I was. That too from one of the most prominent startups in India - Freshdesk!

It was my long cherished dream to work in a startup. Each day, during my semester break, I used to send out at least 4-5 cover letters to startups I wished to work in, but in vain. Coming from a lesser known tier-2 college, I knew it was difficult to grab any startup's attention unless I was extremely good at what I do. I was always interested in programming and it is my hobby to automate any repetitive task.

On 24th Dec 2013 I wrote an answer on Quora:

Manoj Memana Jayakumar's answer to What are the best Python scripts you've ever written?

The answer received a lot of attention, especially because it was easy to use and it was aimed at solving a problem every movie buff faces. As of 17-04-2014, the source code for subtitle finder has been downloaded over 1700 times.

16 days after the answer was written, on a fine Thursday evening, I received a message in my inbox from an employee at the company. He asked me whether I would like to attend an interview at the company.

I was spellbound. I did not know how to react. For somebody who is obsessed about working in a startup ( Read Manoj Memana Jayakumar's answer to Survey Questions: What are you most looking forward to in 2014?), this was just too good an offer.

I instantly said yes. I traveled to Tamil Nadu from Kerala for the interview the next week.

I had attended interviews at 4 different companies before, but this was the most thorough one. I was asked questions extensively from Algorithms, Data structures, and Object-oriented programming. Thankfully, I was able to answer most of them.

I was given the offer letter on the very same day. I will be joining in June 2014. :)

What did I learn from this experience?

College's "brand" value doesn't matter:

It doesn't matter if you are from IIT or from some lesser known tier-3 in a remote part of the country. What matters is that you create. Create awesome, kick-ass stuff. Show it out to the world. Use Quora, Tumblr, Behance, whatever platform you are comfortable with. When you create, people take notice. The world values people who can create.

Do you know Steve Job's GPA in college? Have you even bothered to find it out? Well, it's 2.65/4. Did that matter? No. Because he was a creator. He created things that matter.

(Read: How you move this slider will decide your future )

There is nothing called fate. You create your own destiny.

I have heard people grumble about how their college is teaching them out-dated things which don't even matter in the industry anymore. But this should never be an excuse to remain mediocre. Your college will never teach you things that matter in the industry or the skills you must possess in order to land that dream job. It is up to YOU to learn.

PS: It was only after the interview that I came across this: Page on startupranking.com

Yes, I'm overjoyed. Beyond measure.

Quora, I cannot thank you enough.