NIKHIL ARORA

Two days ago, on Friday July 25, I went to the TechCrunch August Capital party at August Capital’s hq in Menlo Park. The event was a social, networking party held on the massive backyard/porch area of August Capital and had some of the heaviest hitters in the valley there. I was able to meet founders and key members of companies like Digg, Pandora, google, facebook, etc. as everyone was just walking around, open to sharing ideas with anyone. Even cooler though were the tons of people representing very young startups. It was incredible to walk around and just feel the excitement in the air as these people could not stop talking about what they do and listening to what ideas others were working on. As I graduate next year, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to do after May, and after being immersed in a crowd like that, where people are so passionate about their lives, jobs, and possibility to change the way the world operates, I know that’s the path I eventually want to walk down. It’s hard to try to put onto words the feeling in the air at that event – created by hundreds of slightly intoxicated and brilliant entrepreneurs, PR people, traditional media enthusiasts, millionaire(and billionaire) investors looking for the next big ‘thing,’ and representatives from internet giants sniffing out up and coming competition. It was just pure, positive, and innovative energy.

It was mind boggling to see all these people walking around with the names of their companies scribbled on name tags and thinking a few years from now, these could be the most recognizable names in America – the next facebook, myspace, pandora, etc. Oh, talking to Chamillionaire and his manager for a while definitely adds to the ‘interesting’ factor – it was awesome to hear how they’re trying to utilize a lot of this new tech/social spaces to build his brand prior to the new album release. Though I don’t feel “catch me riding dirty in menlo park” has the same ring to it as the original.

Lesson learned: life after graduation doesn’t have to be like working in Office Space where you have to beat the pulp out of copy machines while blasting hardcore rap in order to release pent up frustration. There are so many exciting ventures out there that don’t have to make what you do feel like a ‘job’ – and make you a ton of money as well.