With all the cool startups in San Francisco, it is so tempting to submit a generic resume and an overused cover letter to every position that matches your experience. Clearly you can make it or break it in the startup world. Especially in the Bay Area (San Francisco and Silicon Valley) where the density of startups, founders and investors can make their fortunes and dreams happen in a short amount of time.

Taking the Bart for instance from Oakland to Montgomery, I have witnessed time and time again the abundant ideas and networking neighboring my daily commute. From my experience, there are several ways to join the hype. But I only find one - well equipped with high rewards and least amount of risk — join an awesome & successful startup.

For instance in 2008 - fresh out of college - I’d joined Yelp and experienced my first IPO in 2012. After this chapter of my life, I sought after a new startup experience. As soon as I found Tint, I thought I’d chronicle the 6 steps that helped me get another opportunity at an awesome startup (formatted in a story of my journey).

Here’s the 6 ways that helped me land an awesome startup job:

1. Be a user & then apply to an awesome startup job

I stood out as a candidate because I am an avid user of Tint. Tint is a small tech startup comprised of 3 recent USC graduates now based in San Francisco.

As a business owner, I have spent countless hours updating and designing my website with very little experience in programs like photoshop, illustrator and HTML. For my indie lifestyle brand, Ze Line, it was important to promote current events and new projects in real-time. Designing, editing and maintaining my website took up majority of my waking hours. In addition my social network positions were fragmented and the channels were overwhelming to maintain: Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, Google+, Vine, Wordpress, and Twitter. How do I effectively tend to all the networks and keep the information consistent at the same time?

If you are a one man team business owner like me, this is just flat out bananas!

Luckily, I found Tint from an e-commerce site and loved the implementation of Instagram photos to showcase my friend’s site, RodeOh. I had to try it! It took me 5 minutes to aggregate my social content, and another 5 minutes to embed the curated content on my wix online shop.

What a relief! I persisted to learn more about Tint.

2. Reach out as a real person in the real world.

I read all their blogs and understood where they were coming from as entrepreneurs. I researched about who they were, their advisors and the industry they were in. I learned all about their competitors Rebelmouse, Tagboard, Mass Relevance and a few others to understand what I was getting myself into. I signed up to try all the sites and found the user experience on Tint by far more superior in features, simplicity and design. Lastly, I understood their product market fit and its potential to generate revenue through social media.

I had to reach out! Tint didn’t have job opportunities then and everyone figured out how to connect using Linkedin. So I found Tim’s email and requested for a casual meet and greet at their SOMA Office, cleverly called the “Hatchery.”

3. Create a position by proposing your vision in your email.

My user experience with Tint gave me so much useful information. I combined the UX w/my sales experience, and proposed ways to generate revenue. I shared my affinity for previously working at Yelp and explained how sponsored ads are sold annually, from $300-$1000 per month. I concluded the email by proposing that I can help generate $100k by the end of the year.

I was ecstatic to get a quick response from Tim.

4. Provide strategies during your meeting.

Be overly prepared. As a business owner, I proposed enforcing annual plans to bring in new recurring revenue. I talked about how increasing traffic annually through Tint would help a lot of mom & pop shops. I saw the value in using Tint for contests, testimonials and brand engagement. I knew that Tint missed a Series A funding, so I volunteered to have a $25K quota and $30k target to help generate $100k by the end of 2013.

I shared my experience with CRM systems like Salesforce to have a 360 degree view from lead to conversion. I talked about valuable metrics that would help me as an individual contributor produce, which will ultimately help the team execute important decisions to scale.

And below is what happened when my ideas started to come to fruition in Oct. 2013.

5. Let the past dictate the future.

I had a lot of fun meeting with the team. I was very open about my past, my successes and my mistakes. I felt candid in describing how valuable each and every experience were for me as a human being. All my achievements and adversities only trained me to be the person I am today and so sharing my vulnerabilities had a major part in earning the team’s trust. I decided to be completely transparent, and it was a perfect way to show my honesty.

Today, one of Tint’s value statements: “Transparency is key.” I will always carry this principle with me wherever I go.

6. Walk the talk.

We’ve heard this all before and even after earning someone’s trust, there will always be that doubt. It was interesting for me to propose $100k to 3 intellectual guys straight from college, decades ahead of their years. I had to prove that I could step up to the plate.

So I offered to work together first… before anything else. Not many applicants have the luxury to offer full commitment to startups because of the insecurities of a freelance position. Vice versa, not many startups have the luxury to commit on false promises. I felt confident in the team and I knew we had a winning recipe to execute on the vision.

This is just the beginning of a fairytale story: I started in September 2013, and enjoyed sharing a desk with Tint’s awesome CEO, Tim Sae Koo (first image above). Most importantly, we have already passed the 100k vision.

October alone, our team team of four generated over 92k in recognized revenue.

Hope you enjoyed this story as it’s only the beginning of an exciting journey ahead my path to my dreams and for Tint. Do you work at a startup? How did you land it? What kind of strategies did you employ successfully that worked for you? Feel free to share in the comments below!

Four months later, since I’ve left Tint, my 3 founder amigos never fail to amaze me. Check out their celebrity spotlight in NYC (Nasdaq):