Mak­ing inven­tion acces­si­ble. That is the con­cept, the rea­son why a boldly pur­ple com­pany exists – to empower peo­ple to invent and to give great ideas a chance to come to life. This is the mis­sion of Quirky, a rapidly grow­ing startup in New York City, where I had the plea­sure of spend­ing my spring break.

Although I only spent a few days there, this Princetern­ship gave me a unique win­dow into startup cul­ture, leav­ing behind the aca­d­e­mic rig­ors on cam­pus and begin­ning to under­stand the excite­ments of the entre­pre­neur­ial world out there. Warmly wel­comed by our Prince­ton alumni host Nikki Laf­fel Kauf­man ’07, and Suzan­nah Kerr on the first day, we were soon off, meet­ing peo­ple of all depart­ments that are grow­ing the com­pany together. 

I was exposed to a vari­ety of depart­ments I had never con­sid­ered, rang­ing from design to sales to oper­a­tions and more. Every­one was so pas­sion­ate about what they were doing, so will­ing to explain and answer any ques­tions, excited about the com­pany, pumped about the future, and invested com­pletely in their poten­tials and the power entrusted to them. Peo­ple hung out in the kitchen, joked out loud in the main work­ing space, laughed, thought, and through all of that – solved stim­u­lat­ing prob­lems with cre­ativ­ity and focus. I caught a glimpse of the chal­lenges each part of the com­pany wres­tles with and was more impor­tantly, inspired by the con­fi­dence with which each per­son approached these chal­lenges. Get­ting advice about every­thing from how to make the most of col­lege to prepar­ing for the life beyond, I learned not only about spe­cific career paths, but also more broadly about the value of tak­ing risks and jump­ing at oppor­tu­ni­ties that may take you on a path you may have never imagined.

Nikki Laf­fel Kauf­man ’07, Quirky Staff, and Princeterns

My Princetern­ship expe­ri­ence at Quirky ended with my par­tic­i­pa­tion in their company-wide prod­uct eval­u­a­tion meet­ing, a won­der­ful expe­ri­ence that exem­pli­fied col­lab­o­ra­tion and the open­ness of the Quirky com­pany cul­ture. My biggest take­away from the peo­ple at Quirky is the notion that it is by going for the things we love and work­ing hard at them that we give our­selves the oppor­tu­nity to find a career where work does not feel like work. I learned that most spe­cific skills can be picked up on the job so that it is really about pur­su­ing your curiosi­ties and devel­op­ing the capac­ity to think and prob­lem solve that can be applied any­where. As an aspir­ing inven­tor and entre­pre­neur, I believe my expe­ri­ence at Quirky was invalu­able and would strongly rec­om­mend it to any curi­ous stu­dents. Many thanks to my hosts and Career Ser­vices for giv­ing me this opportunity