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What I learned at Venmo

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I join Venmo as its first employee, feel the joy of work that doesn't feel like work, and learn for the first time that the world is made by people like us. The first in a series of posts about building companies and teams. In late 2009, out of the blue, I got a text from an unknown number that read: “Iqram paid you $1.00 for being a super sexy dude.” A few trips to Philadelphia later, I joined Venmo as the first employee after the founders, Iqram and Kortina, both close friends from college. My time there was intense, physically and emotionally. I joined knowing nearly nothing about startups, building products, or web engineering, and certainly nothing about payments. I knew little other than that Kortina and Iqram lived by few conventional rules, believed intensely in their ideas, worked relentlessly on them, and knew how to have a really good time. The first thing I noticed was that Iqram and Kortina were always showing off Venmo. At every interaction on the street, at a bar, with n

What I learned at Venmo ← SHREYANS.ORG WHAT I LEARNED AT VENMO March 3, 2016 I join Venmo as its first employee, feel the joy of work that doesn't feel like work, and learn for the first time that the world is made by people like us. The first in a series of posts about building companies and teams. In late 2009, out of the blue, I got a text from an unknown number that read: “Iqram paid you $1.00 for being a super sexy dude.” A few trips to Philadelphia later, I joined Venmo as the first employee after the founders, Iqram and Kortina, both close friends from college. My time there was intense

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