A former Googler who is now CEO of her own startup shares the best piece of advice she ever received
(Courtesy of Liz Wessel)
Liz Wessel.
Liz Wessel remembers the very moment she received the piece of advice that changed her life.
"Well, it wasn't explicit advice — it was kind of an observation that someone made to me," the 25-year-old CEO and cofounder of WayUp tells Business Insider. "I remember sitting with a friend's parent, who was speaking out loud about the fact that people worry so much about who they will date or marry, but often don't think of their career as anything more than a way to make money.
"However, he was saying to me that the average person spends more time with their job than with their significant other, and that it's vital you find a job that you actually want to pursue, versus one that is convenient. I love Mark Cuban's advice about following your effort, not your passion. I totally agree."
She says this advice, or observation, really came in handy when she was deciding whether to start her business.
"Launching a company is not easy. In fact, it's really, really hard. It takes over your life. I literally spend almost every weekend in the office, and am certainly up every evening until 2 or 3 a.m. working," Wessel says. "But I love it. And I wouldn't change it for anything."
(Courtesy of WayUp)
The WayUp team.
That being said, she didn't choose to start a company because she wanted to get rich or famous. "I started a company because I couldn't stop thinking about starting a company, because I wanted to work on an idea that would change the world, and because I had the perfect cofounder to do it with," she says.
"Yes, I was passionate about the idea of starting a company, but it was the fact that I couldn't stop talking about it that made me realize I needed to quit my job and dedicate the next chapter of my life to making my dream a reality."
In 2014, she left her job at Google to start WayUp with cofounder JJ Fliegelman. Today their site is used by more than 200,000 college students to find jobs at places like Microsoft, Uber, The New York Times, Disney, and Google.
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