Tristan Walker wanted to work at the hottest startup in Silicon Valley which at the time was Foursquare. He applied for a job on Foursquare’s website and didn’t get a response. He found the CEOs email address and sent him a note. He got no response. He emailed him again and again and again, each time with no response. So then he emailed him three more times, eight times in all, still no response.
So what did Tristan do? He started working for them. He wanted a job in business development so he started doing business development for them. He contacted companies, told them he was a student and asked them if they would be interested in advertising on Foursquare.
It is important to remember that not only did he not work for Foursquare, they had no idea he was doing this. A number of companies said yes so he emailed the foursquare CEO a ninth time and told him he had some advertisers for them. Tristan was hired and went on to run business development at Foursquare.
Last week I said that every once in a while someone puts themselves out there. Makes the leap. Faces rejection or failure or worse. And comes out the other side. Better. Changed.
Most people won’t. This means that those that do change everything.
I love that story; it just shows what you can do if you take the initiative.