A few weeks back I had the privilege of having dinner with and attending a lecture given by Sam Weber (’14). I have known Sam since I was a freshman in college, so it was great to catch up with her and hear about what she has been up to since her graduation. She has certainly kept herself busy. Having moved to San Francisco, she has been working on her own start up and another, LuvTap. LuvTap was an app that allowed users to share gifts with their friends, and although she no longer works there, Sam learned some valuable startup skills there that have helped her in developing her own app, ProfilePasser.

I learned a lot about starting up from Sam. Whether it been small things or major catastrophes, Sam has seen it all while developing ProfilePasser. The app, which lets users easily share their sports recruiting profile with college coaches and recruiters, has garnered a lot of attention recently and even has the support of several world class athletes. Despite facing problems such as losing all her code and having a demo fail during launch weekend, Sam has been persistent and pushed through the difficult times to come out stronger on the other side. She has not been deterred by these obstacles that she has faced and has been resilient through the process of starting up, something I myself had to do when starting my own company.

There are many lessons one could have learned from Sam’s lecture, but the greatest of those is this: Never let anything stop you from achieving the goals you have set for yourself. Sam has certainly epitomized this work ethic, and demonstrated what it takes to survive in the start up world. I can only hope that in my own endeavors I will be as resilient as Sam has been with ProfilePasser.