On Venturing: Part 1
Developing My Personal Thesis
I’m publishing this over half a year since my visit to SF, but I’ve needed the time to digest the adventure. Comparing it to my previous post about London, I’ve realized I often travel to places with strong intentions, but end up being redirected in the best of ways.
I’ve been to the West Coast only once in my life. Like all pilgrimmagers, tourists or founders, I let myself get lost in both the literal and metaphorical fog the Bay Area was so well known for.
As I wandered down Mission Street, trudged up the hills of Nob Hill, and hopped off the double decker tour bus in Presidio, I kept saying to myself, I made it. I shrugged off a nasty cold I’d gotten from the surprisingly frigid weather and carefully chose which street corners to turn and who to sit next to in cafe’s and restaurant’s. Who knew what they could hold?
Yet, it didn’t feel like home.
I had spent the past few years hearing stories of SF being the home for the quirky misfits who build tomorrow. I got a taste of those incredibly talented people when I slept on a couch at a UC Berkley dorm and snuck into a lecture, and indeed, the tug of entrepreneurship was strong. Billboards appeared around every corner signaling the home base of companies whose apps were on the computer I had carried with me from home.
But, I still couldn’t resist the desire I needed to get back to Yale. To study until I was ready to come back. To develop a deeper sense of what exactly I wanted to build for tomorrow. And so, when few days later, my flight took off for NYC, I was tearing up. I was proud I knew not to rush into the future too quickly.
One of the main things my San Francisco trip helped me realize was that being a generalist was not a weakness. It was a superpower — I had the fluency to understand things as a writer and as an engineer. But I couldn’t use the fact that I was a good generalist as an excuse to not develop depth in a particular field. That would take time, something I was scared to do because I was so comfortable not having “a thing.” My curiosity had taken me down endless rabbit holes. I had hundreds of Google tabs open across my phone and laptop. I knew a lot, about a lot.
At the same time, I often had more questions than answers and when someone asked me what I wanted to do in life, I would blush and mumble something about interdisciplinarity. I could never utter the phrase, “I want to do something that will really change the world.” I thought people would zone out and associate me with oft-mocked stereotypes. In fact, I tried to avoid words like “innovation,” and identified more with people who “hustled opportunities,” “opened a third door,” and were “builders” rather than “entrepreneurs.” But, what exactly was I builder of?
Ironically, the person who had, until that point, made me most comfortable with being a generalist was one of the most specialized person I know — an 80 year old historian of Cold War relations, my first professor at Yale. He inspired me to read David Epstein’s Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. The foremost thing I learned from the book was that it is quite alright to take time to study various disciplines and apply unconventional knowledge from one industry to the other; in fact, it’s impacted my ideation process to the point where I often present an idea, as well as something radically different from it, at the same time.
Despite validation that it’s okay to be undecided, I still had San Francisco and the need to develop my personal thesis in the back of my mind. Conflicted, I sat in my computer science and economics courses thinking “I’ll never be a real computer scientist or economist. I’ll never be as good as these other students, each of whom take 3–4 courses in the same field each semester and really know the subject.” I thought my problem was that I was just too curious about so many other things. I didn’t want a compartmentalized career path devoid of history, the arts, and physics. It’s no wonder that I’m so drawn to early-stage startups where everyone works on everything. Notedly, there is a nuance to this argument — I’ve observed that 21st century careers are awfully multifaceted and a liberal arts education is becoming widely accepted, even for engineers.
I’m the first in my family to go to college here in the US. Perhaps that’s another reason why I put a lot of pressure on myself to develop multiple strengths, because man, have I had to figure out many things by myself. But now, I believe it’s time to close some tabs. Stop trying to pursue twenty career options at once. Figure out what really motivates me and gain a thorough understanding, so that the next time I’m in San Francisco, I know how to confidently introduce myself and why I belong there.
After a few months dabbling with this idea, joining technical and investing-oriented communities, and spending the summer as an Outlier Fellow at Ann Miura-Ko’s Floodgate Fund, I’ve learned to stand by my words when I say the following goal. I mean it.
I plan to find, fund, and build companies that will truly disrupt industries and generate a preposterous future. One in which online realities don’t dominate tangible ones. One in which data privacy is respected and cyberattacks are disincentivized. One where it’s easy to log off and not feel a fear of missing out on the latest happenings.
I know I will make a million mistakes, but then, one day, I will hit an intergalactic home run.
I know there are caveats, I know there is number-crunching, and I know there is dream-crushing and redirection. I also know there is a healthy mix of meritocracy and nepotism and Twitter — although Joe Lubin from Ethereum told me to get off my phone more often.
For the next few months, I’m going to use this mindset as I dive into cybersecurity and urban studies. Imagine the graph of a fourth quadrant asymptote — that’s where I’m at— growing, soaring, and musing — now with a purpose in mind.
In due time, I’ll be booking my return ticket to San Francisco.
