Evan Carmichael debates whether entrepreneurs should follow passion or data. He turned down $80-100k offers from McKinsey and Merrill Lynch to stay with his $300/month startup because it felt right, and says many who took the banking jobs later regretted it.
I know the time now is 6 PM. You guys have waited till now. Can you spare a few more minutes? Can you maximize your time to ask the panel any question?
This is not to actually ask a question, it's to pick a fight with Stevens so that I can break his leg and he can't go to salsa. I'm just jealous about his height, youth, and all the thing.
You're killing me, man.
Never mind. I just heard something and that's like something that analytics or data or quantitative information is not important, feeling is. My question is, where is the contradiction, right? Saying that feeling can make your social presence great is like even if I have a bad product and if I really don't believe in my product, I can go in social media and create a great magic, it's not possible. That's given that you have a great product to start with, you are passionate about your business, and you are really a true believer of what you're doing, not to just to make money, right? That's given. But then you have to take the qualitative step and quantitative, all the information and analysis to go to do the right thing. Isn't it true?
For me, it's the difference between thinking with your head and acting with your heart. Right? And your brain is limited into a world that exists, a world that exists right now, where your heart can create any world that you want. Okay? And let me tell you through a story. When I was growing up in high school, I never thought I was going to be an entrepreneur. I thought I was going to be a VP at a bank. I look at my high school yearbook, that's what it says, VP at a bank. OK? I didn't have family of entrepreneurs, I didn't know what I was going to do. When I got to university, I hooked up with a software company, I became an owner. And in my final year, I got job opportunities with McKinsey Consulting and Merrill Lynch, which only a few years prior would have been a dream scenario. I couldn't imagine working for a better company. They were offering me $80,000 to $100,000 starting salary. They flew me out to New York, put me up in the Waldorf Astoria to try to get me to join the company. And I'm balancing two things: $80,000 to $100,000 a year, $300 a month with my company. What does the brain say to do? What does the quantitative data say to do? It's easy. Go for the job. That's where the money is. But it didn't feel right. So you have to listen to your heart. That's my view. You have to listen to your heart. You have to be passionate about it. My friends thought I was crazy. They weren't getting those job opportunities. They said, "Evan, what are you— what is this company?" And years later, like 10 years later, my friends now are coming back to me And they're saying, "Evan, I took that job in investment banking and I hate my life. And now I want to start my own business. How do I do it?" And I'm so glad that I didn't make that decision, the smart thing to do, right? The quantitative, logical, money-making thing to do, to go get the job. I had no logical reason, no logical reason to stick with this $300-a-month company. But I did. Does that answer your question?
No, actually not. Sorry. So what I meant that obviously you have to be passionate to start with, right? So you have to be like I took up entrepreneurial life of my own, so that's the given, right? Then after that, when you're taking decision day by day, every time if your heart says do that and go this side and every time the heart says go to the left and you go that side and you have no actual evidence to support your decision, you'll be running around in everywhere not reaching anywhere, right? So you have to have—
No, no, disagree.
Okay.
Disagree. Quite often the analytical decision is the wrong way to go because you're restricting yourself of a world that currently exists. Where you can create any reality you want. Yeah, you have to believe in what you're doing. That's the whole point of my first presentation, you pick your one word, right? If you guys don't believe in what you're doing, there is no passion. So yeah, you have to pick your one word, you have to start a career or business around that. But I believe your decision should be based on what gets you excited. You're creating a social media campaign, I would challenge you guys, Why put that video up? That Believe video? 150,000 views in one month? Not made on any quantitative decisions. I made it because I wanted to make it, it needed to be made, and I'm proud of what we made. And I would challenge you guys, with no advertising, to see what videos you've made based on quantitative decisions that have gone that well.
What you just stated as a proof of success, You said this is watched this many times. You just give a quantitative information to support the theory that quantitative information doesn't matter.
I don't say it doesn't matter.
No, I mean—
It's not that it doesn't matter. But it's the same— It's not the main reason. No, this is a big difference. It's not the main reason for doing anything.
Right.
You can still look at it. Steve Jobs didn't say, "I'm going to lose all my money, I'm going to just throw it all in R&D." He still had to make money, but it was never the main reason for doing anything.
Okay, I think we take this offline. We have time for one or two more questions.
Does anybody want to go next?
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