Amber Milos

I had the privilege of speaking with a woman named Amber Milos, cofounder of a company called Did It with her older brother. It is an application that is in its early stages, so it is open to the public and is still getting user feedback and making changes. Did It allows you to take and share photos, and attaches information (such as location, what they are doing, context of photos, map, activities nearby) to your photo automatically. When these are shared with friends, it becomes a natural recommendation. They have reached out to some famous people such as DJ’s and chefs to see what they are doing and what they would recommend.

Amber’s route to creating this company and becoming an entrepreneur was a little bit like a maze. She assumed right out of college that she wanted to go to a top business school, but most of these schools required work experience. She spent a few years working for a corporate company (that helped put her through business school) and after business school realized that something was missing, but she didn’t quite know what it was. As a result, she questioned whether she was supposed to be in the business world. Amber went back to graduate school once again, this time for public policy. She loved public policy but also missed business. During the summer between her 1^st and 2^nd year of graduate school, she had the time to begin an idea she had been thinking about for over two years.

Amber’s favorite part of entrepreneurship was that she gets to determine her own fate, and create her own path. She realized the problem was that she was on the “corporate path” and she didn’t really want to be. She believes that business school helped her entrepreneurship career by teaching finance, accounting, operations, and legal. Although business school could help with these, she also believes that business school can’t teach how to build a network of resources. In business school, everybody is an amateur still, but when creating a startup, resources are the most important part of being successful (whether it is money, people, ideas, etc).

My favorite piece of advice that Amber gave me was that most entrepreneurs assume that they need to be the smartest out of everybody on their team. In reality, it is ideal to feel like the dumbest out of the group. Being surrounded by smart people who support the idea, and are willing to work hard and do their part is the key to creating a successful team, product, and company.

Thank you so much Amber for taking the time to talk to me.