Julien Wormser (Is '12) On Harnessing Opportunities

Running a successful start-up company hadn’t been in Julien Wormser’s plans as an undergraduate in Cornell Information Science. Long before he cofounded Servy, Wormser was uncertain which career was the best fit for him. He knew he liked computers and building software, but entrepreneurship came somewhat unexpectedly, formed out of harnessing opportunities.

“Looking back, as a student, I didn’t ever think, ‘I’m going to start a company,’” he said, “but I did gravitate to chances to practice what I was learning in class, which evolved into entrepreneurship. When opportunities present themselves you have to be ready to take them.”

And Wormser did just that as an undergraduate. In his junior year, he built a content management system for a friend who wanted to start a blog, and the research he completed for his Honors thesis during his junior and senior years was made possible because of the lessons he learned in his computer science and information science classes.

“For me, entrepreneurship is not only rooted in challenging the status quo but challenging yourself. Getting out of your comfort zone and taking opportunities to apply what you have learned, or what you want to learn, to a real-world application are essential” he said. “I would encourage Info Sci students to do the same. It’s the best way to learn. Servy started much in the same way: a friend asked if I wanted to help him build an app, and I said ‘yes’”.

Julien graduated in 2012 Magna Cum Laude in Information Science with double minors in Science & Technology Studies and History. He credited Cornell with providing the opportunity to explore a broad range of diverse courses.

“I’m thankful that Cornell gave me the opportunity to explore a ton of diverse courses,” he said. “I’m also thankful for discovering Info Sci because it was the foundation for my passion of building software but also having a strong appreciation for UX and HCI. That focus on UX and HCI is pretty rare in a program.”