A wide-ranging conversation with celebrated Waterloo Engineering alumnus Chamath Palihapitiya and one of his early role models, technology entrepreneur Vinod Khosla, was a highlight at the recent Hack the North event.
Sponsored by Waterloo Engineering, the University of Waterloo and a long list of industry partners, the largest hackathon in Canada doubled to 3,000 participants after moving to a virtual format because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Palihapitiya (BASc ’99, electrical engineering), the billionaire founder of Social Capital and former Facebook executive, recalled writing a letter to Khosla in search of a summer internship after reading a magazine story about him.
“I thought this guy sounds like a bad-ass,” Palihapitiya said during a keynote session to open the hackathon. “I got a ‘no’, but that meant a lot too, just because it’s like you feel seen – and, you know, here we are.”
Khosla, whose accomplished resume includes an entry as founding CEO of Sun Microsystems, told his own story about being inspired by a Hungarian entrepreneur after reading about him in a rented magazine as a 15-year-old in India.
“Curiosity and role models make a huge difference,” he said.
Click here for the full story on Hack the North.