Sander Daniels was psyching himself out.
It was 2008, and he wanted to start a tech company. The problem? He had no background in tech, no experience in business. He was studying to become a lawyer.
“In the early days of my career, I kept thinking to myself, ‘It’s going to be too hard to do this thing I really want to do,” Sander told Pursuit Fellows and staff gathered on Zoom recently. “What I saw when I entered the tech industry was lots of competition.”
But as he grew his career in tech, he saw lots of opportunity, too. Amazon had brought e-commerce online. Airbnb had brought lodging online. Uber had brought taxis online.
“But nobody had brought local services online,” Sander said. “It was still transacted through word of mouth.”
Together with his friends Marco Zappacosta and Jonathan Swanson, Sander co-founded Thumbtack. The online platform matches service professionals with customers, bringing economic opportunity to plumbers, painters, and thousands of other service professionals across the country. Today, it’s surging ahead after raising $400 million in venture capital.
As Sander shared in the latest installment of Pursuit’s Fireside Chat series with leaders and experts in technology, a successful tech career is far from guaranteed.
For Pursuit Fellows, that advice resonated loud and clear. As participants in our four-year Pursuit Fellowship, they spend long days and nights learning to code so they can land their first jobs in tech. Many hold down day jobs as they push through our rigorous program.
Current 6.0 Fellow Briahana Maugé recently completed 12 months of training in our nights and weekends program while working as a substitute math teacher in New York City public schools.
“It was definitely the hardest year of my life, and I had a lot of long days and nights, but it was worth it,” said Briahana, who moderated the q-and-a portion of the Fireside Chat. “Being a Pursuit Fellow has opened doors to an industry that is notoriously difficult to break into. With the skills I learned over the past year, I hope to secure my first role in tech.”
Briahana will receive support in that endeavor from Thumbtack’s engineers. Through our collaborative six-week Job Prep Mentorship program, Thumbtack mentors will help Fellows deepen their understanding of the tech industry and practice advanced technical skills. The Job Prep Mentorship adds to an apprenticeship program that Pursuit and Thumbtack are building together — one of the many ways in which we work with hiring partners to secure job opportunities just for our Fellows.
Like our Fellows, Sander knows what it’s like to balance his current career with his future one. This was in the early days of Thumbtack. During the day, he worked in a law firm catering to Wall Street Clients. At night, he fielded questions and complaints from Thumbtack’s service professionals as the company’s only customer service agent.
“I was on this particular track, I had a career path, and then I wanted to go in a totally different direction,” Sander said. “Sometimes you have to find a way to square your current career with your future one.”
Being a customer service representative was tedious and time-consuming. But as Sander explained, work like that is key to a successful career.
“So much of building a career isn’t about the glamorous things, or the major decision moments — it’s about the day-to-day and putting one foot in front of another,” he said.
But that hard work does pay off. Thumbtack has beaten the start-up odds, growing from a risky idea hatched by three college friends to a venture-backed company valued at $1.7 billion for their latest financing round.
Sander’s advice for getting there is straightforward: If you want to make a big break, you need to put in hard work.
“There’s no overnight success, no lucky breaks,” he said. “It’s all about the tough stuff you have to do and pushing forward.”
Success also takes constant reinvention — of your product, of your career, and yourself, Sander said.
When Thumbtack announced last year that it had raised $150 million in funding led by Sequoia Capital at a $1.7 billion valuation, the company had done something unheard of: they took a business that was growing more than 80% year over year and pressed pause. Starting from scratch on their product, they transformed Thumbtack from a digital bulletin board into an instant matching mobile experience unique in the local services marketplace.
Sander, too, is in a state of constant reinvention. In “The Long View,” a Medium post describing Thumbtack’s approach, Sander stressed the importance of “identifying your weaknesses and improving them and identifying your strengths and leveraging them.”
“It can be disorienting and is always hard work,” Sander said, “But it’s worth it.”
Sander encouraged members of the Pursuit community to look to trusted friends and colleagues to provide honest feedback, and then, “act on it.”
“The story you tell yourself is never completely spot on,” he continued. “The only way to get the true story is to ask for feedback from the people who know you best. It’s hard to hear, but it’s really important if you want to grow.”
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In our Pursuit Fireside Chat series, we bring in leaders and experts from the tech industry to share their stories with our community. Past Chats have featured:
- Amit Paley, CEO of The Trevor Project
- Andy Dunn, founder of Bonobos
- Austin Woolridge, CEO and Co-founder of Players' Lounge.
The Pursuit Fireside Chat series is one of the many ways we create opportunities for our Fellows to network and connect with leaders in technology. Visit the Pursuit Fellowship for more about joining our community and launching a career in tech.
