I want to try to keep this short as there is a lot on likely your plate, and you may want to explore other areas of the website. Nonetheless, this is probably the most important part of the website. I have spent the last 7 years of my life (since freshman year of college) working to build my career full of meaningful experiences and opportunities.
Product management & investing
I have worked for 5 startups (3x seed, 2x series A, 1 acquired) and founded 2 of my own. During the pandemic, I built out a newsletter for investors where I helped them track and identify Gen Z trends and wrote about how they related to the private markets. This newsletter grew to 750+ subscribers with some of the top firms in the world represented in the mailing list. I also spent time working with some top investors through college helping them understand my generation and making recommendations. All this so say, I have spent my entire career working in the early stage market.
For the last 2.5+ years I have spent most of my roles operating as a product manager across various early stage startups. I have learned how to build, talk to customers, and notice great products when I see them. I believe this translates directly into investing. At the end of the day, a company can only be as good as its product, this is a belief I discovered and have written about here.
I have built and seen multiple early stage products and am very confident in my ability to notice great ones, identify the areas of improvement on bad ones, or see which ones could successfully pivot. This is something that I have echoed in my writings, and through my work in the markets prior to today.
Product people think logically. We are problem solvers. In tech companies, problems occur, goals are built, and product managers solve these problems and hit goals by building, iterating, or sunsetting parts of the product. Once you pull back the hood, early stage companies are exactly like new products. They are being built to solve a certain problem in the world, and the founders have conviction that this is the solution. The job of the investor is the same as a PM in this case, we are supposed to question the thesis and work to prove out the assumptions and see if maybe, the founders will be right. From there it is about evaluating if this founders will be the ones to do it, but thats more of a team decision.
I hate writing about myself because I feel that I am much better at showing my work than telling it. To that end, I’ll start by saying I have a tenacity and work ethic unlike most kids my age. As you can see, I have put a lot of hours and written thousands of words to go above and beyond what is needed in a traditional application.
A little bit about me and why this position interests me.
I am endlessly curious and like to sit in the front 10% of the law of innovation of adoption curve. This means that whenever something new happens, crypto, NFTs, AI, I am on it before most are. Sometimes this is beneficial (crypto) and sometimes you could have some unexpected bumps (shoutout my NFT portfolio). Nonetheless, I have a track record of staying up to date with the newest innovations and trends while also spotting the companies that are making that shift happen.
Beyond this, I am a quick learning and an extrovert. I will talk to a stranger about how AI for an hour (just did that on the flight I am writing this on), and love to meet new people with the same interests as me.
I have been in this space for while. I understand where the money flows, I’ve seen the mistakes of the past, like when companies didn’t feel the need to grow toward profitability (circa 2021), and I am confident I can be an extremely strong asset to any firm.