While most Towson students were having the time of their lives during their senior year of college, Steven Weinstein was at home building a website. Before HE graduated, Steven already had his own business. Seven months later, Steven works full-time and works on his website. He talked to Her Campus about life in the real world and building your own business in college!
Steven Weinstein doesn’t claim to be the next Mark Zuckerberg, but the recent Towson graduate has a lot in common with the Harvard superstar. Steven created BeforeWeGraduate.com-a social networking site where users can post goals that they want to accomplish before they graduate and work with other users to accomplish them.
The site was created during his senior year at Towson and took over his entire life.
“From the beginning of the fall 2010 semester til the site was launched in March, I spent probably hundreds and hundreds of hours working on the site, and countless more thinking about it when I wasn’t working on it,” Steven said.
Steven worked day and night to launch his site. Sometimes he would spend all night, 9 p.m. to 4 a.m., working.
“It was really hard socially to follow this dream – I spent most weekend nights sitting in my apartment working on the site,” he said. “I barely went out, lost touch with a few friends, and was constantly stressed out.”
His hard work has payed off. He is now the owner of an evolving new website and works full-time at Deustche bank in Manhattan.
A screenshot of Before We Graduate
Despite his heavy work load, Steven, who graduated in May of 2011 with a degree in computer science, loves to relax by watching sports, hanging out with his girlfriend, taking photos and indugling in his other passion-food.
“One of the goals on my site was actually to break a sushi eating record at a popular restaurant in Towson, and I did it,” he said. “I ate 50 plates of sushi at the rotating sushi bar, Kyodai!”
Steven breaking the sushi record at Kyodai
Although Steven is already extremely accomplished in his short post-college career, he says that he thinks recent graduates should not get discouraged when facing the tough job market.
“Keep your heads up. It’s a tough market out there, but stay focused and keep trying to spread your resume out to many companies,” he said. “You also have to be open to moving to another state in order to take a job. Join LinkedIn, the professional social network, and keep it up to date. Don’t get discouraged. It could be worse – at least you will have a degree.”
While Steven has a lot going for him right now, he says that in ten years he hopes to own his own business related to computer security.
Got a question for Steven? Contact him on his website: BeforeWeGraduate.Com