Why I Quit my Post College job to Start a Startup (after only 10 months)

I first want to say that this post is not meant to influence anybody to do anything in particular. I am only writing this because anyone who might google “Should I quit my first job out of college to start a company” is probably in a similar position as I was just a few months ago. It’s guaranteed that my circumstances will have been much different than yours are. With that said, I promise by the end of this article you’ll at least have a 360 degree view of WTF it feels like cutting all safety nets and completely buying into something that you’ve created, which might not even exist a year from now. Fingers crossed…

The Backstory

I think it’s good to give some context around where I was in life before I graduated. I studied finance at Arizona State University, but followed a relatively non traditional path. What I mean is, everyone who studies finance is competitive. They compete within the same category to be incrementally better than the next person studying finance. They look for internships at the same companies, in the same role, doing the same work. Most resumes look identical , and everyone joins the same clubs. It was pretty standard stuff for finance undergrads — at least where I was.

Real picture of me at this point in time

I’m not completely innocent either…at some level, I was also doing these things. I felt that if I was in finance, I wanted to be the best in finance. However, the difference for me was the type of work I chose to occupy my time with. In the same year that I switched my major to finance, I tried starting my first software company. I was — and still am — extremely passionate for working with interdisciplinary teams to solve problems with technology. It is a totally different world, but is what I enjoy spending my time doing. Because this approach was so different from what everyone else was doing at the time (applying for internships, trying to get a 4.0 GPA, etc.) it wasn’t always easy to feel confident in where I was headed. Here I was, missing out on top grades and a potential job at Goldman…so that I could spend time trying to wrap my head around the mechanics of building a business, fundraising, building teams, learning how products are designed and developed — things that all seemed like unnecessary skills for someone who wanted to study “finance.”

What got me through was an unwavering confidence in myself over the long term. I had began to build my life around this continuous feedback loop of trying something extremely difficult, getting positive feedback, learning from the failures, and not retreating into a shell when things didn’t pan out. This isn’t new, but it’s just a lot easier said than done, especially when so much of our identity is tied to the work that we do. I couldn’t go anywhere without someone jokingly yelling out the name of my failed startup. Failing publicly can be extremely embarrassing, but I knew that these experiences would have a net positive affect over the long term, and that once you fail once, it gets easier and easier to get back up. This is why I’m here again, more experienced than I was before.

The Job

So it’s now its towards the end of March, less than a few months from graduation. I’m working in a research lab on campus that was letting me get tremendous hands on experience on some really interesting projects. I got to work on things such as autonomous drones for search and rescue, computer vision tech for the blind, and several others. Yet, I couldn’t escape this looming pressure that was hanging over my head. The infamous question:

“What job do I really want when I graduate?”

I knew that there needed to be a time when I really reflected on what I wanted to be doing, but I was so busy working I never wanted to focus on planning. It always blew my mind that people were signing offers within the first 3 months of their senior year — I mean, most of the impressive things I did in my life happened in my senior year, so how does that even work? I wasn’t sure if I wanted to try banking, or to find a startup — It always felt like a mix of what I wanted to be doing and what I felt I was capable of doing because of what my degree was in. I’ll spare you the details — I took a job as a finance analyst for a large cybersecurity company. I only applied to one place, and actually took the first interview while on spring break not thinking too much of it at the time. I ended up accepting the offer before even graduating, and within a month of asking myself the “what job do I want?” question, my life had been signed away to the first place I found. It was very hard not to, and for me it came down to only three things:

1. They were a tech company headquartered in Mountain View.
2. They were building a new finance team in my city, which kept me close to family.
3. They paid me what I asked for.

(Lesson learned — if you don’t ask for what you really want, you’ll most likely always get less. So be honest with yourself and don’t be afraid to negotiate.)

Where the magic happens

I didn’t even have to leave my bed if I didn’t want to! Ok, not exactly — but I did get the option to work from home, although I would normally choose to work out of the office. At this point, you are probably thinking I am just an unappreciative millennial, but I can explain.

It’s not that this wasn't a phenomenal job opportunity — it absolutely was. I learned a ton about corporate FP&A (financial planning & analysis), and was even supporting the company’s enterprise R&D team which meant I spoke with engineering managers who oversaw teams all over the country that were building software. I learned about how corporations go about building software and saw first hand how automation can let you maintain efficiency when resources become less available — just as a byproduct of the role. I even became comfortable financially, meaning I was able to rent a much nicer place and even went from being LimeBike’s biggest US customer to buying my own car — it all seemed great.

Well…new to me

But there was a problem: If you know anything about me, you know that I’m an extremely talkative and lively person. I’m not the type that can sit in front of a computer for 8 hours a day, with headphones in, pounding away at spreadsheets in excel. It was difficult coming into work knowing I was a drop in a pond of over 14,000 employees across the globe. It had nothing to do with my capacity to do the work — it simply was not what I wanted to be doing. I also began to realize that my breadth of skills were far better applied in different areas of a business, not necessarily in FP&A. Once you begin to feel like this, it’s nearly impossible to stop.

The Startup

Before graduating, I began to take on several side projects in an attempt to get better at UX/UI design. One of the main reasons my previous startup, Koine, had failed was because I simply lacked the necessary hard skills needed to actually create and launch a new software product (whaaaaaat? You’re kidding…). Yeah, well let’s not forget, I studied finance — and I understand it pretty damn well, but I still couldn’t design, code, or really build anything tangible. This led to two major problems:

1. I couldn’t tell the difference between skilled engineers and non-skilled engineers. If someone told me they could build something in a certain amount of time, I’d just have to take their word for it.

2. I couldn’t clearly explain my vision for a product to a software engineer because I didn’t know how to use any wire-framing or design tools. Paper sketches and powerpoint mockups only got me so far…

Clearly I was naive, but to the point I made earlier — if I hadn’t tried back in 2016, I would not have learned what I did, when I did. Now starting a new company, my co-founder Danny and I have actually been able to avoid a sh*t ton of mistakes that we both made in the past, simply because we’ve learned through doing. We had worked together on a project a little over a year ago that used NFC to let you unlock doors on campus with your phone instead of your badge. It was actually really cool, and was one of the first times I got to experience the SCRUM process with a larger team from ideation to MVP. However, in a series of events that probably warrants its own blog post, we all split up to do our own thing.

To the original point, one of the design projects I took on near graduation came from Danny, when he called me one day about an app idea he was beginning to work on. A lot has happened since that call; we pivoted the original idea into something that just made much more sense, and come July, we decided to become roommates with the intention of launching the app by Q1 2019. For me, it was a very easy decision. I had just started a job, and school for me was over. In my eyes that meant that I would have an open schedule outside of 9–5 to work on whatever project I wanted. If we were efficient, we could actually launch this thing in a reasonable amount of time. Only one problem…Danny is a year younger than me, which meant he was still in school and also had a part time job on campus. To avoid an increasingly fragmented schedule, Danny left his part time position at the university and eventually withdrew from school for the 2019 academic year (please don’t tell his parents, he’s still trying to figure out how he’s going to do that).

Just like that, we were off — back where we always found ourselves, trying to build something that we had no business trying to build, and putting ourselves in the least optimal situation just because we thought we could really pull it off. It felt great, and the work that commenced between July and December is what pushed me to leave the safe job behind to go all in when it was time. My paycheck had been covering most of our expenses, so it was impossible for me to consider leaving. We would have been out of money before the year even ended if I did that. We reached a functioning POC by October and were able to apply for Y Combinator but didn’t even land an interview (trust me we did not deserve one at the time). At this point, I promised Danny that I would leave my job by January to ensure a successful launch. I had no idea how it would happen, but I knew it had to if we really wanted to do what we set out to do. About two months out is when I really started to question if I was going to be able to honor my commitment (and Danny probably didn’t believe it either). I hadn’t even been there a year yet! What would they think? All I was concerned with was what they would say, how they would react, or that they’d believe I simply wasn’t capable of doing the job. I felt like I had 100 people to please, knowing I couldn’t please everyone. I knew that with my responsibility at work increasing, it was only a matter of time before I would be spread too thin to the point of ineffectively executing in both areas. I knew what I needed to do; I was just afraid to make a decision.

The Resignation

Before committing, I did spend quite a bit of time meeting with people whose opinions I valued, to get other perspectives on my situation. That’s natural I would assume. I feel like when you are in the center of it all, it gets very hard to look at things objectively, so advice can be a good thing. At the same time, it’s equally difficult for anyone to give you sound advice because they can’t know what’s really on the line, at least not as much as you do. Nobody can tell you what the best decision is except for you. Nobody would believe in the app as much as Danny and I did until it was on the market, so I had to decide whether I felt like it was the best decision. I also had to respect the fact that it would be hard to have a successful launch in Q1 if I was still employed full time. This type of thing takes a substantial amount of effort to gain traction, especially as a mobile app.

To make matters worse, my manager was trying to get me to fly out to the Mountain View office in the second week of January. Danny and I planned to launch at CES, which was also around the first few weeks of January. This meant I now had only two real options:

1. Put in my notice now, so that I am gone in time for CES.
2. Stay with the company for all of January, miss CES, fly out to Mountain View, only to put in my resignation a few weeks later.

(To make things even more complicated, year end bonuses were going to pay out in the first check of June so every month I waited to leave made less and less financial sense. It could have easily turned into “ok well I might as well stay until June.”)

I decided to do it that very next Monday. I knew what I needed to do, and believed in what I was doing, and almost as fast as the pressure had came it seemed to disappear. It’s a crazy feeling, having to make a decision with absolute conviction. If I doubted our ability to make good of our promises to launch the app, I don’t think I could have done it. I was leaving money on the table, stability on the table; It would have been the easy decision for me to stay, deal with the work for four more months and collect my cash. I simply couldn’t do it. I had no intention of starting a company when I took this job, but I can’t say i’m very surprised it turned out like this. If you’ve read this far, you might know the feeling.

I made sure to do it over the phone instead of over email (since I worked remote, I didn’t exactly have other options). The call itself went better than I expected. We tend to think of the worst case scenarios when we play out these situations in our head, but she was ultimately very understanding. I was not afraid to explain my reasoning; I didn’t want anyone to feel as if I was trying to be deceitful. Most of my colleagues had some words of wisdom to share with me, that I thought I would include in some closing notes here:

1. Now is the time when we are free to take as much risk as possible. When I had to explain to each person on the teams’ that I worked with what I was doing next, I was surprised to find that many of them had this reaction. Most of my colleagues were married/engaged, half had multiple children, and there were only a few within my age range. While I initially thought they would see me as a “quitter” they were all extremely supportive of my decision. Many told me that they didn’t know what they wanted to do at my age, and pointed out how most people find themselves 5 years into a career, find a spouse, and have kids. Once you reach that point, you can’t afford to take these kinds of risks. I’m 22 years old. I have almost no student debt, and a keen interest for building cool things. If there is ever a time to do just that, it’s right now.
2. Never lose focus. Losing the structure of a day to day job requires you to place a lot of self-discipline and structure upon yourself. One colleague, who was particularly interested in comedy, referenced a podcast where the comedian explained how he would never have been able to accomplish what he accomplished if he had been doing his comedy while working in a career. If he didn’t believe 100% in what he was doing, why would anybody else? Without a relentless focus on one goal combined with self induced structure, it’s nearly impossible to achieve any extraordinary amount of success. Without the willingness to put it all on the line — to cut all safety nets — you will never know what you can truly accomplish.
3. You are always going to be your biggest fan. This one is something that I have been sure to tell myself a lot recently. It may seem a bit narcissistic, but I promise there’s some merit. Realistically, everybody has their own goals and ambitions in life. We can never expect anybody to care as much about ours, as we care about our own. We will continue to face people in our lives who might not believe in us, or might not think we can achieve what we’ve set out to achieve and thats completely fine. However, we alone have the ability to control our thoughts and to create the world we want to live in. The moment we begin to let doubt creep into our own minds, we have already lost. For that reason, I always focus on being my own biggest fan, pushing myself to my own limits, and making sure to tell myself everyday that I can accomplish anything with focus, perseverance and patience.

Our Company: Beammit

Beammit is a mobile app that uses Bluetooth to let you discover and message the people around you.

Right now, it’s impossible to know who’s around you. For example, I could walk into a coffee shop, stand on a table, and offer anybody $1,000 if they could tell me what my name is. Unless someone was desperate enough to attack me and steal my wallet — you simply couldn’t do it. We live in a world where we can quite literally filter through millions of people online, but still have no way of telling who the person is standing right across the room. Particularly at events, when people are paying hundreds — sometimes thousands of dollars just to network and meet new people, it becomes a much more apparent problem. Beyond this, people still resort to using business cards to exchange information face to face, or — even worse — awkwardly handing their phone to a stranger so they can type in a name and number (only for you to try and look for it tomorrow to realize you don’t even remember the person’s name). I’m sure many of you reading this have experienced this exact scenario first hand.

We wanted to fix that. It takes less than 30 seconds to get on-boarded to the Beammit app. Simply create a profile card which looks just like this. Once made, you become discoverable to all users within 0–30 yards, and vise-versa. We also made it possible for two people to seamlessly exchange information between each other through messages, making it easy to follow up and connect digitally. We’re currently in Beta and are launching to iOS in early March. Our first goal is to scale locally within ASU campus.

We are currently looking to raise a seed round to support user growth initiatives, hire talent and refine our product. If you or someone you know is interested, we would love to talk more about our approach and strategy for 2019.

Me, trying to raise money

Visit beammit.com to join our early beta user list and be sure to follow us on twitter @beammitapp and on instagram @beammit

Thanks for reading.

Marcus Jones
Co-Founder & CEO,
Beammit, Inc.
marcus@beammit.com
beammit.com