Roger (college to tech entrepreneur)

By Andrew Chen | Interviews

It’s when you take that leave of absence or quit your job to focus on the startup full-time that it becomes real. – Roger Lee, president at PaperG

Sheila (college to entertainment news)

By Andrew Chen | Interviews

“The beauty of entertainment is that you’re helping people have fun during their day.” – Sheila Marikar, ABCNews.com

So Good They Can’t Ignore You

By Andrew Chen | Blog

A couple weeks ago a friend of mine recommended the new book by Cal Newport, “So Good They Can’t Ignore You,” which argues that the best and most satisfying careers are those where your passion for the job emerges only after you’ve developed distinctive skills for it — because distinctive skills enable you to do that job with autonomy and impact, which are the only lasting sources of career satisfaction.

Jason (sales to ridesharing startup)

By Andrew Chen | Interviews

Paul Graham was like, “This could be the Altair Basic.” – Jason Shen, Ridejoy

Jessica (McKinsey to chief of staff)

By Andrew Chen | Interviews

“I spend a lot of time thinking about scaling our organization and figuring out how to preserve the culture.” – Jessica Yuen, Khan Academy

Dana (biotech to gifting entrepreneur)

By Andrew Chen | Interviews

“We’re building a social gifting framework that allows me to get a gift for you by crowdsourcing the creativity of our common friends.” – Dana Underwood, The Muse Factory

John (finance to social media)

By Andrew Chen | Interviews

“Think hard about what you enjoy and don’t enjoy, and be careful when taking on things you don’t enjoy, because those are much clearer than what you do enjoy.” – John Milinovich, Google

Delivering Happiness

By Andrew Chen | Blog

I wrote in the last blog post about Daniel Pink’s thesis in his book “Drive” about the three things that shape a motivating, fulfilling career: mastery, autonomy, and purpose. It made me think about similar themes Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, wrote about in his book ”Delivering Happiness.”