Episode 7- James Pleasants

Well, James, thank you so much for taking the time out for this. I really appreciate it and look up to you. I think the first time I came across you was when I was scrolling through Instagram and came across the Marshall School of Business posting about you, and I was pretty fascinated by how you were doing so much just while I think you were a junior at USC. You were on the surf team, you were on a frat, you started your own startup, and you know, all full-time schooling. So that definitely was a lot. And I don't think we actually connected until probably this year. And then I noticed you were working on, you know, your plan was to work on 13 different projects that you felt inspired by. And I was like, okay, you know, I've got to have you on my podcast and just, you know, learn more about what you're working on. So really appreciate you taking the time off for this. Well, why don't you start off by introducing who you are and, you know, what's happening in your life right now?

Yes, I would also like to start off by saying thank you for having me. This is awesome. And right back at you, you inspire a lot of people. You're always connecting people, and you're doing a lot as well with this podcast and everything that you're doing. So it's, it's awesome to see, and you're also inspiring a lot of people. So thank you for having me. Um, yes, very glad we came, came across each other. Um, I'll start by introducing myself. I am James Pleasance. I, um, just graduated USC, studied business administration and finance. Um, kind of grew up in Silicon Valley, so always had that sort of I guess, natural inclination to be an entrepreneur. And starting at 12, I went to a conference that told me— it was Craig Kielburger was speaking, and he kind of explained you can combine a passion that you have with a problem, and then you can kind of create beautiful impact in the world. And that, as a 12-year-old— and he said he was explaining at, in this conference, that when he was 12, he created a company called Free the Children. And I basically was like, what, you can start a company at 12? Like, this is crazy. I see people around me all the time growing up in Silicon Valley doing that, but that's like an adult thing. And I really want to change the world and make a better place. 12 years old, I was like, okay, what is a problem I'm seeing? And I went to public school, elementary school, and my best friend was a Lebanese immigrant who was getting bullied every day. And getting knives and guns pulled out on him. And I would stand up for him and I would get punched in the stomach. And I was a little bit bigger back then, so I could stand up for him. But it was, it was, it was, uh, for 12-year-old, it was a lot to handle. And so that was kind of the problem I identified. And then the, uh, the passion I had was basketball. I was a basketball player, always had been. And so I was like, how do I combine these two, these two circles, right, of like bullying and basketball. And I combined them in a basketball camp where I would teach the kids about bullying and also basketball and how to be an upstander instead of a bystander. And ultimately donated, I think, $5,000, $6,000 over the course of the camp to PACER.org, which is a foundation that basically raises awareness about bullying and goes to schools and does prevention presentations and such and educates people on how to stand up and why bullying is bad. So that was kind of my first experience. Being an entrepreneur. Since then, kind of throughout high school, was always doing crazy other projects. At one point, I was building clay filters for a community in the Democratic Republic of Congo, kind of engineering project, learning different compositions of coffee beans with terracotta clay, and then sending them instructions on how that can turn into a filter. So they didn't have access to clean water. NFTs became a thing, and that was hot, so I kind of jumped on that. I'm always looking to dive into new technologies. So, and so started a couple of NFT companies, all these, all these things were with an angle of trying to make the world a better place. So for the NFT companies, 50% of the proceeds would go to planting trees and forest restoration, right. So it's always trying to leverage kind of these cool opportunities or ideas I have to try to make the world a better place, kind of the passion and the problem, right. Commando. So that's kind of who I am. I've been doing that. And then I ultimately founded a company called Ohm. A lot of other stuff, small stuff before that, I was actually applied to Troy Labs for a different startup, which we ended up pivoting to Ohm, which is an EV charger company. I can explain more about that. But I'm kind of long-winded now on my intro on who I am. But yes, that is, I guess, who I am. Long story short, an entrepreneur. Who's trying to maximize my own human potential and try to make the world a better place. I'm sure I'll end up talking about Om later, but yeah.

I love how you started off by being an entrepreneur, by realizing that you don't want to be an entrepreneur to really make money or for the fame, but just really start off by solving one problem after other that you really want to tackle and start with that life lens of being like, okay, I want to do this so that I could make a difference in the world. More so before even realizing what the word entrepreneur meant, making the world a better place, really. Was that exactly? So I'm curious to know more about, you know, let's start after you were in high school. You start, you know, you, you were at USC to study business administration and finance. So I'm kind of curious, you know, what inspired you to start off by starting that?

Yeah, it's actually a little bit— it starts before that, to be honest with you. I'll give you the after high school kind of spiel. So after I graduate high school, I am a basketball player. I think I'm gonna go play in the EuroLeague. So that's— I have this entrepreneurial aspect to me, which is crazy, but I'm spending most of my time actually playing basketball. And I end up right after high school, I'm supposed to go to play basketball at Tufts and also be an engineer over there. And I tear my knee. And after that, I kind of end up going to Tufts for the year, not playing basketball, kind of having to redefine myself yet again, which has kind of been a common theme in my life. And focus much less on— I can't— I basically can't walk at all for over a year. I'm like, when I stand up from a chair, I have to pick my leg up physically to stand up. It's like it was a serious injury. I tore my patella, meniscus, and cartilage. And yeah, I had all sorts of like stem cells injections and all this gnarly surgeries. But long story short, I go to Tufts, I'm an engineer, and I'm there and I'm— I can't play basketball. And I'm like, okay, who am I? And I'm good at STEM, so I'm doing engineering. And I was in environmental engineering because I was passionate about the environment and wanted to work in the environment. And then I realized, okay, I actually, I've been an entrepreneur and I want to keep pursuing that. Engineering doesn't seem like it's leading me down the right path. I'm not really surrounded by people who are like-minded and I'm in kind of a smaller school. I kind of, I need to flip everything up. I need to go back to the West Coast where people can— are people on the West Coast kind of think, I can shape the future, and East Coast is a little bit more of like, based on the past, how do I like continue doing what's worked? Which is, there's nothing wrong with either or, but it's just I'm used to more of the West Coast culture where you're thinking of future. How do I create the future? How do I create the Hollywood media for the future? How do I create the next tech company? You know, wherever you are, it's, it's something about creating the future, um, in general, big stereotype, but So I was like, okay, I have to switch. I want to study business and entrepreneurship. And then I transferred to USC, transferred to USC. And I chose to study finance instead of entrepreneurship because I felt like I grew up in such a place where there was so much entrepreneurship that I felt like I got a crash course just by living where I grew up, you know. So I felt it would be more of a use of time to kind of get a hard skill. And study finance and really understand how money flows and to create value and stuff like that. So I kind of dived into the finance knowing that it would be an additional skill versus like an easy kind of learning all the stuff I already know about. Like, I've started a couple things and I kind of understand how it works. So there's always to learn more, but I didn't think that USC would provide a lot of value in sort of the entrepreneur classes. And I thought it would provide more value if I took finance. So that's why I ended up doing finance. But the whole time, so I work, my sophomore summer, I work in VC again, because I want to understand how, I want to understand the founder side and the venture side, right? Because as a future founder and a previous founder, I'm like, okay, I need to learn how venture works because I'm going to at some point probably go raise money for my own company. And maybe one day also I'll be on the other side. If I make enough money, I would love to be investing in companies that are going to change the world. So that was super interesting. Worked in VC my sophomore year, learned a lot, came away from that thinking, okay, hey, I understand this. I think I can now go take my small ventures I've had in the past and now really give it a shot to really build a meaningful company, raise millions of dollars and give this thing a shot. So I come off of that and I'm thinking everyone's kind of getting these investment banking consulting internships for junior year and setting them up so they can have return offer and all that, right? And I decide, hey, I get my best friends together and I don't want to do that at all. I've been passion-driven about creating impact companies my whole life.

Let's—

why can't we do that now? We know a decent amount. We're going to learn so much by trying. And even if it fails in a year, we'll be so much better off than having not tried going the traditional route of like, okay, I'm just going to build and work my way up the ladder in consulting or investment banking. Not that there's anything wrong with that at all. It was just I felt very passionate about this other angle. So I was like, that's what I'm going to follow my my sort of heart, so to speak. And I'm not gonna live with regrets and look back and say, hey, I should have, I should have taken a risk. So anyways, we're trying to figure out a problem where we were surfers. So we kind of created this Strava community, but for surfing, and that we applied to Troy Labs with that ended up getting in. We applied to Troy Labs with a couple other ideas, but that one was our best idea. And we got in for that. And then we said, hey, halfway through, we said, look, we're going to switch up and do this actually, the service business, which has a software angle with AI incorporated as well, which was called Ohm. And we already had clients and we were making money, whereas the surf app, it's like kind of a chicken and egg. We got to get a bunch of users for it to be applicable because it doesn't really work until there's a bunch of users. You know, social media, it's hard. It's hard to start social media. And we had some traction, you know, we had like 100 users and it was kind of— but it was like the path to monetization was like you know, years and years out. And we already had something that was making money as like— and they pinned it as like a service business, which it is. It was— it's maintenance for EV chargers, but it's enabled by software and integrated with AI, which I'll explain more in a second. But we had this— we had this kind of thing that was like, okay, we're good. This is going to blow up. We know it's going to blow up. Can we switch? We asked Troy Labs and Troy Labs were like, no, you can't. So we ended up getting kicked out of Troy Labs. We ended up pivoting full time to Ohm. Raised around $500K on the family and friends round and then later raised $1 million in the price round. And the X, and we've partnered with ChargePoint, we got their CRO, Chief Revenue Officer, to join our company as a CEO. So this is like a big time, you know, 55-year-old guy who's like, I want to be full-time on your company. This is legit. We're going big and we have a lot of traction, right? So I'm thinking, okay, I might even finish school. I might just drop out, ride this thing, and I'm making a company I care about. We're enabling EV chargers to— forwarding the electric vehicle movement, which is then forwarding kind of less carbon in the air, mission-driven. And it's not 100% like my favorite thing, but I connect the dots enough to where I'm passionate about it. And I'm working with my best friend, so it's great. And we've got traction and everything's awesome. Then it kind of gets a little, a little bit monkey and the, uh, the, the founding team doesn't quite get along. Everyone's kind of like trying to scrap out and be a little bit ego-driven and, and I want more and I'm doing more, so I deserve more. And I'm kind of providing more value because I'm the coder versus I'm actually the guy getting the sales. And it becomes like these best friends who've all of a sudden now kind of have a, like, they feel like they're someone and I'm better than you because I raised money and whatever. And we're all best friends, but it's like all of a sudden we're not getting along at all. People are talking behind each other's backs and the company culture is really, really poor. And we're hiring, we're hiring people and it's kind of there, they can tell, they can tell that this is not, the culture is not working. So we decide something needs to change. I basically am like, I can't work in a company culture like this. I step back. I'm feeling fine. I still have part of a company and they'll go try to figure it out. Hopefully they're successful. But it's, again, it's not like the number one most driving, like it's not, I feel like it is partly my baby, but not completely. I didn't, like, I still feel like there's other ideas I'd be more passionate about. So I wasn't worried. I was like, hey, I have a year left of school. The other founders just graduated. So this was, this was, they were already full-time on it. And I was like, hey, I have another year. I don't need to drop out. I can just go back to school. And that's exactly what I did. And so that's kind of the story of Ohm. And now I'm here and I'm actually moving in a month to go work in a private equity firm in Australia. And then in the meantime, building all these AI projects, learning and doing all that. So kind of all over the place, but that's how life's supposed to be, I think.

No, I feel like, I mean, first of all, I really appreciate you for sharing that because I feel like everything that you've done until now, right from your dreams of being in the NBA, which I'm assuming since you play basketball, to, you know, getting an ACL, which is absolutely terrible. And sometimes you feel like, why did this happen to me? You know, why me versus everybody else who is making it to the NBA, like Cooper Schragg making it to the NBA at like 17, 18. But I feel like— and then you study environmental engineering, which obviously was one of your passions. To now using that at home and then later, which I know for a fact must have hurt a lot knowing that you had to step away from a company that you helped build from the ground up and basically wanted to go full-time and drop out, you know. So it's, it's very inspiring to see that you chose to connect your values and, you know, question yourself as to what do you want more, you know, just being in there but you start from scratch being under the success point of view, or do you want mental peace and want to connect to what your values are, which, you know, I absolutely admire you for? What was that like? How do you realize that you wanted to choose your values? You know, what was the decision point like? You know, I'm kind of fumbling this question up, but, you know, how is it like in that instant? How do you realize that you wanted to step away and connect to your values versus stay somewhere wherein you felt it could be successful? You know, if you're comfortable answering that question, and also, you know, getting back to the private equity Yeah, just to make sure I understand that question.

The first is how, how did I decide to step away from Ohm? And the second is kind of share more about the private equity opportunity. So for the Ohm situation, it just, it wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't really that hard of a decision because it wasn't working. We all agreed it wasn't working. So it was, the decision was, I guess, right, drop out and continue with something that the culture isn't working. Or kind of say, hey, I'm out because I have another year of school. And that's the natural thing because they were like, you can't go to school and be like full-time and we need you full-time or you're out. There's no part-time, you know, if you're, if you're a co-founder, you need to be full-time. You know, this is where we're taking off. This is an important time for you to be here. But, but at the same time, it's not really working with culture. So it's like it was just, it wasn't really that difficult for me because I had that year of school left. So I just knew if it wasn't working, and I could step back, and if that ultimately made them more successful, because I was out of there, and it simplified the team, and they were able to get 3 people instead of 4 people, the dynamics maybe. So for me, it didn't seem like a hard decision. So it wasn't that much of a decision process. But yes, obviously, it was hard. It wasn't, it wasn't easy because it would have been really awesome if it worked for, for all of us to be working with your friends. You have something that's working, um, and it also like these, these co-founders are, were really close friends and are much less so now because of some of the stuff that happened. So it's, um, it's definitely difficult, you know, um, don't necessarily advise going into business with your friends, unless sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't. So just, you gotta know that. And then for the, for the Australia thing, it was kind of like, I, it's a lot due to these projects, actually, these AI projects I'm working on, was graduated with finance, ran into a guy who has this firm in Australia, and he thought what I was doing was super cool with AI. He wants me to work with his, one of his AI tools that his firm has invested in. Called Modondo. And it is basically an AI tool that just helps you basically with financial spreadsheets. And so I'm going to be doing, working with their AI tool there and basically becoming like 10 times more efficient than the average person at doing finance, which I think the whole world is like, ultimately, in a couple of years, it's like, who's going to be sitting there doing spreadsheets? It's like, who's going to be doing like long math equations versus using a calculator? It's going to be the same, the same thing. It's basically going to be a useless skill. So I'm excited to be learning instead of doing the kind of like, I'm grinding, going to be learning the useless skill. I'm kind of learning the tool that's up and coming, tool leveraging some of the AI stuff that I've learned so far to kind of position myself well, which I'm super excited about. And these— this private equity firm, which is— I'm very value aligned and I really am aligned with this firm because they're a legacy firm and they invest in companies and they hold it for like 150 years instead of doing the 4-year flip over kind of fire everyone, make sure the P&L statement looks really good, sell it for more value. And then over time it's actually like, oh my God, what did I just buy? It's not really that valuable because the value, the culture is kind of gone because they fired everyone and tried to make the margins better. Right. So that type of private equity I don't align with at all. But yeah, it's kind of a crazy turn. I never thought I would end up— I didn't even know firms like this existed in private equity and finance. So I really thought I was going to get away from my finance routes, but weirdly took an awesome turn, which life, you know, it always surprises you. And yeah, I really wanted to travel as well, so it was awesome to get the opportunity in not America.

That's very inspiring. I mean, a lot happened since you spoke about, you know, you leaving home, you graduating, the projects, and the private equity internship. So I'm now stepping away, me starting back, but You know, the private equity internship sounds amazing. You know, we are heading towards AGI, which I will get your take on later. But I feel like now that we are heading towards AGI, most of the human skills are definitely going to be so useless and so many jobs are going to be taken away for the good because a lot of people are just focused on doing the redundant work just to make money. But I feel like a lot of humans now will be focused more on learning skills that will actually change the world for the better. So I mean, I am all in for that. But, you know, circling back, Um, what do you say?

So that's a nice perspective you have. I know a lot of, a lot of people are pessimistic about what, how humans are going to contribute value, but it's nice to hear you thinking, okay, we're going to, we're going to be much more focused on changing the world for the better. That's cool. Cool to hear. So continue. Sorry.

I think, yeah, I think I wrote an article about that as well. I mean, I've been reading a lot of digital twins. Um, I know someone who's building it as well. And I feel like just the fact that there's an AI, I mean, I coded a career tool. Which I'll tell you more about later, but it's basically like that helps you figure out what you're supposed to do next in life on basis of, you know, everything, psychometric tests, you know, whatever you posted on LinkedIn, your social media, just like your everyday journals. And just like you talk to your AI, just like tells you what exactly you're supposed to be doing next in your life, helping you figure your life out. And then that kind of on basis of what your career goals are, breaks it down into tasks that you're supposed to be doing. And then, you know, let's say your task, your main goal is to get a job, right? So that digital twin, or kind of, um, you know, send an email on your behalf, or do the job, post on LinkedIn on your behalf, apply for jobs on your behalf, just basically an extension of you while you can spend time with your family, which is like learn more and do things that really matter versus things that are so redundant. And I feel like that is a career, and that is a future where I see will be so bright because then you're actually making a difference in this world.

It's where the world's headed for sure. I'm thinking about the same type of stuff for one of my next projects. I'm thinking about just how do I build an AI version of me? You know, get on a call with me and it's like we're talking, but it's actually not getting to know me that well. And I don't think it's that far away. I don't know if you saw ChatGPT today came out with, I forget what it's called, the action feature.

I did. I did see that. ChatAgent. Yeah.

So it's like, and there, there had already been a couple startups doing, doing stuff like that. I forget, uh, I wanna, uh, I'm gonna butcher the name, but there's, I know a couple other ones, uh, that I've been sort of able to use browsers and stuff like that, but it just to have it all in one tool and see the progression is just so stunningly quick, you know, with the updates they come out with and where the world is headed. And I think. I don't know, I think it's coming sooner than we think that we're talking about is going to be possible. So it's exciting, exciting time to be alive for sure. How did you decide to start this podcast? And you say you want to build an agent that kind of decides what you want to do next or tells you what you should do next. I'm curious, are you building that out of because you don't know what you want to do next and you're looking for something to tell you or what were Yeah, and hear more on that.

Good question. I think, okay, getting back to the podcast, I feel like I've always been passionate about VC and I worked there for a bit and I feel like the crazy part about being in VC is that you're always sourcing and that was like the most favorite part of my job was like sourcing companies. I would go on LinkedIn, I would go on Instagram and just like source, source, source. Like I'm, I'm, I'm big. At 3 a.m. in the morning when I cannot sleep, I'm on LinkedIn and just scrolling. And every day I'm like, okay, you know what's happening in the world out there. But the crazy part is that a lot of these startups that I would see and I would be like, this is so inspiring, would either be too late for the VC firm to invest in. Like the VC firm I worked for was pretty much early stage and these were basically like seed stage, Series A, Series B. And I'm like, okay, you know, I started a podcast when I just graduated from college wherein my main goal was to find the next Tom Cruise find the next Elon Musk, find the next, you know, whatever before the world caught on. And I basically came from my own struggle to do something, you know, to actually be able to apply myself and get a job or, you know, be able to— I knew I was meant for entrepreneurship, but, you know, that kind of did not work out. So I was like, how can I help other people instead of, you know, helping myself? Because my purpose in life is to make a difference in the lives of others. And that's how I connected to everything I did. And so this Podcast was basically an extension of me. Okay, how can I actually find all these early-stage startups before the world caught on, interview them, ask them questions that VC would ask, and kind of, you know, bridge the gap between VC and a founder? You know, maybe like a VC would, you know, listen to this podcast and be like, okay, this is a founder that's working on this, you know, before they even meet them, they can have these answers to the questions that they would be asking them. And so if they're interested, then maybe these people would come in and, you know, like reach out to them. But it was basically because I was not working in VC anymore and I was like, I love this so much. I want to help these founders. They're reaching out with their pitch decks and I am seeing all these amazing founders. How do I keep doing what I love? And this was that. And the career tool, basically it was because I, after graduating and even before that, I was like, you know, what the hell am I supposed to do with my life? I know what I'm supposed to do, but I don't know how to get there. And it's insane because do I really know who I am or do I not know who I am? And it's like this weird mix of feeling like, okay, you know, what if there was an AI career coach that could at any point of time in my life just tell me what I'm supposed to be doing? Like before I even went on to not waste my life, but just like spend all these years doing things and later realizing, okay, this is not what I'm meant to do. And then pivoting careers is like not easy at all. So a lot of people when they're young, they grow up But people at 18 right now can leverage on AI, but I wasn't 18 when all of this came out. And I'm assuming neither were you. So I'm like, why? What can I do differently to help other people? Let's say my brother, he's 14 right now. So what can I do to help him or people like him figure out early on so that they can leverage on the full potential? Because I feel like we all have raw potential to make a difference in this world and to go all big. It's just about understanding who you are and just being the best at it. But, you know, being a generalist is great, and I feel like that is what will serve you more than anything else. But I feel like just having that core purpose early on and just using all your life to making a difference in this world, maybe a legacy, I suppose. Not even legacy, but just, you know, I don't want to be someone who like leaves this world without having done anything, you know. I, I feel like that would be too selfish of me. Like, I could— I don't mind dying at 30 But I would rather die at 30 having done something which is really impactful and changes at least 10 lives. You know, the goal is million, but at least 10 lives versus, you know, just dying having just changed my life. I guess long story short, it feels like you're interviewing me. I'm interviewing you.

That's beautiful. But no, and you got to give yourself more credit. Your podcast and all your ventures are very entrepreneurial. So don't, don't say you're not entrepreneurial. It's cool. It's cool to see. So thank you for— you're also so good at connecting everyone. Like, you just— you're reaching out, sourcing all these things, but you're also connecting. So it's, it's, it's a two-part skill, not only sourcing but connecting and creating value through that. And now creating your own podcasts, creating value through that. So you're, you're well, you're well on your way to your goal. And I'll be one of those 10 people already that you've inspired.

So I appreciate that. I appreciate that. I can, I can see the same about you. I mean, I wouldn't be doing this unless I really believed in you, and I wouldn't do this for anyone unless I believed in them. So, you know, this— I am inspired by everything that you say and do. So, you know, the feeling is definitely mutual.

Thank you.

But, um, getting back to the question that I have for you, um, I— yeah, okay, so you, so you left Own, you went on to study, But then you also graduated and began working on these projects, which I'll get back to later. But how did you actually realize that this is what you wanted to do after graduation, like work on these projects that you've been called out to work on? And did you ever feel like graduation, now what, what next? I feel like this is a heavy loaded question, but yeah.

No, yeah, obviously when you graduate and everyone has something lined up, I think actually something that made me feel a lot better is you read in the news, oh, there's not like post-college jobs are down, it's a hard market. And a lot of my friends didn't have jobs. And that kind of just, it made me, I had a couple options of jobs, but nothing that excited me, you know, I had like accounting, I went to an insurance company, if I worked as a finance guy there, like, but it was nothing that I was really mission, like aligned with what I had. So I didn't feel too stressed because I had kind of backup jobs. But I kind of was like, okay, I'm not going to take— I already told the people that I wasn't going to take a job until like mid-August. So I had time to figure out and see, get more options. And I was like, what's going to position me the best to get the job I want? And it was super clear when I thought about it like that. I was just like, well, I graduated, I know finance, what are my skills? What do I need to know to be the person to get the job I want? And it was obvious it was AI. The world is going that direction. I want to be at the forefront of that because that's where you're going to make the biggest impact in people's lives and change the future. It's headed that way. So why would you miss that? It's like I compare it to the internet back in the day, as does everyone. It's not a hot take at all. But it's like you got to jump in on waves when they come. So this is a big wave. And I was like, I have to understand it and learn better. So what better way than to build a bunch of projects and kind of, I don't know anything, I'll post it on LinkedIn for other people that don't know it. And I'm not some crazy smart guy who's building all this stuff. I'm kind of showing, hey, I'm a normal guy, just graduated, I'm building a couple projects. And I'm trying to inspire people to, to be able to build their own projects too. Because if we all come together and we build cool projects, we can make the world a better place. And I'm going to have a bunch of fun while doing it and learn so much. I'm going to learn about all different AI tools. I'm going to learn about how to make things more efficient, how to automate things. And then I'll be able to go to, go to companies and say, hey, I actually have these skills. Here's 13 things I built in the last 2 months. And I can apply all those sort of tools that I've now learned and systems into your business to make make you way more efficient and save you a bunch of value. And if I can just go to someone and say, hey, like, I'll, I'll build something for you that will save you 3 people, like, now you need 3 less people, right? That's like hundreds of thousands of dollars of value. And clearly, so like, if I'm contributing to a firm or to myself, to anyone, this sort of value, then I'm well positioned. And if I learn basic finance tools, like I was telling you, if I just do DCFs all day, and my skill is like, I just know how to do it with my own fingers, and that skill is not going to exist in 2 years. That's not really— I didn't feel like that was going to position me well for the future world that we're going into. It's kind of like you got to retrain and relearn, and we're at this inflection point. So I was like, I got to— I just got to dive headfirst. And it was obvious to me once I asked myself that. I didn't know where it was going to take me. Still don't know where it's going to take me. But I think the goal is just learn as much as possible, get, get a skill from, from what you've learned. And then from there, you're gonna, you're gonna build a network of people that know you for that skill, and then you're going to be able to get plugged into good positions, get resources, and then develop a platform for yourself. So that's kind of the way I think about it. Yeah, I'm curious to, to hear about how you think about it coming out of college and what to do.

I feel like I, first of all, like I really, I'm inspired by what you said right now. You know, like you showed people that you had value to add beyond what everybody else showed on their resume. Like everyone can do what you can do, like basic DCF, everyone coming out of college, but like you know, you did something, went the extra mile to learn and post about something that you could add value. And just coming from that perspective of adding value is really a big thing because a lot of people are like, okay, I learned this, I'm going to USC, and that's definitely going to help me. And it's not the case because everybody, even from Harvard University, I see students graduating are still not having jobs. And that's the market. And that's how you're telling me.

Yeah, yeah. I just, I would coming out of like, if I just put myself in the position of someone hiring me, Why would I hire a person who can do something an AI can do in 10 minutes? And that's their job. Like, it just doesn't make any sense to me. So it would be like, okay, clearly you have to— you're going to have to hire someone that really knows sort of how to use these AI tools. And that is like the only possible way I could think about hiring someone who's, who's 10 times more efficient than someone who doesn't know how to use the AI tool. I'm not going to— I'm not going to hire an average person who doesn't understand how how AI works because then you're just less efficient and you're wasting money, right? So it doesn't, uh, it makes sense why the out-of-college white-collar jobs are going down because it's just, uh, I mean, it's stuff's being automated away, but, uh, it doesn't mean that there's not new opportunities for sure.

But I feel like the future of AI, where we see the world going, it's like, I'm no, you know, I'm no expert, I'm no, you know, I'm just someone based on what I see and what I believe is happening, I feel like a lot of these, you know, blue-collar, white-collar jobs that we see right now are all going to be gone. You know, the very redundant skills of people, you know, going in, um, and building all these, you know, Excel spreadsheets, you know, all of the nitty-gritty things that people do really right now, I feel like all of them will be probably gone. Um, and I watched TED Talk given by, um, Vinod Khosla. Um, and he said a lot of things about how the future of AI would be. And I personally, I mean, looks like you watched it as well. Um, and I feel like, so you get what I'm saying. Um, I feel like from whatever he said, like, I feel like you can see the future and you already understand what's going to happen in the world. And how he said a lot of these services will be free, like right from, you know, being a teacher, like, you know, all these things that teachers charge for, all these things that doctors charge for, they are going to be free. You know, a lot of these pay cuts that we see right now are going to be way lesser than what they are right now. And it's funny because whatever he said, there's an exact video said by another expert which contradicts what he says. But I will say that I think that a lot of things, from what I've understood, is that a lot of these things that people do right now to like, you know, find it out and make money just for the heck of it. Like, for example, you know, people replacing tires, you know, people just doing the basic jobs like being a mechanic. I feel like a lot of— or like, you know, like be a nanny. I don't know if that's going to, you know, be replaced anytime soon by humanoid robot because it's scary, um, to let a robot take care of a child unless it's fully trained. But I feel most of these nitty-gritty things that people really have made a lot of money from and treat as a living would all be gone. But I feel like versus, you know, a lot of these jobs wherein you can really be creative, you know, people say that a lot of these engineering jobs would also be gone as well. And I feel like if you want to thrive as somebody who's an engineer, then they have to, you know, understand, you know, just like be the very best at what they do so that they can train these AI models. But and pick these AI models, unless we get to the AGI age. And even after that, we won't really be able, you know, AI won't really be able to do the job by itself, right? There has to be someone who trains that and, you know, evaluates whether what it's doing is the right thing or not. Um, so, you know, those kind of things. But I feel like being a generalist really would help someone just thrive in this world. And also at the same time, somebody who's, you know, already great at what they do, like engineering jobs for that matter, would also be taken down. I don't know what I'm saying really makes sense. Um, because there's like so many videos that I watch that I feel like I'm really contradicting what I'm really thinking, but I feel like creativity would be there. But you know, this, um, actually there's a journey I spoke about called 21 Lessons by the 21st Century. I don't know what it is, but this is book by— for the 21st century, this book called You by Yuval Noah Harari. Yeah, great guy, great guy. Um, read this during COVID and I feel like a lot of what he said, like, um, you know, AI AI making music, AI, you know, doing the writing part, AI replacing, you know, writers. And I feel like that is something which, you know, I see the world going.

Yeah, that's something I'm actually— you say AI and music, it's funny because that's another project on my list of 13 projects I'm going to build. I'm trying to— I'm going to build an album, but like with— I'm not very musically talented. My brother is super talented. He's a professional musician, but I am like no nothing. And he says that he tells me these AI tools are crazy. He can build like house music song in 20 minutes. And it's like as good of a one song that he could make. So he's inspiring me to kind of dive in with the AI stuff. But he's scared as a musician and saying like, the performing stuff, obviously, he's safe with because he also performs, but it's just to create the music, it's getting scary how much AI can do and replicate and sound completely human and actually be way quicker and better than humans. So it's, it's gonna be, it's gonna be interesting with the creativity stuff. I'm— there's, you know, you hear, so as you're saying, so many different takes on what is actually going to happen. And I don't think anyone knows. But the thing that Vinod Khosla said that kind of stuck with me is that 80% of jobs are going to be gone or displaced in the next 5 years. 80% in the next 5 years. And he's right about a lot of things, right? So it's not gonna say he's gonna be right, but he's, he's a smart guy. And yeah, then when you think about it like that, it's like, okay, the whole world's gonna change completely, flip upside down in 5 years. So it's really, it's really hard to say, hey, I know where it's gonna look like. But you can, you can know that it's not going to look like what it looks like right now, I guess is that's kind of my take on it. But I'm super excited to see to where it goes. And I think if you, if you have the positive outlook on it, it's your kind of point, it's going to be okay. And now all you need is one person to start a company. I can, I can prompt my way to creating a business or even an enterprise. And hopefully there's going to be a lot of people working on stuff that creates real value in the world. And quality of life will get better, as does with every technological revolution. And we'll be in a good spot. That's kind of the positive spin on it. Or the negative spin is, you know, hey, like these machines are going to take over. Humans aren't going to have jobs. Maybe there's a universal income, maybe not. But like they're going to— the machines are kind of going to think that they're better than us and take over and Terminator or whatever. Right. So there's both ways. I tend to lean more the positive way because you might as well. Think positively, but yeah.

I'm so inspired when you said that, you know, first of all, I love your take on AI and like working on making music using AI. That's like so inspiring. But, you know, and you said that your father's a musician as well. So, you know, what does he, what does he think about it? First one second, you know, like what's, you know, how do you plan on going about this? I'm so curious.

Yeah. So the music stuff is super interesting. I haven't dived in. I'm actually going to dive in right after this call. Because I was, I was so inspired earlier. But my brother used to make house music. And he pivoted away from that because he said, AI can make a house song, just basically he inputs his old songs, he said, make a song in this style. And it can just pump out like 30 songs easily in 30 minutes, you know, so it's not, he was just like, and but it's like, it's almost like posting, like, let's say, okay, you're a basketball player. And it's like posting a clip of you dunking the basketball, but it was AI-generated. It's like, obviously you're not going to post that because as a basketball player, it doesn't feel authentic. It feels like I'm lying. Like, here's a video of me dunking and I can't dunk, right? And he was saying the same thing with his music. And for me, I'm like, dude, you typed it in, like, whatever, you made the music. Like, and he's like, no, I didn't make it. Like, I just, I typed in a prompt and it gave me music that sounds like my music and it's really good, but it's not me, so I can't publish it. That's how he feels. I'm not an artist, so I'm gonna go explore that and publish what I find, which you'll see on LinkedIn. But he pivoted to being— he's a super talented piano player and guitar and singer-songwriter. So he's just kind of gone the full performance route now. So he's doing performances kind of all over the country where he gets gigs and stuff and kind of making a name for himself. So he's doing that, which is great and kind of defensible against AI, right? Like, you there's no AI, like actual physical person that can walk in the building and perform and entertain people yet. So that's where he kind of found his ability to be a musician and have that defensible aspect. But yeah, I think I would be shocked if most of these like house music artists or even like rap and stuff like that. I've heard AI rap or any sort of reggae, any genre you name with lyrics. Not with lyrics, and you can just replicate it all easily and create cool creative stuff using AI tools these days. And I don't know much about it because I haven't dived fully into it, but it's— I also read a study from MIT that said that the AI right now is actually more creative than humans. So it's going to be an interesting world for sure. But there will find ways to to create value as humans, but we're gonna— it's gonna have to like redefine what that means. It's gonna be a lot of, I think, community and real-life interaction stuff that's like gonna be like the most valuable, you know, land and stuff like that. That's, that's where my head goes long term, but it'll be interesting.

I'm excited. I love your take. I mean, on, you know, where you're headed and, you know, especially what AI and creativity coming in together and how we can actually now use that to enhance our creativity, which I feel like is a great way because I wrote a screenplay, you know, back in the day. I'm no screenwriter, inspired by feeling lost in life, and you know, it's all over the place. But I was like, today, okay, you know, I'm inspired by traveling, what can I do? I tried to prompt ChatGPT, I'm like, can you build something of this, you know, can you help me realize how can I make a script out of it? And that did a pretty damn job at way better than I did, kind of hyped me up to realize, okay, should I just go in and pitch it to an agent tomorrow to have it made into production? But having said, I feel like there is so much potential around it. And I feel like as and when we use more of AI to bring our creativity versus using— looking at it as a threat, I feel like we would be in a much better place and much more able you know, tackle the future, um, looking at a certain body. But, you know, you come— but what I'm really inspired by is that you come from a finance major, like, you know, you did study environmental engineering, but you have no background in AI. You— I don't know if you've done any sort of tech, but then you go dive deep, head-on, take on these coding projects, you get inspired to build a device from scratch. That is That is really inspiring. You taught yourself VC, how to, you know, do these things. So, you know, I'm very curious to know, you know, which did you first, did you ever have that apprehension of being like, okay, you know, how do I go ahead and make these projects to life knowing that, you know, I'm not a person who's like absolutely technical and to, you know, how do you start off?

Yeah, I, so that's a good question. I actually, uh, when I was studying environmental engineering at Tufts, I took I'd taken coding classes in high school, AP computer science, and then I took CS15 at Tufts and that I kind of decided from there, hey, I actually don't really want to be a coder. I don't want to be a computer engineer, which is why I pivoted to environmental engineering. But I knew, I knew what coding was and I had enough background where I could code, but I was like very, I hadn't done it in 3, 4 years. Years. And I, but I knew it was, I didn't see like this massive mountain, I could never be a coder because I had previously taken some courses. And I was, I was actually thinking, okay, I had a mentor in my life who kind of dived into coding for 6 months, was a consultant, graduated USC, consultant, quits his consulting job, takes 6 months off to just invest in coding, like learning how to code. 6 months later, he's working at an AI company, making voice agents, then leaves that company, joins YC with his own company. And I was like, wow, that's a super inspiring thing. I think I'm going to do the same thing. Why would I not do that? That sounds like up my alley. I need to go learn how to code. And on my, on my journey to learn how to code, I kind of realized, oh my God, AI is at a stage where you don't really— like, you can just vibe code everything and you can get by learning along the way. And he— his— that was his advice to me too. He was like, I like, I, I write a lot of code, but I use AI so much. It, you learn to leverage AI first, and then if you still, it's only getting better. And if at some point you really need to learn to code, you can learn to code on the, on the fly. Just build projects. That was his advice to me. So I kind of got inspired by that to go kind of build these projects. And I'm forgetting the second half of your question, but that I think I I had always known, I'd always been a builder, always been an entrepreneur, always been inspired by technological revolution. I told you I jumped into Web3 and wrote a bunch of papers on that and even made a couple NFT companies. So I had always been like, okay, the forefront of technology is where the world is changing and it's making quality of life better for people and it's kind of where all the innovation is. So I want to be on this forefront and cutting edge of technology. I've always kind of known that. And then when I graduated, it kind of just everything, like AI is so obvious for me at least, maybe growing up in Silicon Valley, maybe it's not so obvious for other people, so I shouldn't say that, but I knew I had to jump in. So building projects was kind of my in.

I mean, what have you not done until now? You know, which is great because you've now been with shows that, you know, course, you know, grew up in Silicon Valley, which means you have to learn how to embrace the change happening around you. But then also at the same time, you, instead of being afraid of what's coming, you were like, hey, how can I actually move forward and learn this to leverage on, you know, what I know best, or, you know, what I could with what I know best, and use whatever is available by learning it quickly so that I could be, you know, not 10 steps ahead, so that I could make, you know, more of a difference in this world rather than just wondering what next to do in life.

I think for me, the key is kind of like the story I tell myself and everyone's story that they kind of believe in for themselves and how they define themselves. And that kind of ripples through your reality and your next steps and stuff. And for me, the story I tell myself is like I introduce myself, okay, I'm an entrepreneur who's trying to maximize my own life experiences and make the world a better place. And so it's not, I'm a finance guy. It's not, I'm environmental engineering. It's, it's, I'm actually this person who's trying to contribute and learn as much as I possibly can. So I'm doing all this crazy stuff and it's kind of a byproduct of this story that I tell myself. I think everything in life boils down to stories and the story you tell yourself. So, and yeah, every action, every emotion kind of boils back down to stories. Humans, our brains are wired that way. And it's, It's cool that we can kind of choose to define our own story. And then I think you see, once you, once you believe in a story, that reality starts to kind of unfold. And I think that's where I get my story so far has been from my, my identity that I defined my own story.

That's inspiring. It's more like manifesting your own reality by changing your own perception of who you are and what you can have in this world.

Yeah, I try not to use the word manifest because a lot of people, you know, they kind of squirm and get away from that. They're like, oh, that's all hippie stuff, which I'm pretty spiritual myself. But I would just say that it's, it's much more so if you're looking, if you're looking for all the red in life in a room, you're going to see all the red. If you're looking for the blue, you're going to see the blue. So it's, there's both red and blue in every room. And you just have to choose what you focus on. And that's kind of the reality that you're going to get. It's not some sort hippie manifesting thing. It's kind of just, if I define myself as only a finance guy, I'm only going to think, okay, I'm in this box, I'm in this lane, I need to do finance. Okay, now my reality is finance. It's not like crazy necessarily. I don't like using the word manifest, even though it's another word to describe what I'm basically saying.

But yeah, definitely think that saying the word manifest comes with a lot of, not hate comments, but like a lot of reactions.

Yeah, the connotation, yeah, I think turns away, turns off a lot of people, but I think the principle is true no matter how you say it. So yeah, stories is how I like to define it now.

I mean, I really love the way you redefined yourself by changing your own story of who you are. So you started to build out these marine projects, these projects you worked almost like that, but everything is so distinctive and focus on solving a real problem, which I feel is very inspiring. And, you know, like, first of all, like, I'm curious to know, you know, where do these ideas come from? And, you know, like, second of all, like, where do you see this?

Yeah, yeah, it's a good question. I, I would say I don't— it's not a process I have to come up with it. I've— I always, as an entrepreneurial guy, think of— kind of see problems and think of solutions. These are just kind of manifestations, uh, of that. To use the word in a literal sense. Yeah, I think, I think what for me, it's kind of just what excites me. I'm passionate about a lot of things. So the Life Lens one, I kind of have been thinking about that idea for a while where there just, there isn't a space to communicate who you truly are. You know, you have Instagram for highlight reels, you have LinkedIn for work, but where's this sort of like, who am I? What's the story that I'm telling people and I tell myself? And what are my bucket list items? And that's actually like, you know what, obviously you have Goodreads for books, but like, what if you could connect all these places into one and say, hey, here's, here's a little link. It's like basically my personal website, but I don't have to know how to code anything. I can just kind of upload it. Here's me from like a holistic stance. No sort of like just the highlight reel, just the work, just my accomplishments. Who, who, who am I? What do I like? And who am I? And I didn't really see a space for that. At least in my experience online. So I went ahead and I had seen people create personal websites for this, right? And like, they're creating personal websites. And I was like, I want to make it accessible for everyone. So if it can be easy to just kind of make your own personal website, that'd be really cool and be able to share who you are. So people could see the real you and then connect and be— I might go on someone's profile and see, hey, oh, you want to climb Mount Kilimanjaro? That's also on my bucket list. Let's, let's plan something. Let's do it, you know. Or let's talk about that. And that's, that's now we're going to spark up a conversation and create more connection. So that actually happened to me when I posted a lifeline. So my, my, one of my bucket list items, climb Mount Kilimanjaro. My friend was like, no way you want to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. I had no idea. I hadn't talked to this guy in like 5 years. He hits me up and he says, hey, let's, let's climb Mount Kilimanjaro like in 2 years. Like I've already got the plan. And you know, that would have never happened, would have never connected with him. Um, and maybe would have never even done the bucket list item if someone else didn't want to do it and push me along the way. Way. So it was kind of just this idea of like connecting people but not creating a whole new social media, you know, that's hard, just kind of something like you can just link in your bio, like it's a personal website, and you can get more information about people that I had had that idea for a while. So I built that. But the other ones is kind of just, they come up, you know, learn and sleep was just like, I know it's important to kind of before you go to sleep, that's when your memories consolidate. So if you can remind yourself of what you learned that day, right before you go to bed, you're going to optimize your ability to learn. And I was just kind of creating these AI projects. And I was like, okay, I'm learning so much, how do I optimize that learning, you know, and we'll create an AI tool. And then part of that was also the Jarvis feature, which is the, you know, the Iron Man name of the— but it was the idea which they actually created now, I saw a bracelet that always listens to you. And just takes in all this data from you constantly.

Is that OMI?

It is. I don't know. I forget the name of it. But yes. And which is crazy because it seems so creepy and futuristic, but that's where the world's headed. So I was like, oh, I'm going to build that as well and just see what people see, people's take on LinkedIn, see what they think about that. So that's why I created that. Then I created a GUM Loop optimization to scrape Reddit, see the sentiment of stocks, compare that versus the analysts. See if you should buy or sell based on what people are thinking versus what the analysts are thinking. And if there's a big enough difference between there and also just generate a stock report from scraping the web and stuff, which was just cool. I never scraped the web before, didn't even know what that was, never used Gumboop, all that stuff. So it's all just good learning. And also created an optimization where you just— it creates an image with a quote and then uploads that to Instagram. So kind of a way to just have a constant posting machine. That was an interesting concept that I just, I just thought it was like, that would be cool if I could just constantly be sending inspirational messages to an audience and I don't have to do anything.

That'd be cool.

You know, let me go build that. So it's not, to get back to your question, cause I'm rambling, but it's, it's less so. I mean, I have a couple ideas written down and I just pull up, oh wait, what would be most interesting for me this week to build? And then I just kind of shoot my shot at that. Today was the— my brother was telling me about the AI music stuff and I was like, okay, that's gonna be my next project. So it's not necessarily super pre-planned out. I have more than 13 ideas on a list of things I can do, so I'm not gonna run out of ideas, but it's kind of what excites me most at the moment, which is super fun for me.

That's how it should be. I mean, I was— I came across Lifehacks and I was like really inspired. I mean, I came across everything you've done so far. I'm like, Dude, this guy's inspiring. You did like a 10-day silent retreat. Yeah, that was— I was afraid you helped someone who was drowning, I suppose.

Yeah, it was probably me that was drowning.

But yeah, you did save someone. I don't remember. You got something that stood out to me was everything you've done so far is excellent. I can't deny that. But you said two things about it. One was, you know, do we really have free will? And two, what will the future look like post-AGI and humanoid? I feel like we kind of touched on that, right? So, but more so, you know, I'm kind of curious on your take, right? Of do you really think we have free will at this point, especially when the world kind of, you know, is built in a way that you don't really, you can't really control your future, but can you really control your future?

So you're asking the deep questions here. I could talk about hours for this question. I'm curious to hear, I mean, yeah, I gotta hear your take after my take. I feel like I've been rambling a little bit recently, but—

That's what I want you to do. I am inspired by everything you say. I keep my answers short because you have so much content that I'm like, I don't wanna keep talking this whole time.

No, no, no, you gotta talk more. I'm just some random rambling guy.

You say the right things and I'm inspired and I'm learning from you, but yeah, go on.

I appreciate it. Yeah, I recently came across this question, do we have free will? I want to say like 5 months ago when I was playing tennis with one of my buddies and he kind of brought up how we didn't have free will. And I was like, what? I'd never even heard of that concept. I was like, how could you possibly say I don't have free will? Like, I'm choosing right now to play tennis with you. I'm choosing right now to raise my hand. I'm choosing like all this stuff. And he's like, are you choosing it? Where are your thoughts coming from. And if you look at it from a physics standpoint, okay, you go back to the start of like the Big Bang, every action has equal and opposite reaction, Newton's law. So therefore, if you could go back to that time and map out the velocity of every particle, you could predict the future, you know where everything's going at what speed, every single neuron in your head is firing because of other reaction that hit it first, right, external stimuli. And you— everything is predictable. And I was like, what? I didn't really believe it. I went home, I watched a bunch of physics videos, tried to understand it. And even like, if you look at stuff like Einstein's theory of relativity, you see he's like, the future and the past and the present, it's actually, I think he's a box theory, but it's like kind of all happening at once. So therefore the future is like already set. And there is no, like, you can't escape it. And there's, so there's a lot of like very, very smart physicists, everyone that's kind of super deep into science would argue you don't have free will. I was a STEM guy. And I, when I, when I researched that, I was like, oh my gosh, you don't have free will. You know, everything you're deciding to do is because your brain, everything in the past has been formed from external stimuli that you then, your brain's basically a computer. And you actually don't have, you feel like you're choosing to do something, but there's like a certain set and you were always met, you were always going to do that. Based on the situation that you were put in, in your current stimuli. Which is so weird to think about, like, I can't even— I don't lose sleep over it. But I think one of life's most fascinating questions to ponder. And then there's the spiritual side, which you can say, okay, I, if I didn't have free will, is there— I have maybe like a higher self that maybe my human body and my neurons firing and the way that we understand science, right? Okay, I can get behind that. That doesn't have free will. But maybe there's actually, you know, something that science can't really explain, which is like souls, I don't know, maybe past lives and all this sort of different— every religion has different perspective on it. But is there some sort of higher self? That potentially is actually putting thoughts into your brain. And that's— that higher self is actually choosing, and that higher self has free will. But then again, that's not you, right? That's, that's a different sort of system that we don't understand and goes back to our physical human as we know it self does not have free will. So I, I don't, I don't— I try not to spend too much time pondering because I don't think it really matters. But I think if you do kind of settle on we don't have free will, It doesn't mean that you're going to sit there and do nothing. It just means that whatever you're going to do is it's going to happen. So there's no, there's no need to stress. Like, it's all going to be okay. And you just, you're going to live your life and it's, that's fine. And just, you shouldn't be anxious about anything. That's kind of where I settle on it. I don't know, I'm curious to hear your thoughts. It's such a weird, it's, I find it so hard to explain. I'm not the best person to explain it, but I recommend looking up a YouTube video of like Neil deGrasse Tyson or any sort of like— I guess he's not— he's an astronomer. But, um, yeah, there's a lot of physicists and, uh, people who can explain it a lot better than I can.

I think, I think you did a pretty great job explaining it. And I feel like my take on this comes from, you know, the spiritual side of it. Like, I grew up Jewish, And so, you know, there's a concept of reincarnation that I read about a long time back, and it was like your soul, like, like, and there was this documentary that said that a soul, like, it can travel back from the past life into a different body. Now, this is the whole spiritual side of it. So it's like basically all your past memories from who you were in the past comes back to you. In a different body. So it's like, do I really have free will? Like, am I controlled by that person who I was in my past life, and then that kind of, you know, makes me do the things that I do? So am I really aware of what I'm supposed to do? And then there's this other part where people say that, you know, it's already, you know, set in stone. Like, what's meant for you will happen for you, and what's not meant for you will not happen for you. And it's like, holy shit, like, if that's what's gonna happen, then my thoughts and everything I think is not even going to matter. Like, what the hell is, you know, thinking positive and, you know, like, just, you know, doing all that work for the inner work? You know, what's the point of it all if all what you are supposed to be doing is already written in the future, um, written in the past by that? And then there's this part of me that's like, okay, like, yes, you know, this is the other side wherein people grew up in certain household and that kind of decides their future. Like, I see a lot of people who, you know, grew up homeless and then pretty much are, you know, a product of their childhood trauma and then end up being addicted to drugs and all these things because they don't know any better. And so it's like, okay, you— do you really have free will? You know, can you— no matter how much they want to change themselves, they just don't know how to change themselves. And, you know, a lot of things take money. Unfortunately, we live in a capitalist society, which I absolutely hate. With all my heart and soul, but you know, that's how it is. And you know, these people don't have money. So it's like, for people who grow up with no money, you know, can they really change their lives? You know, because they don't know any better. Now, yes, a lot of people come up and, you know, change their lives, but how many of them do we really think, you know, have changed their life? Like Logic, for example, you know, he grew up in a household where there's so much abuse and trauma, but he became the rapper he is today because he read the dictionary and learned, and Eminem, there's so many greats out there, Oprah. But there are also people who, you know, like maybe they grew up rich, but they grew up with childhood trauma, and then the brain is wired to the point that they don't really know they can change. But also people say that your thoughts, like, like you said, you know, you have to believe in a certain kind of story for yourself. And then if you see the green, you will see the green. If you don't, if you want to see the blue, you will see the blue. But you said blue and red. My bad. But I feel like, you know, it's like there's a part of me that believes I have free will. I have to believe it right now because, or else, I'll just end up being stuck in this timeless loop of who I was and what happened in my life and how that kind of, you know, keeps me where I'm at. But there's also a part of me that's like, okay, you know, what if this is all, you know, meant to not happen or meant to happen? I have no idea, but Do I really have control over it? Do I really need to work hard? You know, if that's not going to happen or that is going to happen, that all makes sense, you know. But I don't think I've really understood it from the perspective that you did. But, but I feel like I looked at it from the spiritual side of things and just like the psychological side of things and kind of, you know, try to understand what exactly is this and, you know, how can I really get out of it? Because it's very easy for people— like, I went for a meditation class today, and those people, yeah, were super spiritual. They were talking about, you know, how you need to change your thoughts, and that kind of changes your reality. And then I'm like, just staying positive, my culture, like, it's easy for you to say, but then what if your whole life you've cringed just like over this whatever in your, you know, 20s? You grew up under thinking a certain way because of the trauma that you've had. You can't just change it unless you accept those thoughts and just be like, it's okay to have them, but then I need to be aware. So I don't know where I'm going with this, but long story short, I don't really know if I'm the right person to believe this or not. I just kind of make my mind believe, are there some sort of people, or maybe there's not, but I don't know.

Yeah, I think it's interesting you said you absolutely hate capitalist society. I want to dig into that a little bit more. What are your alternative solutions that you think are better, or what specifically do you hate about it?

I think I hate the very idea of working to make money. There are a lot of things like this one. I don't get paid to do anything, to make a podcast, to interview people, or even to make any sort of connections. Even when I was in VC before, I got no money to do a lot of things. But obviously when I work there, obviously I got money. But like a lot of work that I did before that and, you know, sometimes even right now I don't get paid to do it, but I love it so much that I could do it all my life. And this is what I see myself doing. You know, I don't care about money, I don't care about anything, but I care about making an impact. And sometimes the thought about wanting to make money kind of just gets to me and prevents me from doing my best work. And I feel like that whole pursuit of money just causes so much crime, so much hatred, so much trauma. And yeah, I mean, people who are homeless and have, you know, not able to get in drugs, and I feel all of that is because of inability of their brain to handle all sorts of trauma. But yeah, that's, that's— I don't know, this is a lot I could talk about, how much I hate the capitalist society and how much I really hate the whole idea of like money is great to invest in startups, but you know, like helping them make a difference in this world, but I think that can be done without money if everything were free in this world and we took it on values. And I don't know, I don't know. I just deeply hate the whole idea of a capitalist society.

Yeah, it's interesting. It's interesting. I hear what you're, what you're saying with the capitalism stuff. I also, for some reason, I don't know why my mind went to this quote, but when Churchill said, democracy is the worst form of government except for all other governments that have been tried before, where it's kind of like the lesser evil, if that makes sense. And I'm not saying capitalism is perfect, but I don't know if you've read The Whole Story by John Mackey. It's kind of his story of founding Whole Foods. He talks a lot about conscious capitalism. And I think I agree a lot with what he has to say about capitalism. And kind of at least like the other solutions, like, I don't know, I'm not the most educated about the subject, but it's like, you know, you have like communism, socialism, which is like less extreme and stuff like that. And then you have like kind of fascism, you know, any kind of like dictator-ish kind of stuff. And for me, I don't know, I just can't think of a better example of a way it would work better than capitalism. I'm not saying it's perfect. It obviously has a lot of issues and it's messed up. But I think in its best form, it inspires, it aligns people to try to create value. It aligns their selfish interests and the interests of the world. Obviously, that can break up and people can find ways to screw people over and that's where it goes bad. But I think the intent of it is really well-intentioned and rewards people that really want to produce value in the world. And I think other forms of that, other forms of the other form, like socialism or communism, does not actually incentivize that. And that's why we haven't seen it work previously in the world and history. But I don't— I'm not saying that there's not potentially a better structure or way to have it work. But I think this idea of conscious capitalism where we're aware and we're not trying to screw people over and we're creating meaningful value that tries to help people and it aligns sort of like you get value and when you create value for other people, I think that's beautiful. So I would say like, as John Mackey would say, I'm taking his words, like a conscious capitalism world is like really good. Um, or at least the least of the evils, so to speak. Um, which I think is an interesting way of phrasing it, right? It's like we haven't found this— the world's not perfect, it's far from perfect, there's a lot of issues, but the least of the evils is the best we can do at this point. So, um, I guess I would— I'd say I'm pro the least of the evils.

Um, yeah, looks like I've got Reid Um, whatever John Mackey used to say about conscious capitalism sounds, sounds pretty intriguing because I don't even know what exactly the world would be if not for capitalism. And I don't know anything about probably the world, I guess. So, um, but yeah, I suppose that's, you know, that's probably a better perspective on looking at the world. Um, but I'm curious to know, you know, like, now that you're working all projects, and, you know, you have your takes on, you know, where the world is heading and kind of, you know, you know, learning about how you can be more futuristic. In a perfect world, what do you see yourself doing?

What are kind of my— what are my next steps from what I see for myself coming, coming forward? Steps, I would say I'm, I'm, I'm obviously going into private equity internship. I want to learn a lot about, uh, how to create enterprises and finance them and scale them. And then from there, kind of take those learnings with the AI, like I'm going to be doing a lot of AI tools as I shared before, learning AI tools, keep, keep doing what I'm doing now, learn more about AI, see what it's like to be inside a big business, see how that's changing with all these AI tools. And they're leaning into that, which is super interesting. How is, how is that going to change? And then kind of take that experience. And a lot of what they invest in is sort of like HVAC companies, pool cleaners, engineering firms, unsexy, high revenue companies. And I would love to spend a lot of time talking to them, to the companies that they invest in, and learn about how, how AI can help them and basically optimize and automate a lot for them. And then I would like, I think next steps after that to kind of position myself as, okay, hey, I know a lot about these AI tools. I can come help implement them and create a lot of value for your firm, kind of as I was saying earlier, and I can be sort of an AI implementer and sort of companies that are traditionally less seen as like tech companies that, oh, of course AI is so obvious, I should just plug it in here and I'll make a lot of value. But there's a lot of companies, you know, like restaurants or HVAC or I don't know, there's so many operational companies that I don't think are going to be super quick to the switch to understanding AI and are going to need someone to come in and be able to help them implement systems. And I think that's kind of where I see my next steps is as someone who has a base knowledge of, of the tools, which tools to use in which situation, and almost position myself as an orchestrator. Steve Jobs says that a lot. He's like, you know, connect the dots. You can't connect the dots forward, you connect them backwards. And sort of kind of being an orchestrator of like, he was kind of had this vision and he brings people together to kind of create that into reality. I think maybe it's crazy for me to compare myself to Steve Jobs, but I think it's like there's an opportunity to become an orchestrator here and provide value doing that with, with sort of an understanding of AI tools and what they can do to kind of provide value to firms. And that's kind of where I see myself in terms of the AI stuff, because I'm not going to be the one actually creating these. I'm not like leading AI software engineering right now. So that's where I see myself creating value. I hope I can, I'm going to spin that into sort of creating my own firm at a certain point. And I want it to be an impact-driven firm. Like, that's something that's always— I don't know exactly what it's going to be. I kind of threw out, um, like Patagonia, um, or like 4 Oceans, or just something that's like, it's very clearly, um, making the world a better place. Yeah, impact-driven. And I know I'm gonna do that, but in the meantime, while this whole AI stuff is going on, I'm gonna try to learn and position myself to then be able to create this firm my own brand, whatever it is, maybe that's impact-driven to help people using the experience that I've gained. I think I'm going to gain experience for up to like 4 years maybe. I don't know, who knows what I'm going to be doing, but the end goal is for sure to create my own thing.

That sounds amazing. And you said you shouldn't be comparing yourself to Steve Jobs, but honestly, you know, you do what, you know, everybody's, you know, trying to make an impact in this world in some way. And the fact that you're doing you know, so much and trying to create an impact in your own way means that, you know, like everyone's different and you can't compare your journey to Steve Jobs, but that does not mean that you're not doing what Steve Jobs is also doing. I mean, they're— Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I don't know. It's an exciting world out there and, uh, I'm, I, I'm super stoked. What about, uh, what about you? What are your next steps?

What about my next steps?

I feel like I definitely see myself In like 5 years, maybe not yet directly, maybe not directly right now, but like 5 years, where are you at in 5 years ideally? Are you still, are you doing podcasts? Are you sourcing people or what are you, are you connecting people kind of like orchestrating as well? What is your kind of where you want to be in 5 years considering the trends and where they're headed?

But I have, you know, my dream in 5 years is to be someone who's not just boxed in but doing everything that she feels called out to do. Like, that means starting off with being in VC, you know, first working in VC, meeting different founders, helping them, connecting them in so many other ways I can. Secondly, you know, working on my startup on the side, you know, kind of solving problems that I feel called out to work on. Other than that, you know, I would love to use my storytelling skills to kind of be a screenwriter and maybe an actor because I feel a lot of anxiety. But I also feel like I don't really express my emotions a lot. So, you know, being an actor, which you all are in some ways, to kind of orchestrate and bring those emotions. I really want to bring my screenplay, which is inspired by Feeling Lost in Life, You know, I'm playing my own self basically. That's kind of weird, but definitely having given a TED Talk. Hopefully, you know, hopefully being with someone, married. If not, I'm still okay, but at least being okay with where I'm at, traveling the world a lot, you know, me, and probably just, you know, I don't know if I want to do these podcasts you know, for a long time. As long as I get to create some sort of impact in some ways, I feel like I'll be really happy to do that. But more so just, you know, being someone who's known for creating an impact and having at least impacted a few lives, because, you know, sometimes you need to have that some sort of measure. But, um, but yeah, I can send— I can show you my, you know, like, I don't know, my, um, vision board. But yeah, hopefully also, you know, I don't know, being in America at some point or just traveling the world. I don't know, I don't really like the idea of settling in place and just being there for a long time. I like to have some motion and some sort of excitement slash adrenaline rush in my life. So yeah, it's awesome.

So I'm pretty similar. So it's good to hear. Yeah, definitely send me your vision board after this. I'm excited to see that. And yeah, thank you for, for talking today. It's been awesome.

I mean, it's an honor to be on this podcast with you and just to connect and know you. Connect with you and know you as a person. I see you doing great things and I appreciate you for this.

Hopefully we can inspire some people together.