Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders (ETL)
00:27:39 · Ravi Belani, Carina Hong
[00:27:39] S1: Can you give an example of that just so that people really get the lesson? [00:27:42] S2: Yeah. So I feel a lot of gratefulness to every member of my team. [00:27:48] S1: Okay. [00:27:49] S2: Not every day I say it. And there are like big, big times where we were just grinding. The night before the classification finance info groups, the entire office was just... I mean, at least half of them were there over like all nighter. The reason it's actually quite interesting is because our internal infrastructure tooling is very good. So we run everything very fast. And then what we realized is now is release time. And, like, ideally, you want others to independently validate your stuff. Right? But, like, their infrastructure tool is not very good. So, okay, now we have this choice. Like, that's like last minute choice. Like, it's like 8PM. Like, we're like 7AM. We're we're like posting that like, it might take them a long, long, long time to like run this thing and like cross check it. And they might think it's false, like, because it starts failing. And so, like, because of this issue, like, you're just, doing all nighter. I... Like, I realized that I will express my gratefulness by, like, buying people, like, this massive sushi party boat rather than saying it. I just can't... I... It's very hard sometimes. [00:28:49] S1: It's your love language. Your love language [00:28:51] S2: is not... [00:28:52] S1: It's not... It's it's service instead of...
00:28:52 · Ravi Belani, Carina Hong
[00:28:52] S1: It's not... It's it's service instead of... [00:28:53] S2: But but let's say you're away from the team. Right? Let's let's say it's over Slack, it's after. It's very, very important to just make everyone feel seen [00:29:01] S1: Yeah. [00:29:01] S2: And that you remember them. I think this is something that I later learned. Because there's all these tension being built up just from, like, the daily stress. Yeah. And then the third thing I think about sort of... It's it's kind of an interesting one is to to... I later learned that I I should always make sure to... [00:29:20] S1: Oh, you can ignore that. Whoever's... Yep. [00:29:22] S2: Is is to... I'm just scared that's mine. Oh. Yeah. I don't think it's mine. Okay. But... Yeah. The third thing I think most interesting is people sometimes are very... People sometimes are very different. So I have the belief that because I'm very single threaded initially that I would want people to focus on this one thing. Some people are very, like, thriving when they're octopus ish. Like, they put, like, their claws on, like, eight things. And, like, I literally learned to, like, let that happen, and that's actually the beautiful part of that. So we're now a very, like, bottoms up and benevolent dictator kind of model Mhmm. Compared to before where we would be a little bit more... Like I was emphasizing like top down or like channel command when the company reached large scale. [00:30:08] S1: Okay. That's great. And just so people can understand, how many employees did you have at the beginning of the year, like in
00:30:08 · Ravi Belani, Carina Hong
[00:30:08] S1: Okay. That's great. And just so people can understand, how many employees did you have at the beginning of the year, like in [00:30:14] S2: In January, we had, like, less than 15. [00:30:17] S1: And how many do you have today in October? [00:30:18] S2: We have, like, 80. [00:30:19] S1: 80. So imagine going from 15 to 80, you're quadrupling, more than quadrupling, almost quintupling in just... In less than a year. Alright. Terrific. I'm gonna ask the e t l signature questions, then I'm gonna open it up for questions from the students. So students, you can start thinking about questions that you might have. But the first one, Carina, actually before I do this, I'm curious just with your math background, is there anything that you took away from math that's helped you as an [00:30:43] S2: entrepreneur? Everything. Everything. [00:30:45] S1: So share that because I think people would be surprised that math was relevant to entrepreneurship. [00:30:49] S2: Yeah. So so I... This is something I learned actually from law school. I I did enjoy my law school year very much is that math... [00:30:55] S1: You did not enjoy math.
00:30:55 · Ravi Belani, Carina Hong
[00:30:55] S1: You did not enjoy math. [00:30:56] S2: I did. Oh, you did. I loved it. You loved it. Okay. The first year. When you're in math, when you're doing a proof, you're training your first principle thinking. You're training a very, very particular skill of being highly analytical. So everything becomes like a problem solving puzzle. I cannot stress how important that is in my day to day life, especially in moments where it's very high stake and I'm very stressed. When I'm very high stress, this thing still stays with me. Like the ability to be very high stress in like say, a math tournament and then still like solve the problem. That is, I think, super crucial training. The other thing that I find very helpful from math is the ability to just go very deep, to be obsessed about a problem. Like, it's actually... I call this mental like mental resilience. It's not like, you know, it's not the sort of resilience about like hardship. It's like when I can't figure it out, I just keep thinking. I just keep thinking. I just keep thinking. I take a break and then it's another day and I still cannot get over it. I sense that to be very, very important in company building, because if you don't have that, you will escape from the most critical problem.
00:32:06 · Ravi Belani, Carina Hong
[00:32:06] S1: That's great. Thank you for that share. So these are the class signature questions. We'll go through a few of them with time, but I also want the students to be able to share. And I might need to share the poll anywhere in a second, but we'll intersperse these. So Carina, if you were 20 years old and starting again today, what would you spend the next five years learning or building? [00:32:29] S2: Brain computer interface. [00:32:30] S1: Brain computer interface.
00:32:30 · Ravi Belani, Carina Hong
[00:32:30] S1: Brain computer interface. [00:32:32] S2: Yeah. I think I'm a big nerd and like, I did a neuroscience master because of this, like, nerdy passion. So the reason I... So first principle is why I want to choose it. I want a few that's early enough that, like, no one really has no... Like, no one has any idea what it should be. There are many debates about which way it should be intrusive, non intrusive, a lot of technical problems. We don't really understand neuroscience. How can we understand brain computer interface? But I also wanted to be not just like a hard problem we have no idea about, that it's a problem that in... Involves every single person. Like there's something about every single person needs communication. And communication that isn't just too high. That's why Wispr Flow actually. I was very, very inspired when I first used Wispr Flow. Like, it allows me to type a lot faster and that typing is a way I communicate and that is a big sort of time sink in my life. And then the third thing why I think it's very interesting is because it ties into the past, the present, and the future. Right? Past being AI. Yes. Present being... I think BCI is the present Mhmm. In terms of something early enough. And then the future. The future is if you cannot crack communication between humans, then with AI, all these potential problems of being completely out of the loop. So that's what I would do.