"Find that pursuit that will energise you, consume you, become an obsession. Each day, you must rise with a restless enthusiasm. If you don’t, you are working."

I read this post by Garry Tan this morning about Edward Witten, and how it took him many years to find his passion: http://garrysub.posterous.com/how-will-you-find-your-truest-most-productive. It's short and worth reading.

It reminds me of myself (except for the genius physicist part) and how I've found my passion:

In high school and during my undergraduate studies in engineering, there were some classes I tried really hard in, and others in which I did barely enough to get by. It depended on how much I liked the teacher and how interesting the material was. It wasn't that I couldn't have done much better, it was just that I didn't care all that much. I chose Engineering Mechanics because it was the hardest (and broadest) major I could find, and I put in just enough effort to graduate with an above-average GPA.

Because of a couple of great professors (and the accompanying promise of flexibility) I stayed for graduate school in Engineering Mechanics, even though I knew research wasn't what I wanted to do long-term. During this time, I got to know other graduate students who would work 12-14 hours a day, 6-7 days a week on their research. For me, if it was a sunny day out, I'd skip the lab and go for a long bike ride, and I never considered coming in on weekends. I simply didn't understand how someone could work that hard on something.

I do now. Since starting Heyo, I've consistently put in at least that many hours, and I would put in more if I could. I absolutely love working on this startup, and I know that this company, and likely many other companies after this, will be my life's work. Regardless of how good of a research engineer (or anything else) I could have been, the world of startups is my truest, most productive niche.

Last Wednesday morning, my co-founder, and I left Virginia and drove to NYC for the Ask YC Anything event at Hunch. We parked in NJ, and took the PATH over, went to the Hunch offices early (thanks for hosting us, guys), stayed through the event, then took the train back to the car and drove back to Virginia, arriving home early Thursday morning. According to our parking garage ticket[1], we were there for 8 hours 10 min. Here're our take-aways:

Living in Blacksburg, we're seriously starved for startup culture. Though our investors, DayOne, are trying to change this, there are still something like four actual startups here. It's very hard to go get a beer with someone and talk startups. This trip was the first time we'd been to anything out of the area since we started the company back in June, and it was a rush. Meeting Harj and Alexis, being at Hunch, and speaking to Chris Dixon[2] is probably what it's like for a teenage girl to read gossip magazines for years, then go to a celebrity party in LA. We were giddy. We also met several YC alum from the companies Octopart, WattVision, and Olark. Awesome guys, and friends we wish we had locally.

We didn't get the impression we were at any less of an information advantage than anyone in that room. Whether from NY, SF, or Blacksburg, we all read the same stuff which shapes our view of the startup world. I always had this impression that because I don't regularly talk to many other startup founders, I'm missing out on big things in the community, but I think that fear has been somewhat allayed. (On the other hand, it's likely that we still have no idea what we're missing.)

I think we also learned that we're just as good. We gave our product demo (Heyo, first release for iPhone and Android in the next few days) to many people, and got some really positive feedback. My co-founder and I both studied engineering at Virginia Tech, a public university not known for churning out startups. Before this trip, we both knew that together we can build literally anything that we can imagine on the internet. We still believe that, and now I think we believe we can do it as well as any other startup out there.

Overall, the trip was a huge confidence booster for us. Lots of folks told us that we have a sweet product, and that marketing it would be the hardest part. We know, and understand how enormous this task is. We're very excited about it.

[1] Total cost: we brought food and didn't stay the night, so $38 in tolls + $26 parking + $8 train + $50 gas = $122. I think it was quite a bargain for those insights.

[2] Probably about 80-100 people attended the event, and before it started, Chris Dixon was sitting in the back of the room doing something on his phone, waiting with the rest of us for this thing to kick off. I couldn't believe it: I was in the same room as Chris Dixon with dozens of other people, and nobody seemed to even notice him there. It was like a horse in the Apple Store moment. So obviously, my co-founder and I went back and talked to him for 10 min or so before it started, gave him a demo, got some feedback on our product, and some advice on how to deal with an issue I was working on with one of our investors. Thanks, Chris!