I went into finance after college because I recognized that while I had some hands-on entrepreneurial experience building a startup company, I still had a lot of learning to do when it came to the way larger established companies were run, financed, and sold. If I wanted to grow into a successful investor or to repeat my entrepreneurial success on a larger scale, I needed develop my financial skills and experience a variety of industries and companies. I got all of this experience and more during my time working with the many bright people at Edgeview Partners. Having a ringside seat next to our partners and clients gave me a great appreciation for all the considerations and work that go into corporate finance and dealmaking. In addition to intense hands on financial experience I got, the many late nights hardened and groomed a messy college senior into a stronger, more polished young adult.

However, in time, I realized that I really missed being around technology every day and working with a team to grow a business. Additionally, many of the most talented entrepreneurs and investors I’ve met and spoken with are also great operators, and I knew that I still had a lot to learn in that regard. I wanted to get back to growing a company. Last year’s turmoil and uncertainty in the financial industry provided the final push that I needed to break out of my routine, take some risks, and seek out something new. I connected with a long-time family friend who was able to point me to what would turn out to be the perfect combination of all the things I was looking for – Hosting.com in Denver, Colorado.

When I arrived in Denver to interview, I spent the entire cab ride from the airport to Hosting.com headquarters with my face pressed against the back window – the snow-capped Rockies, brown high plains, and expansive western sky were an arresting contrast to the rolling green hills of Charlotte. I met with several executives, and after a few hours discussing the job, my qualifications, and the quarterback woes of the Buffalo Bills, I knew Hosting.com was a place I could come to make a difference, gain some hands on experience in a growing company with great people, and (maybe most importantly) to get excited about work everyday.

Today, I’ve been here for just over three months, and each day has been interesting and educational. Hosting.com has been a great fit for me because it provides an opportunity to combine the financial and deal-related skills I learned in investment banking with my entrepreneurial drive and interest in technology. It’s also been extremely refreshing to “get on the bandwagon” after so much transactional work and actually focus on the long term success of the company. Everything I’m working on is directly focused on scaling our business, improving efficiency, or serving customers – it’s great to be able to get involved on an operational level. Being on the inside of a world-class datacenter/hosting company has given me a new appreciation for the massive network infrastructure that runs our modern internet. It’s also exciting to be on the cutting edge of much of the cloud computing architecture that will run the internet of tomorrow.

All in all, it’s been a great move for me, and I’m very glad to be back in the technology industry and back in a hands-on role. Wearing jeans to work isn’t too bad either.

PS – I’ve also made a commitment to update this blog more frequently in 2010 now that I’ve got a little bit more time available to write. You’ll still see plenty of posts in the “Finance and Economics” category, but also expect some more fleshed out content under “Technology” as I try to write more about cloud computing, applications, and internet infrastructure in general.

Barack Obama is coming to Wake Forest tomorrow. Limited tickets were available for free on a first come, first serve basis to the student body. Unfortunately, I wasn’t quick enough, and didn’t get a ticket, and neither did my two roommates. After four years at Wake, I’ve missed the chance to see a number of big name political speakers, and I wanted to make sure I got to see at least one before graduation.

I tried emailing my fraternity’s listserv to see if anyone had any extra tickets they weren’t using – no luck. I emailed the president of the campus College Democrats – no tickets left, the event is sold out. However, I was determined to get a ticket, so I turned to the best medium I knew to contact as many college students as possible – Facebook.

At 11pm tonight, approximately 10 hours before the doors were scheduled to open for Obama’s speech, I created a Facebook ad offering $25 to anyone with extra tickets. I was easily able to target it to all students at Wake Forest (though I could have customized it further – by interests, class year, major, and many other criteria). I chose to pay per click, and set a maximum budget of $5. After I pressed “Create my ad”, it was a matter of minutes before Facebook had shown my ad over 6,000 times. Within the hour, I received messages from 4 separate people offering to sell me their tickets. The entire thing cost me $4.97 – that’s only about 8/100ths of a cent per impression. (As a side note – this is incredibly low as far as online advertising goes – a problem for Facebook that has been mentioned before as one of their biggest weaknesses)

Tomorrow morning both of my roommates and I will see Barack Obama speak in a sold out coliseum that I didn’t even have tickets to until less than 10 hours before the event.

Now that’s the power of the internet and social networks – and it’s those kinds of results and precise targeting that make Facebook worth $15 billion (though I do think that’s a bit high, considering their monetization difficulties).

1.) Be accomplishment-driven not responsibilities-driven
Eliminate phrases like “duties included” and “responsible for” from your resume. Most employers can easily infer from a job title the basic responsibilities you had. Instead of listing them, describe how you applied your personal skills on the job – your work ethic, ingenuity, etc. These are the skills that translate across jobs, and that employers are looking for.

2.) Focus on describing skills demonstrated, not activities done
When writing about your past experiences, try to focus on the skills you demonstrated at that job, rather than just describing what you did there.

3.) Use powerful verbs
Don’t start sentences with “I”. Rather, begin with an action verb such as “managed” or “coordinated”. The noun is unnecessary, clearly you’re describing yourself!

4.) Justify your text, don’t use left align
Justified text looks better on the page, because it fills up the entire line. It will also help your resume stand out from everyone else’s with left aligned text.

5.) Use a standard font, but not Times New Roman
Another tip to make your resume stand out in the pile. Don’t be temped to use any curly or outrageous fonts. Pick something businesslike and relatively plain, such as Georgia, Arial, or Trebuchet.

6.) Send your resume in PDF format, not MS Word
When sending your resume electronically, make sure you save your resume as a PDF file. The best advantage to you when using PDF is that you ensure your formatting remains intact. Spacing, fonts, emphasis, margins, everything is preserved when you convert to PDF. No matter what, your resume displays the way you want it to. The only exception to sending in PDF is when a company specifically requests a resume in a certain format (usually because they plan to process it electronically).

I hope these tips are useful to all the job/internship seekers out there, especially college students who may not have written a resume before.

January will bring a number of new posts that I’ve been turning over in my head for a while, discussing topics such as Net Neutrality, partisan politics on the internet, and a post inspired by Bo Peabody’s book Lucky or Smart (which I highly recommend).

See everyone in 2007.

The first is I Will Teach You To Be Rich written by Ramit Sethi, a recent Stanford graduate. When he’s not blogging, Ramit works at PBwiki and does consulting for Omidyar Network, venture capital fund started by Ebay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife Pam. I particualrly enjoy Ramit’s blog because of his Friday Entrepreneur Series, in which he profiles and interviews a different notable entrepreneur each week. Other favorite posts include All About Stocks and Bonds, It Never Gets Easier Than Now, and perhaps my favorite, 8 Stupid Frat Boy Business Ideas.

The second link is to Get Rich Slowly, written by J.D. Roth. While less entrepreneurially focused than Ramit’s blog, J.D. spends his time offering practical tips for day to day money management to help you, quite literally, get rich slowly. From daily applicacable topics like Track Every Penny You Spend and “Investment Fun Money”, to more general life strategies like the Debt Snowball and How to Aquire a Good Entry Level Job, J.D.’s writing is easy to read, and easy to apply in your daily life.

I hope you’ll find the excellent content in these two blogs as useful and interesting as I have. I’m sure this won’t be the last time one of their articles is mentioned here.

So here’s to looking forward to my next 21 years and beyond full of great friends and exciting milestones (and maybe a beer or two).

Beacon has also agreed to provide us with help from their top notch advertising, graphics, and search engine marketing teams. So basically this all comes together to a hell of a great time, and some excellent real world experience (and hopefully a large, much needed comission check). Stay tuned here for updates on our progress, and an announcement when the store launches in a few weeks.

In other news, Landon Mossburg, Tom Clancy, Kathy Markham, and I have been selected to participate in the first annual “WFU Beacon Entrepreneurship Challenge”. The Challenge involves 4 teams of Wake students competing to start, market, and manage an online store. RaceFanFurniture.com will soon be expanding to offer sports memorabilia from 6-7 other professional sports leagues. Each team will be assigned 2 leagues, and will be responsible for running and marketing those league’s departments. The teams compete for points and cash prizes, as well as commission from the store’s sales.

This is a great opportunity for all of us, and I’m really excited to see what the Challenge has in store for us. More updates next week…