Maximizing My Career Impact: Progress Report

Based on my original career planning article: So What’s Next?: Maximizing impact after my startup

Guiding Question: What should I do with my life to maximize my impact after building and selling my company?

This Quarter’s Objective: Exploration

Upon reflection, I realized that the last 5 years I spent working on my startup had me heads down in my product and industry, somewhat oblivious to everything else happening in the world outside of students, startups and advertisers. Hence, the objective of the first quarter is exploration — seeking out all viable opportunities (e.g. career paths) for impact maximization.

Resources

Some of the materials that I’ve consumed (and ideas I’ve considered) during this period:

• 80,000 Hours Career Guide
• The Minimalists documentary
• 4-Hour Work Week
• Mr Money Moustache

Hypotheses

On how to maximize career impact:

• What: Help growth-stage products and / or organizations scale in a strategic operations role, e.g. COO
• Who:
  1) product or organization with high social impact, with empirically proven / externally validated impact (likely post pm-fit)
  2) impact-driven product or organization with a CEO I really admire
  3) a post pm-fit product that I just love

For detailed explanation on my rationale, check out the original piece: “So What’s Next?: Maximizing impact after my startup”.

Approach

1. Use effective altruism (EA) research to learn about EA priority causes (causes with the potential to do the most good)
2. Identify EA-recommended, growth-stage orgs where operational skills (and generally, where people with my profile) may be needed
3. Work with CEOs / founders that I’ve known and admired or are recommended to me by people I respect
4. Reach out to founders of products I love to see if there’s an opportunity / need for me to contribute in an operations capacity

1. Learn about EA priority causes

Results

• Completed recommended read / watch list from Brenton @ 80K, on existential risk, population ethics and AI
• I wanted to learn more about AI by supporting local AI accelerator and the startups trying to apply it. Discussed with founder, but timing was off with the cohort
• Listening to 80K podcast

Learnings

• (Still) no obvious leaning towards any of the priority causes —I believe in the core tenant of supporting causes (and organizations) with the highest potential to do the most good, but am not inherently driven towards a particular cause. I am more driven by supporting the work of figuring out what is good and supporting the organizations that seem most likely given the current research.

Next Steps

• Focus on organizations working on cause prioritisation, community building and funding allocation
• Continue to learn about priority causes via further readings and 80K podcast
• Maybe something will come to me while I’m attending EA Events

2. Identify relevant opportunities within EA

Results

• Reached out to Founders Pledge to explore opportunities to get involved
• Co-organized two networking dinners for UK Founders Pledge team in Hong Kong to assess the opportunity of expansion in Greater China
• Filled in Operations form with 80,000 Hours
• Joined EA jobs @ Facebook
• Applied for Director of Operations / COO roles at Open Philanthropy, GiveWell and Ought

Learnings

• Several of the positions I applied for had filled the position before they could initiate the application process with me. It seems timing is pretty critical and yet somewhat uncontrollable
• FHI reached out, but after discussion with my close network, I decided that university administration is unlikely to be a good fit for me
• Startups may not in the position to sponsor visas — perhaps a waste of time to approach ones in geographies where I do not have right of work?
• Many operations role (preferred) requirements include: consulting experience, data / financial
• EA organizations are also hiring for growth / business development / market launch (GM)-type roles, and they seem more aligned with my current CV. Worth exploring? (Counter-argument provided in reflections from objective 3 below)

Next Steps

• CEA Operations Forum

3. Work with founders, especially on issues related to operations

Why?

• Create value while learning
• A chance to work with founders that I like
• Further test the operations-aptitude hypothesis by working on actual operations-related projects in different companies
• Make some rent money!

Results

• Consulted for 3 startups in: fitness, recruitment and environmental tech
• Approached by more and more founders for help
• Worked on several operations-related projects, including: 1) facilitating internal communications by creating user personas (e.g. interviews with management and ground staff, and across offices ), 2) Sales operations: process documentation, customer development, sales coaching and pith co-development with non-sales founders

Surprises

• Along the way, I had the idea that a more scalable way to help companies would be to mentor at accelerators, so I reached out to a handful
• Offered and accepted Entrepreneur In Residence role with Hong Kong accelerator, Betatron
• Also, I didn’t expect to be working with so many founders (as a friend, advisor or consultant), so I started organizing hikes to bring them together in a more efficient manner (with exercise and nature being added bonuses)
• Actually managed to connect three of founders with potential hires in engineering and sales!
• I also found that I kept getting the asked the same questions about what I was doing after my startup, so I wrote this article and built this website to document and share my answers!

Learnings

• It seems that growth-stage startups all suffer from a shortage in operations talent, especially in areas of process and systems design, documentation and internal communications
• (Early stage startups mostly need help with customer development, not many priority applications for operations )
• User personas, on the other hand, are a very helpful tool for companies across stages. They are a great way for knowledge sharing and supporting internal communications. Personas contribute to many business areas, including product development, sales strategy and marketing material design
• While my CV suggests that I have a comparative advantage in sales and marketing, I don’t feel any intrinsic pull towards these functions (while I definitely have an intellectual curiosity towards strategic operations). Upon reflection, I think this doesn’t mean I’m opposed to doing it, but I won’t be compelled unless I find a product I love (i.e. strong emotional and intellectual reaction).
• Startups who work with me generally want me to join the management / co-founding team — make sure to set the right expectations upfront

Next Steps

• If the lack of operations talent is a pain felt by both growth stage organizations in EA and tech, is there an opportunity / need to build something to solve this? (Will also explore this further at Operations Forum)

What’s Next (for Q2)

Hypotheses (based on learnings)

• Within EA, focus on organizations dedicated to cause prioritization and community building
• Timing may make it difficult to get a job from a job ad — may be better to build relationships with orgs / people that are interesting (and let them come to me when they have an appropriate role)
• If my focus is on growth-stage organizations, I should also consider non-operational roles at (growth-stage) EA orgs if there is a good match with my profile — my focus is on helping to scale (ops is a means toward that end)
• There may be a solution to be built to address the operational talent gap

Actions

• Attend EA events (CEA operations forum, EA Global conference) to meet the people behind the organizations and build relationships
• Conduct interviews to validate hypothesis around operational talent gap
• Continue to work with inspiring founders / products so long as I am simultaneously learning and generating significant (strategic) value for them