The New Path To Success | My First Million Podcast

Name: The New Path To Success | My First Million Podcast
Uploaded: 2020-03-06T18:00:06+00:00
Duration: 42 s
Channel: Sam Parr
Description: In this segment of the My First Million podcast, the host reflects on how the traditional immigrant‑family narrative—hard work leading to higher…

6 Mar 2020 · 1 min

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In this segment of the My First Million podcast, the host reflects on how the traditional immigrant‑family narrative—hard work leading to higher education and a professional career—has begun to break apart. He recounts his own family’s history, noting that his great‑grandfather worked in an Argentine factory so his descendants could become teachers and eventually aim for PhDs or MDs. He observes that today success is no longer tightly linked to formal credentials. The conversation then shifts to his personal entrepreneurial journey: starting a startup in his late teens, attending NYU’s Gallatin School where he crafted a self‑designed major, and simultaneously helping run Dorm Room Fund, a university‑focused pre‑seed fund backed by First Down Capital that deploys roughly a million dollars annually into student‑founder ventures. The discussion highlights the evolving pathways to success for the next generation of immigrant‑descended entrepreneurs.

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It's only recently that kind of playing the startup lottery, for lack of a better term, has been the successful choice. And so for these, you know, my immigrant grandparents, their attitude was they're going to work hard. You know, my great-grandfather was a factory worker in Argentina, right? And he worked his ass off so that my mother and grandmother could be school teachers so that in their minds I could go get, you know, a PhD or an MD or whatever, become a professional. And clearly that's not necessarily happening, but that was like, that was the the life plan for immigrant families in this country for generations was every generation one more level of educational attainment, which correlates with one more level of professional success. And only recently has that been decoupled.
Totally. And then, so, so you go to, you go to Flexport.
So you're saying, yeah, yeah, yeah. Have that experience.
Cool. You're now 17, 18.
Yeah. Uh, so yeah, did the startup like 17, 18, decided to go to college. Um, went to NYU, really special program there called Gallatin where you basically make up your own major. And so the whole school is, it's like Build-A-Bear University, I used to joke about, but it's really like you can do independent study, you can do work study, you can do classes, sort of like hodgepodge this program together. That's cool. And then while I was there, I was helping run Dorm Room Fund, which is First Down Capital's college university fund. It's about a million dollar a year. Actually, it might be more than that. I'm not sure now, but a million dollar a year vehicle just for investing at pre-seed for student founders.