Dylan Jhaveri
Senior Engineer at Procore
Growing up I always thought I’d start my own business. My dad started his own company and so did his dad, so I always just thought it was in my blood.
My first business was the obligatory childhood lemonade stand. My friends and I took it pretty seriously. We sold lemonade and candy and had the signs around the neighborhood. I remember one of our friend’s sister wanted to be involved. At one point we left her alone at the stand while we skated down to the liquor store to buy more candy. When we came back, she was gone. I remember I wanted to fire her. My dad always taught me that if you’re going to do something, be the best at it. We were starting a business and I wanted to make the best lemonade stand I could. My parents sat me down later that day and said “Dylan, she’s our friend, you can’t fire her.” I just remember thinking, “This is no joke, I’m trying to run a business here.”
Around my sophomore year in college, one of my best friends and I both got into tea. We’d drink loose leaf tea and pour it with friends. It seemed like a natural thing to start a tea company. We were always searching for business ideas and at the time, we were getting a bunch of people into this traditional way of drinking tea.
You learn right away when you’re starting a company that there’s always new challenges and always new sets of problems that you’re completely unprepared for. Whether that’s just basic things like filing taxes or figuring out how to manage inventory, it’s a new challenge everyday. That’s the fun part and the part that sucks. The day to day grind isn’t so romantic.
We hired people off Elance to help build our website and I quickly learned I knew nothing about web design. I was an accounting major. But during that process I worked with the engineers we hired to pick up some basic programming skills in CSS, HTML, and Javascript. It was purely fun for me. I started taking online courses so I could make changes to our site when I wanted. I realized learning to code takes more than just the online courses- you need to be working on a project you care about. That’s the key. Find something that you’re emotionally and financially invested in. It can be something small, but having a website or an app you want to build is the most effective way to learn.
I never considered myself a programmer. I always felt like I was barely getting away with it, almost like an impostor. I started taking contractor work on the side with a local Santa Barbara company, called Procore, that needed some very basic HTML pages built. I was around engineers all day, showed curiosity, and just tried to be as helpful as possible. I was never afraid to say I don’t know something and ask a question. But I always framed the question to show that I actually put some thought in it. I would ask as nicely as possible and hopefully I’d find someone that was having a good day. Anyone who’s an expert in a certain field remembers what it’s like starting off and they want to pass on their knowledge. As long as your questions are framed properly, people are usually willing to take you under their wings. People that don’t last, don’t ask questions.
The timing was just perfect. We had decided to shut down the tea company around the same time Procore made me an offer. They were growing fast and needed engineers. If you meet enough people, you will get a lucky connection. You just need to keep putting yourself out there. With startups, there are so many roles that need to be filled. You just need to be in the right place right time once. I also think it’s important to work for real cheap and consider it getting paid to learn. I remember staying up late in my living room, learning to code on my own. I was doing that for free. If you’re ever in the position to get paid to learn, I think that’s a really cool opportunity.
As told to NICK BASTONE
