There is one episode from Lenny’s podcast with Matthew Dicks that calls on people to write down stories every day. Well, here are some interesting (and short) stories I’ve written down that have happened to me in my freshman year at Penn. I think about these quite often, as these stories remind me of three themes I see over and over again in venture capital:
- Do things that don’t scale.
- Build your own luck.
- Be so good they can’t ignore you.
Story 1
I was taking a meeting with a partner from Lunar Ventures. Like any typical meeting, we began with introductions, and it so happened that he said, specifically, that “he lived in the second most populous city in Germany.”
For context, I use an app called Anki (see Apps!) pretty regularly, where I put random facts and interesting notes to memorize. To date, I’ve memorized every single periodic element, flags of the world, capitals of the world, and a bunch of random trivia on science and geography.
My friends often make fun of me for memorizing trivial facts. But I find it interesting how trivial actions can influence a future event, as I knew what the second most populous city in Germany was.
I asked if he lived in Hamburg, to which the reply was “no, Munich.” I pressed on, saying I’m pretty sure that Munich is not the second most populous city, and we proceeded to the almighty Google search.1
Turns out I was right.
The partner was pretty surprised and asked me how I knew his country better than he did (“I like to dabble in geography”) and then proceeded to a little game of geography trivia. Though I don’t remember the rest of the meeting, I know that we both had a great time.
Do things that don’t scale and build your own luck.
Story 2
In November of my freshman year at Penn, I emailed a couple dozen (57 exactly, according to my email client) Managing Partners at various NYC firms asking if I could spend my winter break interning with them.
I wrote the normal things… “I’m a freshman, I live in New York… interested in finance… interested in your firm…” and whatnot.
Exactly one person replied by December and asked to take a meeting the next day at some cafe in New York. I was super bummed out from being ghosted by the other 56 people, so I went all in and said sure. The next day, I took the Amtrak to New York.
The meeting / coffee chat / interview went pretty horribly. He asked about my side projects related to the firm (Robinhood algo trader) and was thoroughly unimpressed by the strategies I implemented. I thought it was over.
At the end, I thanked him for his time and said that I had to return to Penn for research (I said class though).
Interestingly, he thought I was from either Columbia or NYU (he did not notice my email domain ending in upenn.edu) and was shocked that I hopped on the train from Philadelphia to take this meeting instead of asking for a Zoom invite link.2
On the train ride home, he emailed me saying that he loved my dedication and my “willingness to take initiative,” and promptly offered me an unofficial externship to learn about quantitative trading.
So yeah, I really enjoyed my winter break implementing trading strategies, learning about M&A analysis, and understanding server/FPGA/colocation tech employed by HFTs! But I also learned that I did not enjoy a Big Tech career, inspiring me to write the Decline of Big Tech and start Build Frontiers later.
(Cool random picture of the NYSE exchange and visiting Citadel Securities afterwards.)
Do things that don’t scale and build your own luck.
Story 3
In the spring semester of my freshman year, I took physics at Penn. As my friends know, I never go to class for anything, and physics was no exception.
I did enjoy my professor’s research in astrophysics (I dabble) and showed up to nearly all the office hour sessions that semester, where I did not talk about the psets or exam preparation material, but about her research and the latest cool advances in astrophysics.
Outside of class, I would spend time procrastinating on my psets and read astrophysics to discuss at the next OH session. I’m 99% sure the other students in OH hated me for wasting their time asking these unrelated exam questions. Once, I remember her asking me whether I would be interested in joining her lab to study astrophysics, but I declined (I’m a bio guy if I say so myself) and showed her my research at Singh Nanotech, PennMed, and on Nanoneuro (see my summer update on Nanoneuro). She was very impressed.
That physics class has 2 midterms and a final. And on two separate occasions, I had firms in California offer to fly me out to explore their programs. On those two separate occasions, I accepted the offers both times and met a lot of cool people – and ended up skipping both my physics midterms.
At the end of the semester before the final, I showed up to OH and explained to my professor why I did not take either midterm and that I was willing to make them up for at least partial credit. To my surprise, she told me that she thought I was an exceptional student doing some really interesting research and that her class should not hinder my efforts to do great work (see Modern Education Teaches Mediocrity).
She did some magic and waived both of my zero-score midterm results. I’m super grateful for that, as I would have failed that class.
Needless to say, I ended up not doing well on the final and passed the class with a B+. Pretty good if you ask me, but my advice is not to do what I did! It was a bad decision with a (very) good outcome.
Though if you were to replicate this, then build your own luck and be so good they can’t ignore you.3
Story 4
As I wrote in my first year reflection of Penn, I dropped out of all the clubs I was involved with at Penn in my second semester. Honestly, to the one or two college students reading my blog, my advice is to seriously reconsider being in any club (see College Advice) and read the footnote.4
However, at the end of the year, I was invited to join the Wharton Undergraduate Entrepreneurship Club (WUEC), not as a member but as a VP. Considering that I knew nobody in WUEC and never joined it my first year, this was quite surprising. Still, I am probably the venture / startup person to talk to at Penn, which is why the WUEC board knew of me.
I only joined it on the condition that I could do whatever I wanted within the club. My goal was to push Penn students to become builders, especially in deeptech (again, see Build Frontiers) but I quickly realized that this was impossible to do. First, the WUEC culture is not around builders, and therefore does not attract builders. Second, there is only so much you can do as a VP with outlier thoughts on the venture community.
Needless to say, I’ve basically soft quit my position as VP now. Sorry to all the people who joined my committee at WUEC and placed your trust in me – I’ve let you down. A lot. Truthfully, I think about the people I’ve accepted into WUEC quite a bit and feel terrible for not doing anything for them.
Becoming a VP at WUEC did teach me some valuable lessons:
- To never waver from my principles without a seriously good reason.
- Don’t second guess my own advice (I don’t want to become a hypocrite).
- I should focus a lot more now on saying no and saving time to improve myself – by reading, writing, or doing cool things on my own. Following prestige is a trap and something I want to actively work against.
- Culture is hard to change once established (sparked a week-long reading into building culture, influencing group dynamics, and the political system of America).
But most importantly, be so good they can’t ignore you.
Footnotes
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I guess there is something to be said about conviction here. If I was wrong, I would’ve looked really stupid. ↩
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This makes me question the common advice of stating what school you are from in a cold-email. Not putting Penn actually worked in my favor… ↩
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Although I would imagine that if I was truly exceptional, I would’ve aced the final. But alas, I am no genius. ↩
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To college students: work on yourself. Be good at what you do. Be known as the person for something. If you ever need to interview to get into a club, you are not good enough. You are not spending enough time on yourself. Work towards the inflection point where clubs need you more than you want them. The same applies to jobs and internships, although this is much harder. But it is not impossible. ↩