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When I was 15 years old my father asked me if I wanted to join an entrepreneur program for high school students in San Diego, my hometown. At the time, all I had on my mind was tennis, the prom, and my algebra grade. Spending 4 hours every Sunday morning for a semester listening to people give me more lectures? Eh. Hesitant at first, I said yes. The very first lecture was on the topic of ideation, basically a glorified term for “how to come up with cool ideas”. The program director brought in these 3 young Harvey Mudd students to talk about how they came up with their textbook exchange service called SwoopThat (this was before e-books… or SaaS for that matter). I sat right in front of the room and heard these guys, barely much older than me at the time, talk about their story and bold vision from product/market fit (which I don’t believe in much today) to execution. They were in college! What? How? I thought company execs let alone managers had to be 40. Revenue? What does that mean? That was the day my world turned upside down. I was so excited by what I experienced that I naively ran home and told my dad, “Hey, guess what, I just met these college students more successful than you!” I didn’t even get a business card (I didn’t know what networking was at the time — ha). In fact, it wasn’t until many years later that I discovered their names by my now colleague Miles, who mentioned in a car ride on the way to a taco shop in Encinitas that he was friends, in fact classmates, with the founders (its funny how things circle back like that).
Since then I’ve had the opportunity to work in consulting, startups, and finance with some wonderful people (Randy, Anette, Mark). I took a spin at my first startup, a social network called Avaant, with David and Andrew, helped raise capital for a commercial real estate acquisition with Kashish, and made some amazing friends along the way (Gordon, Fares, Neeraj, Daniella, Joy & Mariah). Recently I’ve been blessed to join the Correlation family, focusing on sourcing and investments in the L.A. Area. I’ve been able to go knees deep into the Silicon Beach ecosystem (Shaka Shaka), speaking and judging at pitch events such as the Expert Dojo, representing the firm at LAVA, hosting speakers at USC, and attending demo days at EvoNexus and Disney. I’ve been fortunate enough to hear pitches from and become friends with CEOs behind some of LAs hottest companies like Gil Baron’s Mindshow, and to learn from the lessons of founders like Jason Goldberg of Pepo who are at the forefront of disrupting the tech & media sectors. It was only recently that I decided to start writing about these experiences. Why?
I took a business communication class during my junior year of college taught by one of my favorite professors, Mr. Eric Junker. Eric is a very hipsteresque professor. Similar to how people like their drinks shaken or stirred, he preferred his jeans cuffed and shoes sock-less (not sure if that was cheesy or not… who cares). On the very first day of class Eric flipped on the projector and started the lecture with a quote by Douglass Engelbart followed by a picture of a Macintosh Lisa computer mouse. When he asked us who created the mouse, most people credited Jobs. Yet (surprisingly) it had been Engelbart who invented it. You see, although Jobs didn’t invent the mouse, he gave it a purpose through a visionary story that Engelbart just wasn’t able to convey. Steve pitched it as a revolutionary tool — the “gateway” to interacting with the computer, bridging the gap between user interface and fingertip, while Douglass called it the NLS or “oN-Line-System”. The result? No one knows Engelbart while Jobs is eternally famous.
Storytelling as I learned, is everything. It's one of the most instinctual forms of communication. It helps us connect information to emotion and thus memory. Throughout human history, stories have been documented in helping Marco Polo navigate the unknown, the Trojans win the Battle of Troy, Paul Revere in conveying his midnight ride, and inspired legions of scholars after reading the Ramayana. From Zeus to Seuss, telling stories is the most effective way to inspire change, drive behavior, and spark movements. So much so to the point of fault where the infamous Elizabeth Holmes, the CEO of Theranos, was able to notoriously raise millions in capital single-handedly on a narrative rather than proof of product. To be clear, I talk about Holmes not to encourage deception, but rather to explain how critical, blindly effective & visceral storytelling is to humans (to the tune of $750M apparently). If you can’t tell a story, how can you sell a product to a customer or a vision to an investor? This is why I decided to write — to put my thoughts into words and continue this millennia old infinitely alive profession. It's almost an obligation of sorts. So what’s next?
There was this really interesting video that my friend Kiel Berry posted on Facebook a while back (pasted below). It sparked a very deep fascination and affair with virtual, and augmented reality.
To be frank, I forget much of the discussion surrounding the video when it was released, but I thank Isabelle in her post here for reigniting my interest & inquiry into the ethics of the soon-to-be omnipresent virtual world. Will we continue to be consumers? Or will we be the consumed. Likewise, expect to read some of my perspectives on entrepreneurship and analysis on industry, particularly in the Los Angeles and west coast tech markets, through both the Correlation blog and my personal account.
Lastly, to wrap this up, if there is a certain theme I’d like to associate with my writing, I think it's best reflected in a quote I read recently in a New York Times article by Harvard Economics professor Dr. Mullainathan. In it, Professor Mullainathan discusses why he encourages young people to deviate from the traditional path. His reasoning? “Idealism and inventiveness are the two best traits of youth”.
So to all my friends, old, new, and soon to be, get ready. We’re gonna drop gasoline on a fire.
Cheers.
