“Thank you, but I am not looking to sell,” I heard myself say. “I believe in what I am building, and I want to see it through.”
Michael looked surprised but not displeased.
“Most students would jump at that offer.”
“I am not most students,” I replied.
The next day, Michael called again with a different proposal. He wanted to invest $500,000 for a 15% stake in Secure Pay. This time, I accepted.
With his investment, I could officially incorporate the company, hire a small team, and accelerate development.
The following months were the most challenging and exhilarating of my life. I was still a full-time student, but now I was also a CEO.
I hired two brilliant computer science students as part-time developers and a graduate student with marketing experience to help build our brand.
We worked out of a cramped room in the innovation center, often coding until the early hours of the morning.
There were moments when it all seemed impossible. Three months after we started, we discovered a critical flaw in our security protocol that required rewriting almost half of our code.
I did not sleep for four days straight as we worked to fix it. Then one of our developers quit unexpectedly, leaving us short-handed just before an important deadline.
Our bank account was dwindling fast, and we were still months away from having a marketable product.
During one particularly low point, I called Professor Wilson in tears.
“I think I have made a huge mistake,” I confessed. “We are going to run out of money before we even launch.”
“Every successful entrepreneur has moments like this,” she assured me. “The difference is whether you push through or give up. Which one are you going to do?”
Her words steeled my resolve.
