I reached out to Y Combinator alumni for introductions to the partners, and within 24 hours, I started receiving responses, mostly rejections.

I applied to Y Combinator on a long shot, not expecting to get in, but after interviewing in Palo Alto, I was accepted and dropped out of graduate school to pursue my startup.

I decided to stop working on my startup and joined Google to learn skills that would help me succeed as an entrepreneur.

I ended up interviewing at Google and one other company, but Google was the only offer I had, which made my decision easy.

When I joined Google in 1999, it was a small startup with an electric atmosphere, and I was excited to work on big projects.

In 2000, Google was a startup with a small team, and I remember working late nights and weekends, which was the culture back then.

I started my first company out of my dorm room at Stanford, aiming to help students get jobs at banks and consulting firms, but it ultimately didn't work out because no one was using LinkedIn at the time.

I fell into entrepreneurship accidentally; I went to college to be a computer programmer, but after the dot-com bubble burst, startups weren't on anyone's mind.

I interviewed at Yelp multiple times, and even after failing an interview at Facebook, I was able to leverage that experience for future opportunities.