Why I started a venture straight out of college (pragmatic version)
Recently, I spoke to a older Wharton alum who asked me to write something about why I decided to forgo banking/consulting and jump straight into starting a venture out of college. I have been thinking about this for a while.
My answer has always been that my truest passion has always been for creating something new and building something that provides others joy. Some may call that the idealism of a 21-year-old, even though I believe that it’s reflected in everything I’ve done up until now.
But I have a pragmatic answer as well—for all the die-hard realists out there.
It also about learning where to fight your battles.
Concretely, it means not trying to fight the same battle that everyone else is fighting, because that’s just a more crowded space.
I went to a high school that counts Olympic athletes, Olympic mathletes, literary prodigies, and Mark Zuckerberg among its students and alumni. I quickly learned that intellectually, I was no heavyweight, and I had no special skill or talent. I could try to fight my way to become a better piano player or a better math student. But when your competition includes people who played Rachmaninoff concertos with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and represent the USA at the IMO, let’s face it, your chances of becoming the best are slim. At the best, you’ll just look like second place.
Frankly, I don’t like battles that I know I’m going to lose. And I don’t like best case scenarios of second place.
You can either go on playing that zero-sum game, or you can reframe the world in a more hospitable context, in which your success is not solely dependent on beating someone else. It’s a horrible way to look at the world, anyway. I get no pleasure out of besting someone in itself. Why can’t we all succeed together?
Early on, I realized that no one at school was interested in fashion or cultural journalism. Tiger moms are into piano and math, but the world is more diverse than that. So I started a fashion magazine and through some good luck and hard work, parlayed my way into Women’s Wear Daily and eventually ended up writing for Rolling Stone, Teen Vogue, and Seventeen—by seventeen. No one at school was competing in this space, so I stood out by default.
So what does that mean in a career context?
If everyone is rushing to compete in one sphere, especially a sphere where there is already a solid system and processes in place in which to compete, you should think carefully before joining the crowd. Is it going to be easy for you to triumph there? And if you do decide to join the crowd (because in the end, you will probably have to join SOME crowd), you should think about: how can I differentiate myself as much as possible?
I just didn’t see how it likely it would be for me to win on Wall Street. And of course, the biggest winners on Wall Street are not people who have taken the typical analyst-associate-VP-MD path. They’re the innovators (who brought us PE/LBOs/HFs in the 80s) who created new spaces to play in. While my education has given me an appreciation for finance—in the sense that it’s something I enjoy reading novels about—I’m not obsessed with it to the point that I feel that I can or want to create a new space there.
This is equally applicable to startups when they think about which areas of which industries they would like to compete in. The most important decision is the one you make right in the beginning—which table would you like to sit down at?
I feel obligated to say something about money here, since this is a financially precarious path.
Personally, I have simple needs. I don’t need a lot of money to be happy. Money is useful in that it can buy you the freedom of choice and the happiness of shared experiences—a vacation with your family, tickets to a concert, an education for your children, etc.
Paradox: If you’re doing a startup just for the money, it’s probably the wrong path for you, but at the same time, if you want an ultra-high net worth, being a corporate hired gun is not going to help your cause.
