The High Flyers Podcast with Vidit Agarwal
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.
00:21:11 · Vidit Agarwal
[00:21:11] S0: And this was post you deciding to study... You studied robotics and mechanical engineering. So this was, could you tell me about that? Was that, because that sounds like a very intentional, I studied commerce, which is a generalist degree, opens many parts and most people are confused when you study it, you're like, I don't know what I want to do, but I'll study something broad enough that it opens parts. I'm assuming robotics and mechanical engineering is a very specific intentional part of study.
00:21:39 · Grace Brown
[00:21:39] S1: Well, when I was really young, I always enjoyed maths, like really enjoyed maths. I think between first to fourth grade, I would pretend to hate maths because none of the kids liked it, but I've always really enjoyed maths. And then in high school, we had an engineering subject where we had to build this robotic arm. And that project was such a turning point for me because it was just so much fun. You didn't have to go off and just build the robot arm, but you had to prove it out theoretically first. And then you'd go to the workshop and gather all the resources and materials that you need, and you'd cut and you solder and you'd build the whole system. And then you test it and you get it to work, and it was just such a... It was just an awesome project. And and I remember saying that in tenth grade. I was like, if this is what engineering is, like, this is what I wanna do for the rest of my life. So that was pretty significant for me. And so when we were choosing our courses to go into university, everything I chose was either maths or robotics engineering. I chose specifically mechatronics because it was a mix between software, electrical, and mechanical, and I couldn't quite... I don't think I understood myself well enough to know which discipline I'd be most engaged with and also which one would be best suited to my strengths. So I really like the idea of choosing mechatronics. And I remembered you had to pick six courses... Six degrees in one of your university courses, and I only chose something like three. Like, it was maths at this UQ... Master engineering at UQ, master engineering at Melbourne uni. And the career adviser was like, you have to choose more in case you don't get in. And I was like, if I don't get in, I have bigger problems because that's the only thing I wanna do. Like, I don't wanna pick five or six that I don't wanna do. Like, these are the only courses I wanna do. But they really advised me to try and pick more, and I just... I couldn't bring myself to do it. I'm like, I'm picking these ones, and if I don't get in, I I don't know. Like, I have to get in because this is all I wanna do.