Reflections on a Transition to Startup Life in San Francisco

As a student in school, opportunities and expectations seem to be relatively well defined: go to class, take tests, do projects, behave well and success should follow. The transition to a job is less obvious, despite the fact that more opportunities than ever abound for students with strong math, statistics and computer science backgrounds; essentially all industries have embraced the importance of advanced modeling and data driven decisions. Unfortunately, making this transition can be complicated, especially when speaking to a corporate hiring manager that generally only interacts with a specific type of candidate. In this talk, I will discuss my own journey from academia to the startup life and lessons that I learned along the way. I will try to present my experiences in the context of how I currently see ML/AI/data in industry and what I would recommend when preparing for a shift to industry.