This whole “computer startup company” thing really is different than what I was used to on the east coast. I mean, I had heard about Google and Yahoo! and PayPal and eBay and Amazon and Netscape, but it’s hard to get a feel for them until you’ve worked at a computer startup in the San Francisco Bay Area.
First of all, Stanford. At the school I went to, NC State, most people have the mindset that they’ll graduate, get a job at a normal, low profile, stable company for a while. Maybe get promoted. Maybe switch to a different company, etc.
But Stanford is different. For some reason it seems like most computer science graduates from Stanford have a hunger to come up with a crazy new idea and start their own company, get funded by a venture capital firm and build the company into something big or sell it for a lot of money. It’s like Stanford breeds computer startups.
Just living in the bay area is crazy. I swear half the people in my local climbing gym work at tech companies. It’s like everyone living in this area exists to support the software created here.
There are a few popular websites that cover startup companies. You should check these out if you want to get a feel for the crazy ideas people come up with:
Not meee!
(from Emily)