought of the idea to launch kiosk machines where students could scan their textbook, drop it and get Venmo'd. I launched that kiosk machine and now it's piloting at UCLA.

Aptitud (founded March 2020): Once COVID started happening, I wasn't able to scale Izzy & Riley or Textbook Dibs because both were heavily dependent on people being in college. Something that I'm really passionate about is health and fitness. All of the gyms were closing. So I thought, 'What if I brought a little gym to everyone in a box?'

I had this idea to make a fit kit. It's everything you need for your at-home workout: resistance bands, weights, jump ropes. I manufactured a couple thousand fit kits from a manufacturer I was working in China, and then created this e-commerce brand. I utilized social media to make our fit kits go viral. Our huge selling point was, 'Gyms are closed. Here's your gym in a bag.' We really capitalized on this whole COVID economy, and eventually, after about a year, I sold the brand in Walmart.

Did you ever consider pursuing any of these ventures full time after college??

I wanted to pursue these startups full time, but I had to be really realistic with myself. As I was ending college, I had a lot of student loans that I had to pay off, and I needed a lot of stability. Why I'm such a proponent of people starting companies in college is because it's a very risk-free time. Once I was entering the real world, I didn't have the financial stability to keep taking risks and investing in my startups. I thought to myself, 'I'll just go to Big Tech.' Primarily it was for the money. That was my main motivation. I would get a stable income. On top of that, I also wanted mentorship and learning and impact. I've always been a money-motivated person, and I feel like growing up, that was such a bad thing to say. I don't understand why.

Once I had that realization my senior year, I took a step back and I said, 'If I'm not building my own startup, I want to work for the best.' The best at that time was Facebook, now called Meta. I only applied to Facebook. I didn't want to work anywhere else. I applied to be a product manager and I got the job. I took a step back from my startups. My co-founder is still running my first startup. I have some people working on the other startups on the side. I've been here [at Meta] for two years, and I've been able to do exactly what I said, which is grow my savings, start paying off my student loans and get financially stable so that one day I can return back to being an entrepreneur.

What was your strategy once you identified your target company?

I'm a huge person of manifestation and setting your mind to something. When I do something, I like to put 100% of my effort into it. Once I realized there was this PM program at Facebook that I thought would be really exciting and aligned with my skills, I literally wrote down on a piece of paper, 'I will be a product manager at Facebook.' I always tell people that because even though it's not actually me taking action or networking, the first step in getting one of these big jobs or starting a business is believing in yourself. You are your own biggest enemy and if you don't even believe in yourself, how are you going to expect other people to believe in you??

What’s your advice for landing a job in an industry where you lack prior experience??

What I've learned being an entrepreneur and working in Big Tech is that anyone can do any job. There is small prior skill or education or knowledge you need. You can learn on the job. The biggest tip that I can give, and this is what I did to even find PM, was I started at my North Star goal. My North Star goal was to be a CEO or a business owner. I looked up all these founders of businesses that I loved and was inspired by, and I would look at their prior experience. I saw the commonality with a majority of people that I wanted to be as my life goal. They all had a product management background. That's when I realized, 'That's a stepping stone. That's achievable for me right now.'?

What’s your advice to other aspiring entrepreneurs who are in college??

The best and easiest way for you to start your first business is for you to realize the problems that you're facing. What are the challenges that you're facing every single day and how could those be solved? My biggest advice on balancing it all ... if you really grind in college and you maximize every single second you're there — either working, building a hobby or doing something to pursue an endeavor in your career — it will genuinely set you up to go so much further in life.

Editor's note: Some quotes were edited for length and clarity.

?? Always be a student

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