Published Aug. 20, 2026at6:00am
Fresh out of college and living in Toronto, David Zou was determined to break into San Francisco’s tech scene. He craved its energy and wanted to be surrounded by people “building optimistically for the future.”
First, he needed to land an interview. The 24-year-old applied to about 30 sales-related jobs, cold-DMed roughly 100 startup founders on social media, and crafted personalized messages to recruiters on LinkedIn.
When nothing worked, he ordered a custom cake printed with a photo of him skydiving and the message: “I’m ready to (sky)dive headfirst into crushing it for my clients.” He had it delivered to the office of Virio, an AI startup in downtown San Francisco, after applying for a role as founding account manager.
It worked. He started the job in February.