I had a great summer at Freenome, and I am excited to say I will be joining full time after graduation! I looked back at my blog post about why I was excited about joining Freenome (mission, people, culture, and early stage startup), and I am very happy to say that I got more than everything I wanted out of the experience (which is of course, why I am joining full time).
It was also a rare experience that they finalized their Series B round when I was there, and there was a lot of excitement in the company. We have a lot of great tech investors (Google Ventures, Verily, a16z) as well as biotech investors (RA Capital, Polaris, Kaiser Permanente Ventures, etc.) which is very uncommon. We had a Fireside Chat with Peter Kolchinsky from RA Capital, which was also very enlightening about why he invested in Freenome.
One thing that I did not anticipate, but was more apparent when I started working there, was being part of a company whose mission is inherently about helping others meant that the people there were naturally more caring about the people and the work they did. One of my least favorite parts about the tech industry is how it seems like all people care about is how much money they make in relation to other people, what big name company someone else is part of, etc. It’s a lot of people trying to impress other people and comparing yourself to others. And I’m not saying that money isn’t important or having a good job isn’t important, because it is. It’s important to be in a good career where you can grow. But it’s also important to consider what you are doing to contribute to the world, and how you treat others. It’s not good for the heart to always compare to everyone else, since there will always be someone better than you at something. And it was amazing being in environment where everyone worked really hard to help save people’s lives, but also cared about the people we worked with more than in the normal tech world. Because how can you say that you want to save some random stranger’s life, but treat the people you know not as well? And I think it was partly due to the inherent company mission that attracts more humane people and party due to the culture screening which made Freenome’s atmosphere so awesome.
Another thing that was I was very pleasantly surprised about was how much impact the new grad engineers had. They had a lot of responsibility and contributed their own ideas for what would be good for the company which was awesome to see. I’ve seen a lot of new grads just be handed down projects or work on things that need to be done, but aren’t particularly interesting, but the new grads here had a lot of great work to do even for a startup. My project was also a very impactful work that they are still using today and I really enjoyed the work I did over the summer. I think it’s very important as a new grad to be working on things that have impact and create value while also challenging you and teaching you things so you can grow your career, and Freenome did a great job of providing a platform for both.
This mix of a company mission of helping others, great people, growing company, and a place that allows me to grow my career is very rare combination, and that’s why I’m excited to join Freenome. There are, of course, many great places to work especially in tech, and I think Freenome is one of them. If you’re interested, contact me so we can write code and cure cancer!