The first inkling I had that I might make this list was when Bruce Upbin the managing editor of Forbes emailed me asking about how many companies used Apptimize. Then Kate Vinton asked me for a photo. I asked if they had decided the winners and she said no. I then proceeded to freak out about the photo. Previous winners (back when it was more selective) Danielle Fong and Scot Frank advised us to not freak out. My cofounder Jeremy photoshopped something and sent it over.

A month passed.
James Koppel kept asking, “Did we hear back from Forbes?”
“No. I’m pretty sure I didn’t get it.” I was sure I didn’t get chosen and wanted to quell Jimmy’s curiosity so he wasn’t too disappointed.

Then 1/5/15 I woke up and saw one of my friends had tweeted at me a Dilbert comic about A/B testing. While laughing at that, I noticed one of our investors had tweeted a congratulations for the 30 under 30. Whoa.

Whoa!

I was surprised because I didn’t think I'd gotten it! Then we got more than 1000 tweets, FB notifications, emails, etc. about it! One of my friends said, “Congrats! I only got 30 messages in my FB feed about this!”

“Forbes is genius,” Lynn Wang kept saying. I was surprised by all the people who instantly found out about it and messaged me.

I feel really lucky because I’m turning 30 at the end of 2015 so this was my last chance to get selected. Looking over the other winners whose companies are very valuable, a lot of them are shoo-ins, but I am not because Apptimize is only 2 years old and we’re not a household name yet. I know I couldn’t have gotten in without our investors and friends who nominated me because they’re always enthusiastic about our work and want to help us. My life has been blessed due to the goodness and intelligence of others, and in order to remotely deserve it I have to make sure I devote everything to helping make something valuable.