Ten Lessons Learned I Wish I Could Tell My College Self

Last week I had the privilege of addressing students, faculty, and alumni at my alma mater about my post-college journey and what I’ve learned along the way. 

Let me preface by saying that I am 7 years out of college, and like many of the students I was addressing, I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. I’m still very much writing my next chapter. During this time, however, I have done my best to dive head first into the world. I have lived abroad, worked for Bloomberg LP, jumped into venture capital, started my own business (and then pivoted my business), joined advisory boards, consulted for startups, spoken at universities and conferences globally, and most importantly, I have made more mistakes and accumulated more lessons learned than most people have in a lifetime. And for that more than anything, I am grateful.

I ended the speech with ten lessons learned that I wish I could tell my college self. I wanted to share this more publicly with the hope that others could learn and grow from my mistakes and experience.

1) There’s a misconception that an entrepreneur is someone creating a startup in his/her basement, living on cereal and ramen. This is sometimes true, but an entrepreneur is someone that takes an idea and flips it on its head. You can be an entrepreneur anywhere (in large corporations, in your community, at your university) and in fact, we need them everywhere.

2) Start innovating now. You will never have more resources at your disposal and more time than when you are a student. Take advantage of it. Don’t worry about building the next big thing, just seek to make things better and learn. 

3) Execution over idea. Having a great idea is valuable, but unless you can execute, it’s worthless. As a founder, it’s crucial that you put yourself in position to be the best person to drive the company or idea forward. How do you do this? Stay curious, never stop learning, know your clients and market inside out, and most importantly, surround yourself with people that add to your puzzle and make you/your product better. Team is everything.

4) Know your strengths, know what you don’t know, and most importantly, do not be afraid to ask for help. I’ve found that most people regardless of their status will almost always be willing to give you 5 minutes of their time.

5) Live and breathe your customer. Know everything about them AND don't build anything without customer validation. We made the mistake when Pivt was a consumer app to build features based on the false assumption that since we had needed the features personally, that all of our customers would too. This was a big mistake that cost us time and money.

6) Dream big, but work small. While it’s important to have large aspirations and missions, you can’t build a successful product without focus.

7) Don’t be afraid to fail, just fail fast. In fact, the best lessons come from failures. As Winston Churchill said, “success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” Similarly, you will be surprised by what can happen when you take a risk because you’re not afraid to fail. For instance, never in my wildest dreams would I think that I would be able to convince Randi Zuckerberg, the former Director of Marketing of Facebook and Creator of Facebook Live to join Pivt’s Advisory Board. After flagging her down after her talk in Manhattan and sending information through an Instagram message, I cannot imagine what Pivt would be like if I did not take this leap.

8) An overnight success often takes years. Because of this, know your WHY! One of the first questions I ask founders when looking to invest is, why are you doing this? Entrepreneurship is often falsely glorified and unless you’ve gone through it, you can’t appreciate the ups and downs that come with it. When things get tough (because they will) you will need the passion and your WHY to drive you through it.

9) You will never regret betting on yourself and remember that if you don’t explore your possibilities, you limit them. By the same token, if you’re not pushing yourself forward, you’re holding yourself back. Innovation is the antidote to limits.

10) Lastly, try to view yourself and the world as a work in progress. An innovator is someone who believes that there’s always opportunity for better. Stay curious, continue to learn and grow, and challenge the status quo.

By recognizing that the world is perfectly imperfect, it leaves all of us innovators with no shortage of exciting challenges to tackle. Here we go!