The High Flyers Podcast with Vidit Agarwal
00:15:03 · Grace Brown
[00:15:03] S1: That's a good question. What would someone who would have met me at 18 assumed I would do? It's hard to say. I think people who knew me really deeply would probably not be surprised with where where I've taken my journey. But it's funny, particularly when I started Andromeda, people who perhaps didn't know me quite as well... A handful of people have said, oh, I could never have imagined that you would go off and build a company or build this robot or go be successful with it or whatever. And you... I didn't know you had such drive. And that... Always I found that really surprising because I think the fire in my belly that I have with Andromeda, I've known I've had that since I was about 14 years old, that it's been the same... While it's manifested in the world a bit differently or at least appears different to people, It's been the same driver, and I recognize it because it's some sort of feeling. So I guess it depends on who you ask and what they would have assumed. Some people have also shared that they knew I'd, you know, I'd go really far with my company or whatever I do, but I probably did it faster than even the people who believed in me expected. So that's another common thing I've heard from people who've been in my life the last few years. So, yeah, I think it would vary based on who you ask. I know that's not a direct answer.
00:16:17 · Vidit Agarwal
[00:16:17] S0: Yeah. I was asking what you would say, but yes, I think that the the things that things matter too. Maybe it connects to... I think the the the entrepreneur point that you said is really interesting because I I wonder does that connect to... Like, apparently, you were quite independent in your teenage years. Does that connect to the independence? And I know that was for various reasons that you can choose if you want to go into or not. Did that independence drive the entrepreneurial streak in you?
00:16:47 · Grace Brown
[00:16:47] S1: Yeah. I think so. Well... Yeah. I definitely was a very... Even as a child, I was very independent. Like you, I got my job as early as I could. But my parents, they divorced when I was really young, and they could... I think they never really agreed on a way to raise me. There are, you know, core principles that they agreed on when they wanted me to have time with both my parents, but I think there are other things that they couldn't agree on. Just finances was a really big one. Actually, that that was probably the biggest one, and it made me realize almost everything in life, unfortunately, particularly because we live in a capitalistic society, is just downstream from finance. You can love money, hate money, chase it, whatever you feel towards it, it influences, you know, your life and your reality. And because my parents couldn't agree on how to raise me from a financial perspective, like, who would pay for what, what activities would I do, I had to make those choices for myself. And and... Yeah. And that definitely made me a really independent child, which definitely... I think that's why maybe some people say I'm really mature for my age because I had managed my own finances from a teenager and paid my own rent since I was about 17 years old. And... Yeah. So I'm not sure if that's where you were going, but... Yeah.
00:17:59 · Vidit Agarwal, Grace Brown
[00:17:59] S0: I... No. I was going then. I do resonate with that. Like, I I was very similar. I was always an independent child to the point where all through my life, my friends have always been older than me. Even now, like my friends are a little bit older than me, because I've always felt that, like maybe I've seeked maturity to some extent. Like I was never the kid who would like party every night or would muck about. And my parents always say they're like, no, he was always like, he just had this, like, streak of maturity. And not maturity in a boring way, but in a way that I think made sense somehow. [00:18:32] S1: Yeah. No. Actually, that's something I'm really noticing even now. Most of my peer group... I moved to San Francisco a year ago, and most of my peer groups are about five years old... Five to ten years older than me. So... Yeah. And I've had that even earlier on, but I'm definitely noticing that now. And actually, some of my friends from high school who have stuck with me through the years, what they would say is I always did things like a chapter earlier. Like, the party phase, I had that. I just had that when I was about 14 to 16. And then, like, the the work phase and the, you know, the focus and being locked in and, you know, company building, like, everything, I just had the chapter earlier. So... Yeah. So when my friends were kind of, you know, going out a lot more, I wasn't as interested in that at the same time. Yeah. [00:19:18] S0: Yeah. Yeah. I completely connect to that. So you finished high school in Brisbane, if I understand correctly.
00:19:18 · Vidit Agarwal, Grace Brown
[00:19:18] S0: Yeah. Yeah. I completely connect to that. So you finished high school in Brisbane, if I understand correctly. [00:19:24] S1: Mhmm. [00:19:25] S0: And then where did you go? Because what's interesting about your previous point is it sounds like you wanted to be a founder, an entrepreneur from a young age, but you still went to university. Right? You still believed in studies?
00:19:38 · Grace Brown
[00:19:38] S1: I think I had, like, an entrepreneurial just thread in me, but it wasn't ever super clear what I would do. I kind of followed the blind belief that if I just kept following the things that brought me so much, like, joy, like the act... The projects that I loved building, the skills that I'd love to learn, like, any activity that really got me into flow state, I thought if I could just follow that, I don't know where I would would end up, but it must be somewhere pretty magnificent and aligned to the life I wanna live. So I had assumptions that maybe at some point I'd really wanna be an entrepreneur, but I didn't even know what that would really look like. Startups, for example, weren't a thing... Weren't a very clear concept in my mind because I thought it was something that only Americans do. Like, it's in Silicon Valley. It's in San Francisco. It doesn't happen in Australia. There... It was actually a Swoop Aero. They're a drone robotics company. They're not around anymore, but it was when I was reading their story in university, I was first or second year, and it just opened my eyes. I was like, there's a robotics startup that's just in, like, South Melbourne and is founded by an Australian, and they've raised venture capital funding. And I was like, this is like an American story, but it's happening here. And can you really build this company here? And I listened to the founder on a few podcasts and was like, oh my god. I'm gonna do what he does, which is... You know, it just felt possible. And it goes back to the thing you can't be what you can't see. And so there's been many... He... That is one example, but I think there's been, you know, at least a dozen of those stories that fueled my self belief.