Nat Miller ’17, Co-Founder/COO of Sunbound
What made you decide to pursue a career in entrepreneurship/venture capital/startups after NYU Law?
I had always been interested in entrepreneurship and early stage companies, including in law school when a friend and I made it to one of the final rounds of the NYU Stern New Venture Competition for a fantasy sports–style news game that we had been running as a side project.
How did NYU Law prepare you for this career?
Legal writing trains you to take complicated concepts and fact patterns and distill them into simple and understandable sentences, which turns out to be a very valuable skill in more areas than just litigation. Whether writing ad copy or working through product decisions, I often find myself returning to the basics of good, clear, logical writing.
Why do you think lawyers find success in this career path?
Being at a start-up requires you to wear a lot of hats and solve different types of problems for different types of stakeholders, which really isn’t too far from life at a law firm. You’re always being asked to research new laws and grapple with new fact patterns, so being comfortable making decisions on imperfect or ambiguous information is definitely a central skill for both lawyers and entrepreneurs.
What was the biggest challenge you faced as a lawyer in this career path?
There are a lot of habits that are great for lawyers, but not so great for entrepreneurs (and vice versa). I can’t imagine a place where the motto “move fast and break stuff” would cause more concern than at a law firm. But at a start-up, it often pays to try (and fail) at a pace that is very different from what a lawyer normally sees in their day-to-day.
What is the most important thing students should do while they are still in law school to prepare themselves for a career in entrepreneurship, venture capital, or at a start-up?
I think it’s a lot easier to get into entrepreneurship than people think. You don’t need all the trappings of an established company to start out on an idea, and you can often start learning about your product with everything you already have right in front of you. My first foray into entrepreneurship was a weekly news quiz powered by an email account and an Excel sheet. Every week my friend and I would write the questions, email them out to our friends, and calculate and update the winners by hand. We learned so much and made so many improvements that we never would have made had we not started small.
What was the most important lesson you learned in your career thus far?
Always bring potential solutions to the table when discussing problems. The natural next question after any problem is, “Well what are we going to do about it?” Not only are people going to love working with you, but you’re going to make sure you’re always driving the team towards solutions.
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