Go Beyond Academics

Did you have the perfect resume? Was it just like, check, check, check, check. Andreessen Horowitz.

They found me on LinkedIn. So first of all, keep your LinkedIn up to date. Because I was actually in China when I got a random LinkedIn cold message and they asked if I could meet them for coffee when I came back. And it was because I had a combination of investing experience and product management experience, which back then was a strange combination to have today. It's still a strange combination again, going back to my need for experimentation. But I didn't have the perfect resume. I've never had the perfect resume. I'd say I wasn't a straight A student until high school. Luckily, in the US your grades don't show up before high school. But I was not a good student in junior high or elementary school. At Stanford, I had to retake chemistry 31 because I had such a bad grade. I was not a perfect student whatsoever. Instead, I gravitated to lots of extracurriculars on campus. I did Stanford consulting. I did AK psi, I did acapella. I was really involved in the Asian American Student Association. And that's where I found more of my confidence. To be honest, my confidence didn't come from my academics because I was just an average student. At best, my confidence came from leading different teams and all these different extracurriculars. And I think actually all that stuff has helped me tremendously in my career since then. It's not always the academic piece that's going to make your resume perfect, because to be honest, that first interview, you just have to pass a certain bar. As long as you're above 373 8, you're kind of good. It doesn't matter to me if it's a 4 or 3.9 at all. I'm not even noticing that. It's also about what are the other experiences you bring to the table? Sometimes people will ask me, what kind of internships should I take in college. I do think it's good to have one that's very, you know, focused on business, whether it's consulting, banking or a startup or a company. But it's also pretty nice to have one summer where you're doing something really fun and unique. I spent one summer selling Nerf like toys, these foam toys for a very small toy company. And I would go to these trade shows and sit in a booth for a week and sell these to random retailers that I was meeting for the first time when I had my banking interviews with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. That was the only thing they wanted to talk about. They didn't ask me about any classes. They barely asked me about my interests. They mostly focused on that experience because it was so strange to them. And I used that experience to show them that I'm good at sales, that I would be good interfacing with clients, and that to them, was what stood out. So you just never know what these different experiences can bring to the table and help differentiate you. Obviously, you don't force them. They naturally should be things you're interested in. But I think it's so important to find things that you're naturally interested and likely to have fun in, because those are oftentimes places where you'll really stand out, you'll excel. And more importantly, you'll have also just first principle thinking and ideas of how to improve it, of how to make it better, because you're a natural user of the product, or you naturally understand what it is or you enjoy it. Especially now, when I'm doing consumer investing, a lot of times I just think to myself, okay, would I use this? And then on top of that, would, like, the average American use this? And then it's fun because I end up using these products. And then I can gauge from my own experience and my understanding of just human people if this is a good product or not.