4 years ago today, I sent a tweet that would become the defining point of my career.
But before I get to that story, I need to give you some context. It was early 2011, and I was an unemployed 24 year old living in my mom's house in Santa Clara, California. This was the house I had lived in throughout most of my high school years, and the room hadn't changed one bit since then -- the walls were still painted a splotchy shade of turquoise, decorated with set lists peeled off of the stages of San Francisco's concert venues and signed by obscure indie bands.
I had just moved back after spending a year and a half in London, where I did an MA degree in International Broadcast Journalism at Westminster University. After the initial excitement of catching up with family, friends, and getting thoroughly reacquainted with proper Mexican food, the dreaded quarter-life crisis came in like a wrecking ball. My student loan money was nearly all spent, and I had no job prospects.
At this point, a typical day was something like:
10am: Eat a bowl of cereal while transfixed by games of Plinko on "The Price Is Right."
Afternoon: Halfheartedly scour job sites, anticipating rejection before even writing a cover letter because the job market was so grim.
Evening: Crap, dinner time already? Guess it's time to get out of pajamas and take a shower...
Late night: Distract myself from thoughts of, "what's wrong with you? Why haven't you found a job yet? You had a stable job before, why did you have to give it up for London? Look at you now, you unemployed slacker!" by reading books, watching TV shows/movies, and browsing the internet until passing out.
So yeah...it wasn't one of the happiest periods in my life. Luckily, the power of Craigslist and my mom's instinct joined forces to get me out of this funk. She was also unemployed at the time and, while on her own search for work, came across a Craigslist posting that she thought I should take a look at. It was at a small startup in Mountain View, and they were looking for a summer music writing intern. Because I had been doing music journalism since I was 18, she thought it would be right up my alley.
Initially, I dismissed the posting because I thought that with a Master's degree, I deserved a job way beyond internship level. Besides, it wasn't supposed to start until summer and it was only early February. What would I do until then, even if I applied and managed to get the internship? But after taking the time to thoroughly read through the posting, everything that was written in it resonated with me. I remember feeling physically tingly with excitement while reading the tasks this internship would require. At this point, I decided it was worth it to dig a little deeper and to find out everything I could about this company, 955 Dreams. Mostly to make sure it wasn't really a phone sex hotline ("for a good time, dial 955-DREAMS").
In actuality, they had just built this cool iPad app called The History of Jazz, which was an interactive timeline of jazz history.
In my research, I found the company's Twitter handle and saw that they only had a couple hundred followers. At this point in my job hunt, I was so jaded that I just had a "meh...I kinda don't give a shit about anything right now" attitude. So instead of just sending a cover letter and resume like any sane person would do, I impulsively decided to tweet at them, "You can take down your internship posting now. www.linkedin.com/in/amandavanwest." To my surprise, just a couple of minutes later I received the following DM:
The next thing I knew, I was invited to their History of Jazz launch party, where I had to meet all of the founders and their closest friends, family members, and professional acquaintances before going through the formal interview process. Luckily my decision to stick to a two drink maximum (while encouraging other party-goers to imbibe more...) meant that I made it through the party without embarrassing myself, and I was invited in the following Monday for the interview. I was given an assignment to pick an up-and-coming band and write a short review on their music, so I wrote this review of The Vaccines self-titled EP.
Shortly after, I was given an official offer and I became the company's first hire.
Four years later, I'm now the most senior woman in the company, singlehandedly running our music discovery app Band of the Day. I'd like to think that my geeky inner 17 year-old Strokes/indie band fangirl would be proud if she could see me now.
It's been an incredible learning experience, peppered with a heavy hand of surreal moments like judging a Battle of the Bands competition in the Bahamas, speaking on a music tech panel in Spain, and putting on a showcase during SXSW that resulted in tens of thousands of people wanting to get in.
Needless to say, I'm excited to see what this next year at Applauze (a necessary name change!) will have in store. Like any other tech startup, we've gone through our fair share of ups and downs, but I think our strength lies in how we've used the downs as learning experiences, and so that's how we've managed to prevail.
I'm not sure if anyone besides my mom and the spambots reads this blog, but if you've somehow stumbled over here, feel free to leave a comment. Or, y'know, just tweet me.
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