Hitting the high notes: meet Richard Xu, a student changemaker, non-profit founder, and violinist

Richard Xu is a great example of the diversity of change makers within the StartupIU community.

Richard balances studying Finance in the Kelley School of Business, studying Violin Performance in the Jacobs School of Music, and growing the StartupIU community as a Shoemaker Scholar.

Oh yea —somehow he manages to tinker on blockchain projects and start his own non-profit, too.

I’ve been fortunate to get to know Richard as a fellow Shoemaker Scholar. Now it’s your turn — let’s get started!

Give us your “Twitter bio” or elevator pitch.

I’m an aspiring financial quantitative engineer with a bit of an unusual background. I came to IU originally as a violinist, pianist, and film/video-game composer, but rekindled my love for business and technology over the last few years and have been working in this space ever since.

What entrepreneurial or innovative business or project are you currently working on?

In terms of substantive work, I am the co-founder and CFO of a LA-based, national non-profit known as The String Bank, which helps donate musical supplies to underprivileged schools. However, the bulk of my time goes into studying financial/software engineering and projects that emerge from my research.

How’d you get into entrepreneurship and innovation? What were some of your entrepreneurial and innovative highlights since then?

I like to think that I’ve always been a pretty creative guy, and I reasoned that if I expanded my knowledge, I’d be able to come up with something both clever and interesting to work on. Last year, I did some research into the electrical engineering and various applications of perovskite photovoltaic cells with respect to renewable energy, which is a space I still monitor frequently. Most recently, I’ve been doing substantial work in the blockchain space and have been working on a platform with regards to blockchain.

Could you elaborate on the blockchain project? How did you get involved in the space?

The idea behind the project I’m currently working on is simply a platform to trade contracts. There are some glaring flaws in blockchain technology, which is to be expected of a young technology, and the first step I see on creating a platform is to try to find a way to alleviate some of issues in blockchain. I got involved in the space in preparation for the Harvard Hackathon, when a friend of mine mentioned an article he read about with regard to Ethereum.

What has been the most useful entrepreneurial resource or experience at the University?

Critical and comprehensive feedback from trusted peers and professors is by far the most valuable resource available to any student. I am often wrong, and friends are able to catch my errors and tell me when I’m not making sense.

What has been the most useful entrepreneurial resource or experience outside of the University?

Google Scholar for research papers, downloadable textbook pdfs to introduce topics, and MOOCs. A few of the sites I like to use are MIT OpenCourseware, Yale Open Courses, Coursera (be careful with this one, not all classes are useful), Udemy, Udacity, and many others depending on what’s available on each platform. A few of the courses I’ve taken include Game Theory, Morals and Philosophy, Psychology, business courses, and a handful of programming courses.

What’s was your favorite failure or learning experience?

I started a calendar add-on project in my sophomore year that would use an algorithm to solve the Stable Marriage Problem (SMP) in calendar sign-ups, but I had little coding knowledge at the time, and asked a couple of my friends to help me with the idea. The idea crashed and burned to the ground in a catastrophic fashion because I essentially treated my technical partners as code-monkeys while not having any substantial knowledge about the particular subject myself. Sometimes you have to ask yourself why someone smarter than you would want to work on your idea when they are more than capable of pursuing their own (with higher payout than sharing with someone else). It’s definitely a project I look back at and laugh about with my friends to this day. If you want to lead a project, you should always be the most prepared — great learning experience of what not to do in my case.

What’s the best advice you’ve received as an entrepreneur?

“If you need inspiring words, don’t do it.”

What advice would you give to other entrepreneurial students?

Starting a business requires more than an idea. It requires preparation, persistence, and willingness to learn about your field and market. Never hire someone new when you can do/learn something yourself.

Where can people find you in-person? Online?

I am usually split my time between Jacobs, Kelley, and SICE, but anyone can reach me at richxu@iu.edu.

Thanks for sharing, Richard!

This post is a part of StartupIU Entrepreneur Spotlight, a series of Medium posts written by the Shoemaker Scholars to feature entrepreneurial and innovative students and alumni. Want to nominate someone (or yourself) to be featured? Email us at sscholar@indiana.edu.