There’s a chance you’ve seen Penn students giving “DM” a hard time on Sidechat for not taking his internship seriously enough.
“DM” is none other than Daniel Min (W ‘25), and he finds the posts “really funny.” As a rising senior studying marketing and operations management, Daniel has accumulated over 17,000 followers on Instagram for his witty content about his summer internship.
RecruitU—the company at which he’s working—is a startup dedicated to simplifying finance and consulting recruitment. The cofounders reached out to him after coming across his LinkedIn posts, which are anything but the typical “I’ve gotten a job!” announcements. Instead, Daniel likes to share videos of himself griddying with his professors and photos of his non–Penn friends sitting next to the Benjamin Franklin statue (who surely do not know the statue’s lore). Daniel refers to this genre of content as “shit posts” because of their comedic nature. Along with entertaining content, Daniel also posts about his experiences in the world of social media and his roles at social media companies.
Since then, Daniel has been working as an intern for RecruitU. One of his key projects is the development of an Instagram account called @firststeptofinaloffer, which features street interviews with bankers and consultants. In under a month, he has managed to grow the account to over 36,000 followers.
Daniel conducts the street interviews himself, and it’s no easy feat.
“It’s relentless,” he says. “I’ll go up to people wearing AirPods. I’ll go up to people in the line at lunch. … People have literally yelled at me before just like, ‘Get out of my face!’”
Although Daniel dedicates an hour every day to interviewing, he says that only two to three people per day agree to participate. “It’s a brutal war every time I go out,” he says. The most remarkable part of it all is that he manages to interview strangers with social anxiety; in fact, some of his content is about his journey overcoming his social anxiety. Daniel has filmed videos of himself belting out a solo of Sia’s “Chandelier” in Lauder’s crowded dining hall and shrieking “I Want It That Way” along with his friends in a packed Philly night market. It’s worked out well for him, as he no longer feels as nervous conducting street interviews or embarrassing himself in public. However, there are some special areas of social anxiety that he has yet to conquer: “I probably can’t approach a girl I find attractive and be like, ‘Can I have your number?’ That’s a level of social anxiety I haven’t beaten yet,” he says, laughing.
Daniel’s descent into social media began in high school, long before his Instagram breakthrough. Like many, he started with humble beginnings: Twitch streaming.
“I was on the up every stream, and I was like, ‘Holy crap, like, I’m fucking invincible right now. I am popping the fuck off,’” he recalls.
Using his Twitch success, he built a Discord channel with around 300 of his loyal followers, hosting movie nights and other activities to foster a sense of community. However, with dwindling follower engagement and college looming around the corner, he decided to quit.
“The moment you start caring about the numbers is when you pretty much lose the battle and concentration,” Daniel says. “I should have just stuck through with it, but I was stupid, and I didn’t.”
After Daniel arrived at Penn, he felt “sucked” into Penn’s pre–professional culture, making his rounds at consulting and business clubs. But after his freshman year, he asked himself, “Do I want to be doing this shit?”
After realizing that the answer was no, he decided against taking on an internship and instead learned the ins and outs of Adobe Premiere Pro—a video editing software that would help him create content. That summer, Daniel also connected with another content creator, Mino Lee. Lee posted an Instagram story asking people to contact him if they were looking to dive into the content creator space, and “DM” took the chance to DM him. From that point on, the two kept in touch, with Daniel frequently reaching out to Lee for advice.
“I think the best thing that he said to me, that really struck me, was just him saying, ‘Dude, I believe in you. You have everything you need to succeed. And if you just stay consistent with it, I have no doubt that you’ll make it,” Daniel says. “That impacted me more than any form of practical advice he gave me.”
Attempting to further immerse himself in the content creator space, Daniel attended several conferences, such as VidSummit and Vidcon, quickly realizing that there was no space at Penn for rising creators. This epiphany inspired him to found Reach—a club at Penn dedicated to rising influencers and creators—at the end of his sophomore year. Eventually, Daniel invited Lee to speak at one of Reach’s events, which was where the two met in person for the first time. Fast forward to today, and the two are living in New York City together, with Lee frequently featuring in Daniel’s day–in–the–life videos.
Lee isn’t the only influencer that Daniel has met through his content creation career. Recently, Daniel collaborated with Jerry Lee, the founder of Wonsulting, who boasts more than 1 million followers on Instagram.
“I think about all of … the opportunities that my content has given me,” Daniel says. “Meeting Jerry, other content creators reaching out. I think building my personal brand online has given me a lot.”
Daniel’s content creation journey has been tumultuous, to say the least. He has faced obstacles and criticism from his peers. But he has also learned an important lesson from the experience: “You don’t have to do internships that look good on your resume,” Daniel says. “There’s value to creating depth in your resume and things that interest you. I really think that more students should be trying to do that.”
His advice to other students who are interested in social media is to simply start somewhere. “If you just make that video, and you post it online, you’re ahead of 90% of people who’ve always said they want to make content but just couldn't,” Daniel says. “Making that first post is the biggest hurdle.”
