After graduating from CSUF with a Business Degree in Entrepreneurship I have been very busy and I have cherished every moment of it! Coming out of college in 2010, I began working in Sales at a web security company in my hometown here in the Bay Area. Before long, I was offered what I consider my ideal career opportunity to work at an early stage VC-backed mobile security company.

Being the first business hire at a technology startup is giving me the chance to learn and explore a lot of different areas simultaneously, namely:

• Sales (identifying opportunities and closing deals)
• Support (onboarding customers)
• Business Development (partnering/evangelizing within Wireless Carriers)
• Product marketing (liaising between customers and product teams to influence/contribute to product direction)
• Content marketing (product demonstrations, case studies, etc.)
• Field marketing (trade shows)
• CRM, Marketing Automation and Web Analytics software
• PR (I use a technique called “drafting”, which is essentially building a list of media contacts and positioning our solution around relevant articles they’ve written. My endeavors got us into a few publications like TechCrunch, NetworkWorld, Information Week, DarkReading and a few others)

My favorite part is really the creativity that goes into being the “voice of the customer”. I like thinking about why we exist as a company/product/service and how we make a positive impact on our customers. I like to break down what we do to its most essential form and work my way up from there to craft effective messages and value statements to use with our market.

There is never a dull moment in a startup! We’re growing steadily with our eyes on that hockey stick growth curve!

A few important lessons I’m learning:

1. Being a great marketer is about being able to think both qualitatively and quantitatively; a continuous learning process.
2. Culture and attitude is the single most important success factor in a startup where motivation and teamwork is everything.

Overall, I’m working really hard and see it as an opportunity to work smart when I eventually launch my own venture. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you all in the CSUF Entrepreneurship Concentration. The opportunity to formulate concepts, develop those into plans and eventually pitch them made it “real” for me at such a critical time.

Thinking about becoming a CSUF Entrepreneurship student? Click here for more information or, better yet, drop by our offices in Mihaylo Hall room 3280.