Tech founder shares his best entrepreneurship advice

pulse

February 2, 2017 6:27 PM

Eugene Marinelli has a resume that many Silicon Valley hopefuls would envy.

Eugene Marinelli, CTO of Blend

The recent inductee to Forbes 30 under 30 finance list has two degrees in computer science, and he interned for the engineering departments at Apple and Google.

After his internships Marinelli landed a job on the finance engineering team at Palantir, the big data company founded by billionaire Peter Thiel.

"While working on Palantir's finance engineering team I quickly realized the degree to which many parts of the financial services industry were not up to speed with technology," he told Business Insider.

Ultimately this epiphany led Marinelli and his three cofounders to launch Blend, a fintech startup that aims to make the mortgage process quicker and more affordable for lenders and big banks.

Blend does this by putting the entire process online and by stripping it off its arcane elements such as the fax machines and massive amounts of paperwork.

Using algorithms that determine whether a person is worthy to receive a loan, Blend says its

The 29-year-old Marinelli told Business Insider that aspiring entrepreneurs should expect trial and error. He said idea for Blend didn't come to fruition until after another idea had been scrapped.

"We embarked on a journey to improve something that seemed boring at first glance," Marinelli said.

"I would encourage all aspiring entrepreneurs to do exactly that. Find a niche that most tech enthusiasts wouldn't care to fix, and fix it," Marinelli said.

"Finding the right team is also key to entrepreneurial success" he added.

"You have to be working with the right people specially early on who compliment your strengths and weaknesses."

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