Maxed out by the day’s routine work, some of us are still meeting at Castro Street instead of going back home to rest for the next day. The fact is that we are going to meet Seth (Founder of Meebo) at his office for a mentorship discussion. How cool is that?!?! This seems pretty awesome to us as we had probably never done that before. To us, having a chance to meet up with a successful entrepreneur is as good as getting close to a celebrity (just kidding….). Since most of us have not seen Seth for the first time, we were kind of anxious wondering what he could have looked like –

1) A tired person pressured down by the workload which comes with being an entrepreneur?
2) Solemn person who only talks business?

He turned out to be a jovial young man in his early thirties, and with the smiles on his face, he does seem to enjoy much of what he is currently doing at Meebo. After shaking our hands and each of us saying our fair share of “Nice Meeting You,” we all set down around a table and starting shooting him questions like a batch of ardent interviewers.

From this discussion, we found out that among other things, it is really important to recruit the right people for the company. Other than the requirements of the specific skill sets, it is really vital that these recruited people are a suitable fit in the company’s culture. Why? So that they could at least get along well together and enjoy each other’s company whilst working.

Also, the feeling of doing a startup is absolutely crazy. At Meebo, it means dealing with service providers, struggling to keep the servers “alive” and sending emails to customers which are the norm for many months in its early stage. The founders’ lifestyle also includes sleeping in the wee hours of the morning and wake up before the alarm rings because there are like one million and one things to do.

The overall gist of doing an internet startup - It’s a race to get the product out the door, not to get the money.

After the meeting, we got a chance to have a “tour” around his office. It is basically occupied with a few computers and desks, a meeting table in the center of the room and a projector screening photos of past Meebo events. Overall, it is still spacious and there is still enough room to accommodate another startup company.

All of us will be looking forward to the monthly discussions with Seth. It has been a great enriching experience.