It was late April and I still wasn't sure what I would do after graduation....
I was torn between:
A) finding a full time job in Denver/Boulder area
B) Traveling the world for a few months
C) or doing an internship in Silicon Valley.
Completely different things huh? Yeah....
Well for a few months I had been following this kid's blog. The name was Smit Patel. Smit had spent countless hours as a high school senior (18 yrs. old) trying to find an internship at a startup. But he had no experience. Oh and guess what? He ended up interning with a Y Combinator company in Silicon Valley. It wasn't without much trial and error.
I studied his tactics. I would read a particular post over and over. Until one day I decided to reach out to him on Twitter.
We ended up emailing on that same day and then doing a google video chat 11 days later.
Because the google chat happened, I learned that he was now 19 and doing marketing for a 500 Startups company called Scriptrock in Silicon Valley. And as fate would have it; they were looking for a new Marketing intern! I had no idea what the "DevOps" space was at the time. But Scriptrock seemed interesting and this was an unexpected opportunity that I couldn't pass up.
Smit wanted writing samples....so I sent them an hour after our conversation. Things happened quickly. He set up an interview.
2 days later, the CEO (Mike), Smit, and I talked. Mike grilled me on what kind of stuff I had previously done and had me work on a task. The task was to research the top 5 competitors in the space and to understand the potential of the space in the next 5 years.
I worked on it for one and half weeks. But it was time. I crossed my fingers and sent it off.
......
Scriptrock hired me 3 days later. They flew me out to San Francisco 3 days after that. 2 days later I started my internship.
Looking back, I'm glad I took a chance and acted fast. Because of that tweet, I was able to not only land an internship, but have the opportunity to learn, grow, and network in Silicon Valley.
......
I hope you enjoyed reading this short article!
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