Stole this from Allen Finn who borrowed the idea from Brian Blum.
"You need to master telling your own story. Connecting the dots between experiences positions you as a unique voice, and helps you stand out to potential clients, employers or business partners. Individually, a lot of those experiences probably didn't feel connected at the time. But when you zoom out, it makes perfect sense why you're doing what you're doing. If you're thinking about your next move, might be worthwhile to reflect and complete this exercise."
Here's mine:
1. Junior year of college I accepted a job at top M&A advisory, EY-Parthenon, to start post-graduation from Colgate University in 2020.
2. After an unforeseen hot start to my senior season of D1 ice hockey, I signed with an agent with the goal of playing pro hockey.
3. Beat Brown University in overtime in the first round of playoffs, and two days later, the entire season was cancelled because of COVID-19. (Pivotal moment in my life)
4. Closed the chapter on hockey post-college due to uncertainty from the Pandemic and also took the option to defer the EY job for 1 year due to rough macroeconomic conditions.
5. Joined early-stage COVID testing startup that scaled to $50 million in revenue and 800 employees in five months, where I met one of my now co-founders, Kieran Derfus. I still intended to go to EY at this time.
6. Three weeks before my revised EY start date, Jonathan DiOrio connected me with Marshall Osborne to meet for lunch. This conversation would change the trajectory of my life forever…
7. He asked if I had any interest in joining the business development team at Gopuff. My original goal was to get enough corporate experience to join the BD team at a high-growth tech startup, so when the opportunity presented itself, I couldn’t resist.
8. I completed 7 rounds of interviews in 9 days and accepted an offer 12 hours before my first day at EY. I spent exactly one year at Gopuff learning and being mentored by a team of rockstars (cc Phil Mikhaylov Danielle Andrade Matthew Jones).
9. During my time at Gopuff, I built out a business unit called ‘PoweredBy Gopuff’, which was a Shopify app to unlock instant delivery for DTC websites, where I met some of the brightest minds in the DTC/ecommerce world including Bill Shufelt, Christopher Gallant, Nate Harvey, Calvin Lammers.
10. After learning the ins and outs of the Shopify landscape while at Gopuff, I realized that the notion that it's expensive and takes a really long time to build a high-converting ecommerce storefront is a misconception, so I set out to debunk this myth.
11. I joined forces with Michael Keenehan and Kieran Derfus to build what is now known as Platter, which is a theme and app bundle designed to enable Shopify brands to build high-converting, profitable storefronts.
From a junior in college with plans to join a consulting firm to a software founder in four years. Not expected, but extremely grateful!
What’s your story?
Unemployed
3wGood to know!