#116 - Domonique Fines and Cadran Cowansage

**Craig Cannon** (0:00)
Hey, how's it going? This is Craig Cannon, and you're listening to Y Combinator's podcast.
Today's episode is with Domonique Fines, and it's hosted by Cadran Cowansage. Dom is the Director of Events here at YC. Cadran is the co-founder and CEO of Elpha. Elpha is a private online community for women in tech. You can find Dom on Twitter at Domonique Fines, and Cadran at cadran underscore C.
All right, here we go.

**Cadran Cowansage** (0:25)
Dom, tell us a few words about you, what you work on, et cetera.

**Domonique Fines** (0:30)
Yeah, so I am Director of Events at YC.
I basically do all of our public facing and large scale events. So anything from demo days, a few more founders conferences, our outreach tours, and then also just most recently work at a startup, and then several things in between.

**Cadran Cowansage** (0:46)
Awesome.
So how did you get started in events and working at YC? Was this sort of a planned path, or have you been figuring it out as you go?

**Domonique Fines** (0:56)
Yeah, I would say I've been figuring it out as I go. I have more so a jumpy background. So originally I was planning to go to school to become an attorney.
And I would say like about a week before I was supposed to apply to law school, I definitely just changed my mind. I was working at an entertainment law firm at the time, and I just figured out that it just wasn't something that I wanted to do.
And I told myself that I wanted to plan tech events. And at the time I had no clue what that even meant. Like, what does that mean, you want to plan tech events? I didn't know, I just knew I wasn't going to law school. So I moved back from Atlanta, I went to Clark Atlanta University, and I moved back from Atlanta home to Oakland. And from there, I was just working at a law firm during the day from nine to five. And then at lunchtime, I would actually sleep in my car. And then after work, I would go to my family's club, me lounge, and I would run that at nighttime. And then I would do that same thing every day over and over and over until I found a job that allowed me to do events.
So I ended up at Frog Design as an office manager, and they allowed me to do events at like South by Southwest and different hackathons. So from there, I was able to create a portfolio and make sure that I was marketing myself as an events person. And from there, YC found me.

**Cadran Cowansage** (2:09)
That's awesome. I love that in that you sort of like hacked getting into it.

**Domonique Fines** (2:13)
Yeah.

**Cadran Cowansage** (2:14)
I want to jump back to, you know, your sort of deviation from going to law school for a second. You know, you said you changed your mind a week before you went.

**Domonique Fines** (2:25)
Yeah.

**Cadran Cowansage** (2:26)
How, like, what was that process like, you know, how long did it take to make the final decision that you were going to make that change?

**Domonique Fines** (2:37)
Well, I would say it took me quite a while, of course, because I waited that late to go ahead and change my mind.
But honestly, I was deathly afraid. This was one thing that I knew, like, my entire life I wanted to do. Just that's the only thing I knew I was going to be an attorney. I was going to be an attorney. That's the only thing that everyone knew about me. I was into fashion and also I wanted to be an attorney. So for me to just have that feeling inside of me, just thinking like, wow, I just really, really don't want to do this. And I know that if I don't do it, I'm going to be disappointing so many people. I was really, really hurt and afraid. And also I didn't know how to explain what I wanted to do at the time.
So it just came down to a simple call. I basically just called my mom and I told her, I was like, hey, you know, like, I do not want to be an attorney and I'm going to move home and I'm going to plan tech events. And she's like, great, where are you going to live?
I have a room, like a high school room. It's still there. I'm sure it's there. And so that was a learning experience for me too. But I would say it was the best decision I ever made because if I didn't make that jump or take that step, then I would probably be ended up doing things that I'm not, like I have no enjoyment of. And right now, I'm like super passionate about events and I always will be.