Melissa Kaufman: Entrepreneur, Creator of “The Garage” at Northwestern
Introduction
Melissa Kaufman is an entrepreneur, mentor, and educator to business leaders & individuals at the high school level, collegiate level and beyond. She notes, “I help people live their best life using an entrepreneurial mindset.” Her goal is to help people think and act in an entrepreneurial way whether in a traditional context like starting a business, or a nontraditional one like finding a job or completing a passion project. Melissa believes that the entrepreneurial mindset has broad and flexible applications that anyone can resonate with.
The Past
Kaufman grew up in Seattle attending Lakeside School and would later go to Dartmouth. She applied to Dartmouth after falling in love with the Northeast through the Mountain School of Mountain Academy, “you do like prep school academics during the morning. And then you work on an organic farm in the afternoon. And it was a really special experience that made me kind of fall in love with New England and was a big driver in my decision to apply and go out and ultimately go to Dartmouth.”
Kaufman was interested in business from the start, but because there wasn’t a formal business major at Dartmouth, she decided to major in Economics only to end up hating it since it lacked explicit connections to business. Kaufman fed her passion for entrepreneurship in other ways. She took initiative by attending courses at Dartmouth’s MBA program and speaking to professors about potential opportunities for learning. Ultimately, she majored in Computer Science because she noted that the degree would help her gain footing in the budding tech industry.
This would pay off in a successful tech career post-grad. Kaufman first worked for IBM in New York, but hated it: “I was on the road every week, I had to go to one of the big major airports like JFK and LaGuardia with my little rollie suitcase, while all my friends were hanging out in New York and going out to dinner and doing fun stuff…and [instead] I'd fly to like Green Bay, Wisconsin or St. Louis, Missouri or some other terrible place that I didn't necessarily want to be.” Her job at IBM showed her what kind of job and life she didn’t want, so she made a list of companies she’d like to work for and ended up landing a job at Google.
At Google, Kaufman started out in the Associate program where she gained a myriad of experiences on different aspects of the company. During her tenure there, she worked as a product marketing manager in AdSense, Google Maps, Google Earth, and eventually, YouTube. Kaufman loved her experience at Google. Not only was she exposed to different aspects of the company but Google’s meritocratic culture set her up with quality projects to complete, and a ton of growth potential. Eventually she left Google because she felt that it was time she built her own company, rather than build another’s.
Kaufman started one of the first influencer marketing agencies with a friend from college. She notes, “I'm sick of building other people's companies… I want to build my own company.” Their focus was helping connect Pinterest and Instagram influencers with talent agencies. Given that social media and influencers were a new concept, Kaufman’s company helped brands and agencies navigate the social media landscape. The company did well, but they realized the difficulty of trying to scale it. Her partner, who was more risk averse, wanted to go back to the stability of the corporate world. Their agency ended up closing easily since there was no capital in the business and Kaufman was able to move on to her next adventure.
After her company closed, Kaufman moved to Chicago to be with her now husband during his last year in surgical training. The plan was to move back to San Francisco after and rejoin a big tech company. Given that Chicago was supposed to be so temporary, Kaufman didn’t look for a job and instead decided to consult and plan their upcoming wedding.
Kaufman’s plans shifted when Northwestern University headhunted her to spearhead an entrepreneurship space at the University. She used her past experiences in college and in tech to understand and curate a space conducive to ideas, collaboration, and robust creation. Dubbed “The Garage”, the space offered funding, mentors, and a place for student projects, as well as free coffee and dinners – everything to support budding entrepreneurs in their endeavors. “We worked really hard to build special programs for women and black founders and other underrepresented groups to make sure that it was this really diverse, vibrant community on a campus of students who weren't necessarily all hanging out together, but [they] do because they are all working on something.” Although Kaufman originally only planned to stay for one year, she ended up staying for seven because of her newfound love for mentoring students. This clearly had a profound impact on her, since paying it forward through mentorship is still a substantive part of what Kaufman does.
Highs and Lows
Kaufman experienced multiple “once in a lifetime” experiences while working at Google. She was able to spearhead a holiday project with NORAD (Northern Aerospace Defense Department) to track Santa. While most people are with their loved ones on Christmas Eve, Melissa “spent all that entire Christmas Eve… at the Google office with my engineer, making sure that Santa didn't fall out of the sky.” In addition, Kaufman partnered with Disney to bring the happiest place on earth to life. She was able to create 3D imaging of Disney parks on Google Earth. This allowed anyone to walk down Main Street from the comfort of their screens. The project required her to be at the park before opening and after closing. While her engineer took photos, Kaufman was able to ride all her favorite rides with no lines or crowds. Not many people can say they have been to an empty Disneyland/Disney World. Aside from all her amazing experiences, Kaufman loves connecting with her former students. She enjoys watching them thrive and find success while pursuing their passions.
Although she has had a successful career, Kaufman is no stranger to struggle or failure. On many occasions, Kaufman went for jobs that she thought would be her next big step in her career. However, she would make it to the final stage or round of interviews and then get rejected. It was devastating, especially after investing significant amounts of time, energy, and effort. Although at the moment she was upset and felt like her search was pointless, Kaufman has realized in the grand scheme of things that all her rejections and failures only benefited her ability to persevere.
Kaufman has had more career exposure than most people, and through her vast array of experiences she believes the most important skill she learned was public speaking. Kaufman believes that high school students lack exposure to public speaking opportunities. This is an issue since Kaufman thinks the ability to communicate information clearly and confidently is invaluable, especially in a business context. Kaufman notes that the more public speaking you do, the easier and more natural it is and the better you become at convincing others of your ideas. It was a big adjustment for her to have to speak at and for The Garage since she didn’t have substantive public speaking experience prior. During her time there, Kaufman did every type of interview, including radio, conferences, meetings, videos, etc. She believes students should practice speaking at every opportunity available to promote comfortableness on stage.
Advice
Kaufman strongly encourages students to pick a college where you can have a wide variety of experiences. This could be different for each individual and these opportunities can be found at both smaller liberal arts colleges and bigger research universities. Kaufman agrees with Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb, that college is a time for exploration and risk taking. It is a new environment that is made for discovering your passions and narrowing down what you don’t like. She believes that the more you immerse yourself in everything, the more likely you are to find a path that’s right for you.
The Future
In the future, Kaufman wants to continue mentoring/educating entrepreneurs. Although she has experience mentoring at a large scale at Northwestern and loved her time there, since moving to Hawaii and starting a family, she wants to be able to raise her son and consult from there.
