Monday I was invited to participate on a career panel for Stanford’s Technology Entrepreneurship course.  The panel was primarily Q&A, and just like most other groups of speakers, we were asked “What are three things you wish you would have known as a junior or senior in college?”

The question is cliché, but for good reason.  I’ve learned a lot from such questions, and I thought I’d relay my answer here.

The most valuable tools you have are your status as a student (or other newbie) and your willingness to buy coffee.

While the importance of networking is almost always stressed as a path to success, many people find themselves too busy to set up coffee with an interesting TA or too intimidated to approach a successful professor or venture investor.

Meeting people to become your mentors, investors, and inspiration is incredibly important.  Meet people and begin to form relationships before you need it.  We’ve all seen the guy that walks up to an investor, says hi, and launches into his elevator pitch without any trust or context in the relationship.  Don’t let that be you.  Form meaningful, genuine relationships now and avoid desperate business card exchanges later.

Too busy?  Almost anyone can find enough to do to be “busy”.  Always give up a few questions on a problem set or a perfectly clean apartment for the chance to meet someone new and interesting.

Take the time now; a $3 coffee just might turn out to be your best investment.

Watch next week for “What I wish I would have known… (2 of 3)

If you’re in the United States or if you work with anyone who is, you’ll notice the Internet was pretty quiet last week as everybody took time off to enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday. We did our best to do the same here at Increo, and the team took a few days to relax from work and count its blessings.

While the technical resources we have at our disposal, some of which didn’t exist even six months or a year ago, are certainly important to us, to say merely that we’re thankful for Apache and PHP and TextMate and iTunes and big Dell monitors would entirely miss the point.

Our goals have nothing to do with bits or bytes or programs or even “solutions”, even as much as the last of those appears in the company’s name. We exist to bring people together and to facilitate the innovation that has so often disappeared in modern work culture, and software is just a means to that end.

As such, we’re thankful today for people. For our team — that six of us could be able to come together and share a common purpose — and for our users, the people for whom we exist. For the people in the Silicon Valley blogosphere, for their encouragement and their praise. For the people who backed us from the beginning to the paying customers who back us every day. For the people who read us here and follow us on Twitter, always providing us with the very feedback on which we place so much importance.

To everybody: thank you. And stay tuned, because the next big thing from Increo is coming soon.