Daniel Newman, a 19-year-old student at USC, grew up in Beverly Hills and loves Southern California's star tech company, Snap (formerly known as Snapchat).
Snap CEO Evan Spiegel gave the best career advice to a 19-year-old aspiring entrepreneur (SNAP)
19-year-old Daniel Newman scored some life advice from Evan Spiegel ... and it's good advice for anyone.
even launched a company that helped local businesses create geofilters.
So when Snap's famous founder, Evan Spiegel, came to USC and spoke to one of his classes, Newman was all over it.
Spiegel created Snapchat with his cofounders while he was still a student at Stanford just a few years ago, and earlier this year took it public in a whopping $33 billion IPO.
So Newman approached Spiegel after the talk, and to his surprise, Spiegel gave him his contact information and a few days later took his call.
They talked for about 30 minutes during which Spiegel gave him three pieces of career advice that has changed Newman's aspirations, and quite possibly his life.
Find an area of expertise
Spiegel disliked it, and that became his third bit of advice: Don't build a company that is wholly reliant on another company.
"After speaking with him, I decided to end Geocasion (very ironic, I know) because it was too dependent on Snapchat," Newman said.
Having shut down his business, Newman realized he had no real specialty. So he changed course. Instead of trying to run his own startup, he decided to become the person in the know of the LA college startup scene.
Take the initiative
Newman upped his involvement in a student organization called TAMID, a group that matches US college kids with Israeli startups for mutual advice, internships, and the like. He and the TAMID team created a "Shark Tank" like event where students got to pitch to three
And all of that helped Newman land a
Most importantly, the conversation with Spiegel encouraged Newman to put himself out there, approach people and try and make things happen.
"Evan showed me the value of taking initiative. Of all people in the world, I would've never expected the Evan Spiegel to respond to one of my emails, but he did. It's almost as if when you least expect a response is when you actually get one."
Snap declined comment on this story.