Episode 40: Helping young VCs learn the ropes

Welcome to Startup Cornell, a podcast exploring the bold entrepreneurial ideas coming from our students, faculty, staff, and alumni. I am Kathy Heavis, your host, and today we're talking with Sakib Jamal. He's a vice president at Crossbeam Venture Partners. Sakib was recently chosen for the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, in part for his book, The Young VC's Handbook: A Tactical Guide for Newcomers to Venture Capital. In the book, some of the smartest young minds in VC share actionable advice And we'll hear some of that today from Sakib. To find out more about Entrepreneurship at Cornell and see the show notes from this episode, visit esha.cornell.edu. And remember to rate and review us by scrolling to the bottom of the episode. We want to help young entrepreneurs find the podcast and be inspired to follow their dreams. So welcome to Sakib. So glad you could be with us.

Yeah, super excited to do anything Cornell related. Cornell gave me a lot, and excited to be affiliated in some way again.

That's great. So tell us a bit about your time at Cornell. Why don't we start there? What was your major and what experience did you have there that helped you figure out what you wanted to do with your career?

Yeah, I came to Cornell as an international student originally from Bangladesh. And when I say Cornell gave me a lot, that scholarship was a life-changing event for me. I studied ILR, the I Love Reading School, or otherwise known as the Industrial and Labor Relations major. I picked it because my initial dream was to eradicate child labor in Bangladesh because it's such a big problem back home. But as soon as I came, I realized a lot, well, I don't know how true it is, but I felt that a lot of the impact were actually being made by the capitalists and the philanthropy, the work they were doing versus like a lot of the actual nonprofits or organizations that way. I think the execution of it makes a lot of sense, but if I wanted to have massive impact and at scale, I think the philanthropy side would perhaps make more sense. And so very soon after my freshman year, I decided to pivot to business and finance. Like, there's no shortage of mentors and upperclassmen to look up to. And part of it was often just finding the most impressive people I knew and Learning about what they were doing, and quite frankly, unfortunately, in many ways, a lot of that was like going into investment banking or consulting, etc. And so I was like, oh wow! I really wanted to be like Adam Greenbaum is someone that I that I think of. He was a senior when I was a freshman. He was someone I really looked up to, and he was just genius when it came when it came to finance. And I was like, oh, I want to be like Adam. And he was in this business fraternity called Delta Sigma Pi. Ended up joining joining that. Which gave me a ton of learnings and quite frankly, a network that I could leverage to learn the insider secrets. And yeah, that really started my, my interest in the sector and my senior year, I took a lot of Johnson School classes. And yeah, after graduation, I started my career doing industrials M&A at JP Morgan. So. It turned out to be a really rewarding experience.

So isn't it unusual to get into venture capital like pretty early in your career? And how do you feel like you managed that? I know a lot of people wonder how that happens.

As you can imagine, I probably get this question a lot, but the frustrating part— there's good news and bad news. The bad news is it's probably a bit of a random walk. I think if you ask 100 different VCs or younger VCs how they got the job, they'll give you different The good news is there's often patterns that you can identify, whether it's like, hey, there's certain paths that kind of make sense, which is like, hey, I was a banker or consultant before, this is what I wanted to do, I got involved in the ecosystem somehow, and then that's how I entered. Or it's like, hey, I started my own company, I sold it or didn't work, and that's how I got involved in the startup ecosystem and ended up taking a job with some of these people I met. It truly is a random walk. But the patterns are very much, I would say threefold. I would say it's the buzzword is curiosity in my, but it's not just curiosity. I think it's a deep interest and desire to spend time in the startup ecosystem, whether it's from the investor side or the company building side. And when you're an early stage investor and as a VC, you're really just buying a partnership stake in a business. And so yes, I think of myself as an investor, but I often Do try to also think about as an entrepreneur. No way am I taking credit for the CEOs and the founders who build all these amazing things, but I try to put myself in the cockpit with them. And I think that's very necessary. And so that's like probably the one pattern. The other pattern is the acknowledgement that this is a services job. You're there to serve founders and identify the best founders you can and work with them. And so there's a certain level of rigor and hustle and time that really comes with it. And number 3 is like this desire or interest in sort of playing a very small role in shaping the future or having a thesis, having a point of view, right? I think that's really, really important so that you can find the right people to work with and sort of make a call on what is the right thing to work on, even, especially at the very, very early stages. So those are the 3 things that I think come up as factors or characteristics of people that end up in venture, but the actual way they come up is a complete random walk. Really not, never heard a very similar path. I would say private equity is a little different. It's often like 2 years of investment banking or MBB consulting, and then you go to There's a structured recruitment process like that the KKR and the Blackstones of the world run. But VCs, for the most part, for the, especially for the smaller firms, other than like some of the larger firms, even for the larger firms, I'd say it's very unstructured, very dependent on fund cycles, very dependent on when people leave, et cetera, et cetera. So it's not like, hey, every summer XYZ firm is hiring 10 to 20 new associates. That's not really how it works. It's very much ad hoc and need-based, which makes it harder, which requires a need to have the hustle to continuously be top of mind, continuously follow up with people.

Right, right. So all of these kind of nebulous career paths are maybe one reason why you decided that you should write this handbook. So at what point did you think, oh, you know, I do have some knowledge, or I know some people with some knowledge about this, and there's really nothing like this out there for people? Tell us a little about the process of starting the handbook and then like who's in there.

Yeah. So essentially what happened was I was the first employee at our firm. When I joined, it was just a very small firm, just me and my partner mostly doing all the work. But today, you know, we're much larger. We have a number of people. But at that time, I felt like I was drinking from a hosepipe. There was so much to absorb and so much to learn. And I often hacked my way into learning different things and I would like find people with different expertise and like just ask them questions. And when we had hired a new associate, I started writing this guide that I was like, okay, these are the things that you should be doing. These are that, you know, this is how you should probably think about managing your time. This is how you want to talk to a founder. This is how you write a good pass email, right? This is how you like think about market sizing, for example. And then that market sizing thing was the big aha moment where I was like, hmm, I actually have a friend. Her name's Chelsea at Equal Ventures. She used to be a former consultant. So I was like, maybe I should ask Chelsea who used to do this day in, day out, and probably prepped a lot of market sizing for her interview process about market sizing. And maybe she should just write a chapter in this guide. And I was like, hmm, what if this guide, what if this guide instead of a Google Doc or a Notion doc could just become a book? And then I was like, hmm, I'm going to ask all these people to write all these chapters and I'm going to like make money off it. That didn't sit right with me. But also I was like, I really wanted to give back to my home in Bangladesh. And I knew of an orphanage that was affiliated with a nonprofit that was doing some great work with education. So In my country, like public education is not fully widespread across the nation. And often after grade 5, there's a tremendously large drop-off rate. So it's like, what if we could plug that gap and get them to high school and especially get them educated with computers and IT, right? And so I found a nonprofit to work with and I was like, okay, I'm going to work on this book. I'm going to get all my smart friends to write chapters and, and their thoughts on it. And all the proceeds I'm just going to give away to this nonprofit. I'm super excited. Honestly, I thought only a few hundred copies would sell because it's such a niche topic. And even within VC already is a, is a small industry. And then even within it, it's like, oh, only for young entry-level people or, or what have you. But at the end, I think I'm almost at 1,500 copies sold, almost $10,000 plus raised. Yeah. So it's Been awesome, and $10,000 goes a long way back home in Bangladesh.

Oh, that's great! Some of that money has already gone back there.

Yes, I'm giving it away in tranches because Amazon doesn't. Amazon, I think, has a 60 or 90 day lag between when something sells. First tranches is out already.

How fun! So have you seen what they're doing with? Do they have special plans for what they're doing with your money?

Yeah, so they're actually helping towards building a school in Chittagong, which is a. southern city in Bangladesh. And my goal is maybe in a year or a couple of years to take a lot of the author contributors and some of my friends and actually go to Bangladesh and visit the school at some point. So that's the plan.

Oh, that's awesome. That's great. And what do you think of, like, how did you— I know you mentioned that you were thinking of your friend Chelsea and she had expertise in this area. Did you have like an outline to start out with, or did you think of who you knew that had certain expertise and filled it in that way?

Yeah, I had a very clear vision as to how I wanted to do it. Long story short, I wanted it to be very structured and the vision I had for the book was like, hey, I wanted someone to read a chapter a night and I wanted to have enough chapters where after they finished the book, they get all this wealth of knowledge. The book is actually divided up into 10 weeks. Each week has 5 days. So every weekday before going to bed or whatever, you go read a chapter. And each week is a theme. So the first week is, how do you think about sourcing? The second week is, et cetera, DD. How do you think about LP, miscellaneous, et cetera? So each week has different themes. And that's sort of how you move ahead and get a ton of knowledge in a very quick period period of time, but also not like overwhelm yourself with a ton of information overload.

Right, because you're already at work getting a ton of knowledge during the day of whatever they're learning at their new position. Yeah,

it's built with empathy for a high-volume job in mind. Yeah,

right, right. They may be reading it at midnight or 1 in the morning when they finally finish. Or on the subway, right? Exactly.

A lot of it on the subway. Yeah,

right. Right, right. And have you received some feedback from people who've read it so far and who've gotten back to you and said it's been really helpful?

Yeah, I'm a perfectionist. I've received one feedback. It was like, hey, there's, there's actually a few typos in there. And I was like, oh man. Ah, but that was one out of, I would say at least 50+ positive reviews that's public on Amazon. But also many people have DM'd me going like a lot of senior people actually DM'd me going like, hey, I wish this was around when I started. I was so clueless and it took me so long to figure out XYZ. Thank you for putting this out. I think this is going to be net positive for the industry. Look, it's not, this is not the first ever book on venture capital being written, but the issue with existing books that I found was a lot of them focus on structure and technical stuff like term sheets, how do you think about valuation, et cetera. But the job of a young VC day to day is very different. A lot of it is just like, how do you take calls? How do you think about what's a good investment? How do you learn how to write a good memo, et cetera, right? And so I really focused on those tactical day-to-day practical action items that you can take to be a really strong star associate, VP, principal, what have you, on your way to becoming a partner one. Or starting your farm, whatever your end goal is. I think the idea was to really just ensure that it's actionable. Like everything there is very actionable. And the reviews have, I think that's the part that I think resonated with people and they appreciated it. A lot of people really were like, hey, I love the fact that it is a cool mission. A lot of people were like, I love how It's not just one author saying their own things. You were actually thoughtful about who would be the best person to ask about a certain topic. And yeah, like, and it's really is a full stack project because if you look at the first chapter, it's like, I think the first chapter is like, how do you get introductions or something like that? Or how do you stay organized?

Wow.

It's like, what are some exit opportunities? If venture is not for you, how do you think about leaving the industry? How do you think about if you want to start your own fund? How do you think about raising LP money? All that. So I really tried to make sure that each of those chapters were, you know, I probably, I haven't left VC yet, so maybe I would not be the right person. So I found someone who used to work at Bessemer and ended up joining a startup and with aspirations to become a founder in the future. And so I asked him to write something there. So it's really as tailor-made as possible, at least with the constraint of my own network. But I worked really hard to identify the people and track them down and bug them to write the pages.

And if you are asking them to write a chapter that's easily readable in 5 minutes, it's not as if you're asking them to write a treatise on some topic. You want it to be accessible.

Yeah, it's 2 pages. I was very clear with them. It's a charity project. And I, if I'm being honest with you, I kind of knew what makes VCs tick, right? I was like, hey, your face is going to be there. Your firm's name is going to be there. It's going to be a colored book so people can actually like see a colored photo of you and they will know who you are and will know that you wrote this really unique insight and shared it with the world and your email is going to be there. They can reach you. You're going to get deal flow. You're going to expand your network, et cetera. And yeah, and like, One of my friends, Nandini, I think 4 days after I released the book, told me, hey, like founders have reached out. I'm actually like doing diligence on a company that where the founder had found me from your book and had reached out. And it was a really good feeling. Yeah. It wasn't just like a thing for me personally. You know, everyone who contributed to it got something out of it.

But you obviously used your skills in persuasion to encourage them to help you with it. Yeah.

I think so much of it is just taking the initiative. I will say it's not easy to convince 50 people to write something for you for free, no matter how short it is.

And even when they agree to it, then bugging them to actually send it in and get it.

And then think about the standardization. Some people wrote 2 paragraphs, some people wrote 4 pages, and you're like, oh my God. And you need to make the thing flow better. And so when you're editing, you actually have to read these like You know, especially within a week, you have 5 chapters and it's like, okay, what was the right order for the chapters? What flows better after the other? Then have to get permission. Hey, I'm gonna cut this part. Or, hey, I'm— I added these things. Are you okay with that? It's, it's a, it's, it's actually a bit of a logistical nightmare.

Oh yeah, I can imagine. Right. And people have different writing styles. So yeah, that would be really right. Were there any points where you're like, I don't think I should have asked this person, maybe I should just write this whole chapter myself? Or did they all come through with like pretty Pretty decent. So

there were times like that. People sometimes promised me stuff and then didn't come through, or they would come through with one paragraph and like, and sometimes I'd replace their chapter, or I would be like, hey, you only wrote 2 paragraphs, but the 2 paragraphs were really good. So I'm just going to write the other 2 paragraphs and not tell anyone. And, you know, you still have the credit. It really depends on, goes from chapter to chapter, but I remember it being very, very stressful. I took a break in the middle. I took like a 5-month break from this project because I was like, this is just not, you know, with all the, all the stress of work and there's busy seasons in VC. And then I remember bulk of my work was done between Christmas and New Year months.

Oh my gosh. Right. And I'm sure you were happy when you finally sent it away to be finished.

Honestly, like. You always feel like you could do more. I thought that there was like a gazillion things I could do. Like, as I expected, people pointed out the typos. Finding editors are expensive. And I was like, hey, this is a nonprofit project, et cetera, et cetera. And then towards the end, I had convinced my firm to like sponsor a little bit. I was like, hey, is it okay if I, you know, use a small budget to find a designer, et cetera, all that kind of stuff. And then in the end, I spent some money on the editor aspect and then also the design, internal design, but the COVID there was just a lot of kindness and help from people as well. Like my friend Eric Button helped me do the COVID and that was for free.

Well, I think when you know that the money is going to help the orphanage, that just makes it a lot easier to convince people probably that this is a good use of their time. So I know that you've spent majority of your time in VC, but what do you— so I don't know what you have to compare it to, but maybe some internships or other things you did in finance or consulting. But what do you think is really special about working in VC versus another kind of industry surrounding finance?

Yeah, I've had a lot of jobs. I used to TA 2 classes that have very fond memories. I was on the annual fund that taught me cold calling skills, which are super, super useful. You asked me what the best part is. I'll also include what it's most similar to in my view. I think it's most similar to actually a sales job. There is that investment, the picking part, but so much— you can be the best investor ever, but if you don't see the opportunity or no one tells you about the deal or the special founder that's raising, you're kind of dead in the water. And so there's a lot of sales, social skills required for this job in my view. And for certain sectors more so, like consumer, I'd say, and then for certain sectors that are more niche, like it's probably a little easier because you, you kind of, the circles are smaller, like infrastructure, biotech, et cetera. But it's still very much, it's the only asset class, Cathie, where the entity you're investing in has to choose you back. You can't just choose the entity you're investing in, right? In the private markets, right? That's, that's how it works. Unlike the public markets, you can kind of just go buy whatever stock you want. The best part about the job to me, Kathy, like, it's just, it's just so cool that I get to serve like these amazing, amazing people and I get a front seat at the future. I get a really, really front, really amazing close seat at crazy wild ideas, all sorts of different themes and pieces, like We had heard about GPT like kind of almost a year before ChatGPT kind of came out. The real OGs heard like multiple years before that, right? And so there's all sorts of different sort of ideas that you're exposed to that I think is just so cool. But if I had to just bring it down to the one thing, I think it's just seeing something being created out of nothing. That is so extremely special when, especially as seed investors, you're kind of investing Sometimes on an idea and a person. And then 2 years later, you go to an office and there's like 40 people under that banner. And it's like, they're growing, business is humming. It's just, it's just awesome. Really cool. You're creating employment, customer value, whatever it is, you know, you measure that, but it's just played a very, very small role in creating something and you get a very close front seat at it.

And it might not be such a small role. To them, it might be a huge, it might be the difference between moving forward.

I think in VC, there's a lot of chest bump, chest bumping, and a lot of like, so much of the job is like creating your brand value and trying to seem cool or the person to work with. It's not very too dissimilar from real estate agents and how they try to be the coolest and the best person to work with. And I think people often overestimate what VCs can do, but there are certain things that VCs are probably good at. One is the capital market stuff. They help you raise certain future rounds. They have the benefit of benchmarking. They see a lot of volume, so can tell you best practices, what the market, where the market is, and give you that kind of intel. But if I'm being honest with you, Kathy, the best founders, they don't really need much help. They need access to information and they kind of do their own thing. Look, what I'll say is there's often one or two pivotal moments that I think VCs often help a lot, whether it's a strategic shift, whether it's that one big, whether it's like helping with the cold start problem and introducing them to early partners or early customers, that goes a long way. But the best VCs are just like what I realized are just thought partners that Founders really trust as smart advisors and people to run ideas by, but the best ones kind of figure it out themselves. Those are the ones you really want to be in and back.

So are there any? I know you can't share very much specific information about companies you work for, but are there any general ones that you can remember that you either like you thought not really sure this is going to work that have turned out to be like really phenomenal companies, or are there any that times that you think you know this is like such an amazing idea, but I can't imagine that it can. actually be commercialized or like that it will go anywhere. Like, and how have you, how do you deal with those different situations?

Yeah, I think, I think, look, there are so many companies, if I'm being honest with you, that I was like, oh, maybe it won't work or for XYZ reason. And they ended up ripping later. Although it often hurts to see that, it also means you're doing something right. Because if you remember going back to what I was saying as one of the big KPIs is Ensuring that I see that breakout talent, and so a lot of it is like, hey, am I in the room right when when a competitive process is happening or when a founder is building something special? And so missing companies is actually part of the job. It just it just means that hey, you saw it. Many other VCs perhaps didn't see it. Many maybe your competitors perhaps didn't even see it. So. It's actually, you don't want to have too many misses because that's not good. That then it means you're a bad picker, but almost nobody gets, like, even the legends don't get 100% right. In fact, some legends get very few right, but each one that they get right are $10 billion plus companies that they had at like, I don't know, $5 million or $10 million valuations, right? And so yes, the answer is yes. There's many other companies that I can think of that I didn't think would work. Look, it's a constant work in progress. Like if you asked me 2 years ago what a great founder looked like, then my answer would be very different from what my answer is today about what a great founder looks like. And I'm pretty sure I'm going to raise the bar or change my opinion on something 2 years from now. And so it's a constant refining process and a lot of it is just volume. I think something that a friend always says is very true, which is You have to see 50 Bs to recognize an A. And sometimes it's about finding that A pluses, sometimes taking founder bets, sometimes it's the markets. It's very bespoke. I think that's what makes the job interesting. A lot of it can be automated, to be honest, but at the end of the day, no one can really predict that gut feel and execution ability, et cetera. So that's—

Right.

Human element is very, very important. And yeah, there's a lot of luck involved as well. I can give you an example, Kathy. Like, so there was a student from Cornell. I think he was in the— he was a CS and ag major. He made this company called Orchard Robotics. And I think I can talk about it because we did not invest in it, but it's a fantastic company. It's a really cool idea. And the founder's name is Charlie. I thought he was the smartest, dropped out of college to build this company. I saw the company and then eventually they went with a different firm. So I missed it, but I saw it too late. Honestly, I should have seen it much, much earlier because I'm a Cornellian and I should have, you would think, unique access to students there. But that's a great example of a company where it was, it's a little different. It's not that I didn't think they would win, but I just saw it too late. And by the time I, I saw it, by the time we came up with our own term sheet and conviction, they already had like 3 other offers. One of them they got very close with, et cetera, et cetera. So that's a great case study that I can offer. So, you know, people listening to this, if they have unique ideas or know, know really, really smart friends, I'd love to hear from them.

Right. It seems like there probably maybe is a chapter in your book on like this gut feeling or this relationship building, or like so much of it is like how you reach out to people or how you feel about things as well as all the volumes of data and stuff that you're going through. So how do you describe that, or how do you help people to become better at that?

I think there are some buzzwords in the VC industry. I think pattern recognition is probably the one that you'll hear a lot. A lot of people will be like, ah, like, you know, I've seen this movie before. A, therefore B, therefore C. I think a lot of it is what we call the prepared mind. You kind of take a view on a space and you think it's interesting for XYZ. And you can validate what a founder is claiming. You're like, oh, you think the world's moving this way, or this law is going to create this unintended consequence. Therefore, this market will grow, et cetera. Like those types of theses matter a lot, but the founder stuff, it's, it's just experience. It's just also references. Something I didn't quite appreciate while in college is every single interaction is the point of reference. Like if you are, if you are the best student in class and you absolutely crush school and you're the president of some club and you're doing XYZ and you have a side business while in college, like 5 years later when someone asks like, hey, how is this person? You kind of remember, I very much remember the smartest people that I had studied with or worked with in college. Right. And if somebody ever asked me, I'd be like, yes. He or she is a special, special person. And a lot of it is that. A lot of it is just building up that reputation, building up that successful track record of just being excellent at everything, everything you put your hands to.

So I want to pivot a little bit more to how you manage your days and what some of the habits are that you are— because I'm sure your job is a little bit crazy. And I think that it would be helpful for people to know, like, What are some of the habits that you use or tools or anything like that that you would want to share that help you to manage all the different things that are in the air at the same time?

Yeah, I, I go outbound a lot. So I spend a lot of my time on LinkedIn finding the right people and like reaching out or getting warm intros. So much of it is also information flow. So like having those close friends that you collaborate with, feeding them info, they feed you info, they talk about deals, et cetera. And like, again, so much of it is important to be in the room for, and there's really no secret sauce in that. That's just straight up ground game, knowing the right people, making sure people trust you, making sure that people see you as smart and worthwhile referring you. Because A players hang out with other A players and they want A player partners, right? Right. And so you have to convince them that you're part of the crew. At the same time, having said that, there's a lot of like, A-players that have not been what you would call quote unquote undervalued or mispriced. Maybe it's that smart intern or that junior person that no one really cares about, but if someone knows, some manager knows that person's a rock star and is going to build a company in the future. And it's how awesome would it be if you could meet that person early, build their trust, work with them, add a lot of value to them, help them get off the ground. And by the time that they're ready to raise money, like you really are the best and easiest option because you just have so much data point, right? So a lot of my job is like finding those, being a talent hunter. I do read a lot. I read a lot of decks, a lot of theses. I'm calling a lot of experts, learning constantly about certain themes and areas that I'm, that I want to build an expertise or a point of view on. I think a lot of early-stage investment decisions are made on like what I would say major have-to-believes. Like you have to believe XYZ will happen to create a large outcome here. You have to believe that the TAM is growing or it's already large, or you have to believe there's some sort of dislocation in the market that's creating this opportunity. You have to believe this founder or whatever, there's some sort of unfair advantage or some sort of network effects, et cetera. It's really a lot about identifying what those 2, 3 questions are and working really hard to get as many data points in an inefficient and crazy world, those 2 or 3 questions. So if you get those questions wrong, you're dead in the water. But even once you get the questions right, you then have to go find the right answers. And that, that whole process is a lot of work. It's a lot of reading. It's a lot of like It can start from hard data to like, hey, what are App Store ratings like? What are you, what is usage like? To soft stuff like, oh, let's talk to, okay, you claim that some insurance agent has this problem. Well, can we go talk to 2, 3 insurance agents in our network to figure out that that's actually a problem? Go see some sort of evidence from some sort of public filing that says some insurtech company saying They're having XYZ problem, right? So AI and data tools make a lot of that easier, but you still just have to do the work. So much of it just comes down to sitting down and doing the work.

Right. And that's interesting that you're like almost doing customer discovery for the companies that you're investigating that I'm sure they've also done, but you're doing it too.

We're so early. We have to. That's what I meant at the beginning of our conversation. I was like, I like putting myself in the cockpit. Those are the things that you kind of have to do to gain conviction that, hey, this is the business I want to partner with.

Right. And do you ever deal with like students who are still in school or graduate students or like, or is it mostly people who are already out and have like at least have some kind of, I mean, there's so much, I always think at Cornell, there's so many amazing like research projects going on and most of them will never be commercialized, but some of them will. And so it's like, How do you discover that kind of, or is that too early for anything?

I'll be honest with you. I think, I think a lot of the stuff that's coming out of the labs and stuff, they have specialist VCs for them because they're often deep tech or biotech or hard, very hardware focused that are capital intensive. Probably not a lot of the stuff we are probably going to end up doing. But when initially the AI hype came, I remember firms were doing all sorts of interesting things. Like they would run scrapers through AI papers and find the smartest PhDs. Hey, we think your project has commercialization opportunities. Have you ever thought of starting a company? 9 out of 10 times they'd be like, yeah, I did. But I'm like stuck here. We're like, well, here's $2 million. Go hire your other 3 research assistants and go, go start building this thing. There's many different ways to win. And the graduate student stuff, I have seen it from other people. My most common experience has often been. That really smart software engineer is tinkering with something. They think there's something unique there, or it's actually often been second degree. It's like, hey, that really smart software engineer got recruited by a startup because they realized she or he was like 10x engineer and going and talking to that founder is often a way to get there, right? So there's many different, like I said, when I meant it was a random walk, it's a Truly, truly random walk. It really comes from all areas.

It does make it sound like really kind of exciting, and every day is so different. And right, right.

You just don't know what's going to happen tomorrow.

Right. That's really cool.

You want to bring the stamina and the energy and the attitude to go execute on that. You mentioned there was a lot of students who listen to this. So I think the 2 pieces of unsolicited advice that I give to a lot of students that I talk to is number one. Do the basics really well. I think just follow up with people, write that introduction email, write that cold email, et cetera. Do it and do it really, really well. And you'd be surprised how quickly that compounds. And number 2 is, I would say everyone talks about networking. Everyone talks about like, oh, it's not about what you know, who you know, blah, blah, blah. I think it's a little bit of a BS, but I think finding the things you're good at, finding that, chasing that curiosity, it's like, The best way to put it is be interested in things instead of being interesting. And that will often lead you to some really cool opportunities. And for me, it was like just being interested in startups. What I would do is when I was a TA of the entrepreneurship class, a lot of guest speakers would come and I would often be like, hey, you're a Cornell VC. 2 weeks ago, another Cornell VC came to talk to our class. Do you know this person? Sometimes they'd say no. And I'd be just like, junior year, 19, 20-year-old, like writing an email connecting 2 big shot people together. And guess what? They remember me. Small hacks like that can go a really, really long way.

It's a good idea, right? And to have the sense to know, huh, this seems like a really good idea if I introduce these guys, that that will end up good for me. That's great. So how can people find more about the handbook? It's on Amazon. So you can just Google it and find it.

Yeah, that's probably the, the best way to do it.

Awesome. So thank you so much for joining us, Sakib. Of

course. All right, thanks so much, Kathy.

Awesome. So to find out more about Entrepreneurship at Cornell and see the show notes from this episode, visit eship.cornell.edu. And a special thanks to Abigail Younger, my editor extraordinaire.