Culture is a common buzz word among new and established organizations. It’s increasingly important in a startup to motivate employees to work the extra hours without the added benefits. It’s also the factor many companies rely on to attract and retain strong talent. But strangely enough some of the most successful companies don’t even consider culture, but rather stumble into it.

In a conversation with a friend of mine we discussed the importance of ambition and passion in our lives. As a current or aspiring entrepreneur you are probably in frequent contact with people that rely on one of these qualities. But in your quest for “the next big thing” did you ever pause to think which is superior?

If you ever want to build a tech startup, you have to build technology. That doesn’t mean outsourcing an MVP overseas or creep on engineers at hack-a-thons- it means actually building a technology.

There’s two fundamental processes in a new and growing company- building and selling. But you can’t sell if there’s nothing built to sell. Think of it as a requirement for any technology entrepreneur. All Pre-Med students must have a background in Biology and Organic Chemistry just like all tech entrepreneurs should have a background in Javascript and MySQL.

You’ve been pitching investors but no one seems to get your vision? Maybe you’ve been pining after that cute girl in your CS class but she has a boyfriend?

That’s great! Rejection is actually pretty awesome and here’s why:

Most start up founders and employees have insane work weeks while juggling other projects and hobbies. Working 60+ hours a week and dealing with the ups and down of a startup lifestyle can become really stressful. It’s increasingly important to distress for the health of your team dynamic and yourself.

Go on a Team Vacation

...JUST KIDDING!

I love Greenhorn Connect and I really admire everything that Jason and other team members have done for the community in the past few years. When Jason asked me to be his successor as he moves to his next venture I was honored and incredibly excited. We’ve been working together over the past few months so I can learn how he’s run Greenhoron Connect and look forward to bringing a fresh perspective. This post is my three-step plan to continue to grow the Greenhorn Connect presence as I transition fully as the Executive Director of Community and Student Relations:

I consider The Callbacks, the comedy group I founded at BU to be my first successful startup.The following posts is a series of lessons I learned while leading them:

Hiring (3 of 3)

Finding the right talent in a start up is a very hot topic right now and one that most companies struggle with. Finding the right talent for The Callbacks was no exception and something we really struggled with in our first two years. We were fortunate enough to have a great group of founding members, but when we started bringing on new people we ran into a lot of problems.

I consider The Callbacks, the comedy group I founded at BU to be my first successful startup.The following posts is a series of lessons I learned while leading them:

Building the Brand (2 of 3)

I’ve never met someone working on a startup that didn’t think their product was innately better than their competitors’, but I’ve often met entrepreneurs having trouble raising awareness and elevating their startup’s brand. When I started The Callbacks we reviewed the strengths and weaknesses of our competitors and decided our values would differentiate us from BU’s other comedy groups. The following are lessons I learned while building that brand: