H A C K B R I G H T
D A V I D P H I L L I P S
Entrepreneur | Hackbright Academy | May 2014
Co-Founder and CEO of Hackbright Academy, David Phillips, has a story uncommon to most. The 27 year old entrepreneur started his journey at the age of twenty while he was attending UCSB for Business Economics and Accounting. In his last year there he owned and managed a tutoring company, while juggling an internship at a finance company, and being a full time student. Since then he knew he wanted to have his own company and work for himself. Like most of us, David worked a full time job in hopes to one day stray away and follow his true passion.
After college, while working at Deliotte as an accountant, he started taking classes and learned how to program. Eventually he raised funding for an idea called BANJO, a location based iPhone app. After leaving Banjo within less than a year, he quit his full time job and continued his journey in the cut throat, start up age of entrepreneurs. Within the 2-3 years of learning how to program, he met Christian, his now business partner, Co Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Hackbright Academy. Together they have worked to build Hackbright from the ground up. While Christian is in charge of more of the coding side, David is responsible for high level strategy, setting goals for the company, business development and building relationships with companies. Today they have grown to their team to twelve employees and have graduated over 138 women engineers. They have gained recognition all over the states and are continuing to open more classes to keep empowering women in the industry.
Q & A
What is you're inspiration?
Taking an idea and seeing it be implemented to a reality, and to see it in the wild…thats what drives me, coming up and executing ideas. Hackbright was an idea and now it's a reality.
How do you manifest ideas?
By personal experience. For example, I was able to learn to program and get into the industry or it's an experience I'm experiencing in my day to day job. How do I solve this problem? Here's my solution. Okay let's do it! Or other people's personal experience. If someone in the company is struggling with the application process…How do we empower these people? I love watching and helping them try to solve the problem and implement their ideas.
What do you like to do aside from work?
Run, hang out with friends, and family. I recently just got into meditation. My friend hosts Wednesday meditation and soup nights, so me and a bunch of friends go over there after work hangout, meditate and eat soup. I also like being outdoors and just talking about different startups.
Entrepreneur | Hackbright Academy | May 2014
Co-Founder and CEO of Hackbright Academy, David Phillips, has a story uncommon to most. The 27 year old entrepreneur started his journey at the age of twenty while he was attending UCSB for Business Economics and Accounting. In his last year there he owned and managed a tutoring company, while juggling an internship at a finance company, and being a full time student. Since then he knew he wanted to have his own company and work for himself. Like most of us, David worked a full time job in hopes to one day stray away and follow his true passion.
After college, while working at Deliotte as an accountant, he started taking classes and learned how to program. Eventually he raised funding for an idea called BANJO, a location based iPhone app. After leaving Banjo within less than a year, he quit his full time job and continued his journey in the cut throat, start up age of entrepreneurs. Within the 2-3 years of learning how to program, he met Christian, his now business partner, Co Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Hackbright Academy. Together they have worked to build Hackbright from the ground up. While Christian is in charge of more of the coding side, David is responsible for high level strategy, setting goals for the company, business development and building relationships with companies. Today they have grown to their team to twelve employees and have graduated over 138 women engineers. They have gained recognition all over the states and are continuing to open more classes to keep empowering women in the industry.
Q & A
What is you're inspiration?
Taking an idea and seeing it be implemented to a reality, and to see it in the wild…thats what drives me, coming up and executing ideas. Hackbright was an idea and now it's a reality.
How do you manifest ideas?
By personal experience. For example, I was able to learn to program and get into the industry or it's an experience I'm experiencing in my day to day job. How do I solve this problem? Here's my solution. Okay let's do it! Or other people's personal experience. If someone in the company is struggling with the application process…How do we empower these people? I love watching and helping them try to solve the problem and implement their ideas.
What do you like to do aside from work?
Run, hang out with friends, and family. I recently just got into meditation. My friend hosts Wednesday meditation and soup nights, so me and a bunch of friends go over there after work hangout, meditate and eat soup. I also like being outdoors and just talking about different startups.
Words of advice to fellow entrepreneurs
"Don’t give up, DO NOT GIVE UP. BE HAPPY. Figure out what the market needs and build a solution for it. Make sure you're excited about the solution, be passionate about it, be the one to solve the problem because if your not, the other girl who's doing it is going to beat you to it, always."
- David Phillips
::: Hackbright Academy :::
An all women's' engineering school in San Francisco established in June 2012. It is three month program that allows women with no computer science or programming background to learn all the skills needed to become a professional software engineer. These women come from all over the world, mainly the US, with an expertise within their profession (art, law, finance). After the program, these women are recruited by companies all over the Bay Area, some being, Facebook, Stubhub, Survey Monkey and Eventbrite.
An all women's' engineering school in San Francisco established in June 2012. It is three month program that allows women with no computer science or programming background to learn all the skills needed to become a professional software engineer. These women come from all over the world, mainly the US, with an expertise within their profession (art, law, finance). After the program, these women are recruited by companies all over the Bay Area, some being, Facebook, Stubhub, Survey Monkey and Eventbrite.