Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders (ETL)
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.
00:32:32 · Carina Hong, Ravi Belani
[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. [00:33:56] S1: That's That's great. Thank you. What do you believe about building companies today that you wish you'd understood when you were sitting where these students are?
00:33:56 · Ravi Belani, Carina Hong
[00:33:56] S1: That's That's great. Thank you. What do you believe about building companies today that you wish you'd understood when you were sitting where these students are? [00:34:06] S2: It's really hard. Like, it's just really hard. I think, like... And and and I think... Oh, one thing that probably is worth worth mentioning is that it's it's very hard is not, like, that informative. It's it's very hard at the moments you least expect. So if you're someone who's very, like, I want my things, like, planned. I want my trips planned. Very, very hard to get past that sort of mental hurdles at times. Like, it will hit you as a weirdest day. Most of the hard moments will come after very good, like, achievements. After the grind, I'm now sick. Apologies about that. I think the uncertain pain and suffering is something I didn't understand. And I understood something about it's gonna be difficult or it's going to be spontaneous, but not both. [00:34:55] S1: It's going be difficult and spontaneous. Yeah. And the suffering. [00:34:58] S2: Yeah. And that makes it worse if you're like a planner. [00:35:00] S1: Yeah. Yeah. Because it's coming out of nowhere and you just have to build that resilience even more. Okay. Terrific. Can I ask what's the biggest professional failure you've had and what did you learn from it?
00:35:00 · Ravi Belani, Carina Hong
[00:35:00] S1: Yeah. Yeah. Because it's coming out of nowhere and you just have to build that resilience even more. Okay. Terrific. Can I ask what's the biggest professional failure you've had and what did you learn from it? [00:35:12] S2: Oh yeah. I got this... Okay, so there was this high school math competition And I remember I was devastated because I am so close to the place I wanted to be. And later on, I looked at why that is. I also realized that it's because of something that's my biggest strength. Mhmm. That's my biggest, like, that... In that context, failure. I... There are four problems, Chinese Math Olympiad. I, like, plunge into the last one, number theory, which is usually the hardest problem and also the one that I love the most. And I almost couldn't get out of it. I'm very obsessive. Right? Like, the sort of mental resilience. And I, like, ended up spending the entire time working on that problem. What I learned from it is that, like, a lot of things that is very context wise, like feature or bug. Like, I don't think I can be who I am today without that trait. But also in that local moment, it felt very demoralizing. So I think one thing is that maybe there is not a lot of right or wrong. What are... Like, time management is, of course, good and, like, lack of prioritization is, of course, bad. Not necessarily. [00:36:30] S1: Mhmm. [00:36:30] S2: Right?