Season 39: Ishi

- Okay, awesome, this is sick, dude. - All right, welcome, welcome, super excited to have you. Where are you from? (laughing) - And it's a question I struggle to answer sometimes, but till D.R., I grew up equal parts between the U.S. and India. Slightly longer version, born in Socal, live there, so it was five. - We're in Socal. - Orange County. - Oh, where? - Do you have any other screws? - Hi, baby! - I've gotten values where I was born and we lived in Huntington Beach. - Huntington, okay? - Yeah. - No way, we had a baby covered. - Maybe, maybe. - Moved to India when I was five. - Where? - Bangalore. - Bangalore. - The family's from North India near Delhi, but grew up in Bangalore when they were for dad's work. And was there for 11 years? So, like in an upper kindergarten through 10th grade, was in India. So those were my formative years. I feel very Indian. (laughing) - I'm very Indian, okay. Thanks for letting me know. - Okay. - Kollywood, Andy, you've met, like, the whole Shebang. - Right. - I do like the semesterly jot night that I host in my apartment. - Wait, what was it? - Jat is like Indian street food. - Okay. - So I love like making Jat from scratch. I'm just having a bunch of friends. I've done two so far this year. - Okay. - Maybe people come so next year. - Oh yeah. - Yeah, waiting for them by, yeah, let me know. - In 10th grade moved to Texas again for dad's work. So that's what I mean by kind of equal parts. If you add up the years in the West Coast India till I was like 20, it's kind of half and half. - Because you don't have an Indian accent, I'm assuming a lot of people think you're from by their Texas or where, yeah, right? - Bingo. People assume I was here born and raised. And the reason is, I was here for the first five years of my life to talk here, but my Hindi is pretty unaccented. - Oh wow. So you're here to study Hindi? - Perfectly fluent in both. - Yeah, yeah. - Oh wow, okay. - So I feel like a true high school. - Did you go to international school? - Yes. - Okay, in the background, okay, that's why. But I never fully felt like one of you. I'm curious if you ever did. - No, and also 'cause I feel like you have an American passport too, right? - I do. - Do you have two? - No, just American. - Oh, just American. - You can't have a duality. - So I would have loved to. - That's part of your identity, not having a visa in a certain country. It does kind of shape how you think about yourself. So even if I had spent like 30 years of my life in the States, if I was on a visa, it kind of makes you feel like you're not a person. - An outsider, yeah. - It does, it does. - Even though I may have never left the States. So yeah, I think that kind of stuck with me where I can't do certain things like fall for credit cards, like do certain things where there's a lot of paperwork that has to be done. And so, yeah, I think that too. - So yeah, I want you to tell me more about Bangalore. - Yeah. - 'Cause I've been to New Delhi, Rajasthan. I've been in India twice, but I never made the visit down to Bangalore. - Yeah. - Yeah, what's it like growing up there? - Yeah, no, that's also what you've been. I've never been to Rajasthan. It's going to December, but that's a blown story. Bangalore, so they call it the Silicon Valley of India. - Okay. - So, yeah, and I spent the summer in SFs. I feel a lot of, like, energetically, there's a lot of similarity, I think. There's a lot of talent. It makes Bangalore very diverse. There's some strong international presence, but even within India, I mean, India itself is such a diverse country, right? You've got like close to 30 States. Each state has its own language. - There's 30 States. - Oh, okay, okay. - Bangalore has its own language, essentially, and then smaller dialects. Like, there's over 1,000 languages spoken in India. - Oh, wow, okay. - In a ridiculous amount of cuisines, clothing, so very, very, I don't think a lot of people realize just how diverse India is, but Bangalore was a very diverse place for that sense, because work brought people from all over the country. - Okay. - So, like, I'm north Indian technical speaking, but I had friends from all over. Quite well-industrialized. Traffic sucked. I mean, I've always said, like, traffic seems to follow me from LA to Bangalore, and then Austin was really bad as well, but-- - Is overpopulation a problem in both Indian cities? - I think so, yes. Population just, I think, a few decades ago, grew so fast. The government didn't really, my guess, I'm not an expert on this, but I think the government just didn't know how to handle it. Some other extreme measures were taken to calibrate for that, but Bangalore in particular, over the 10, 11 years I lived there, probably tripled in population. I mean, I lived, we moved to really quite part of Bangalore. It was literally easier to get coconut water. Like, in a fresh coconut, then it was to get bottled water. No exaggeration. - So, you would walk into a convenience store. There would be no-- - No convenience store. You'd see stalls on the street. - Or, like, stalls, and there's no water. - It's easier to get coconut water. - Oh, okay. - Like a bottled water thing you'd have to hunt for, 'cause it was, like, in nature, close to, like, a government forest reserve. It was quiet, it was beautiful. You drove 20 minutes and you were in the city. - Oh, so you were in central Bangalore? - No. - Where was it called? - So, it's called Whitefield. - Whitefield? - Yeah. - Oh, that's a very American name. - It is. - Okay. - The British. - Oh, okay. - Did you just kept that name? - They just kept the name for it. I mean, Bangalore is also the British-given name for the city. The local name, which it has not been rebranded to, is Bangalore. - Bangalore, okay. - Yeah, so a few years ago they rebranded it to officially be Bangalore. But Bangalore was what the British call it for convenience. - Okay, I would think Mumbai and Delhi are the two biggest cities, is that correct? - Probably, yeah. - It's probably like the New York LA. - I would think of it, like Mumbai is in New York. It's a financial capital. - Okay, okay. - And then Delhi is more of a DC. Like, it's not only the governing capital, but it's a much older city. - But like population-wise, isn't Delhi the biggest? - It's huge, yeah. - It's huge, right? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Whereas people won't really think of DC as like a huge-- - That's fair. That's fair. - And then, okay, I was just trying to make the comparison. And then, where would Bangalore fall? - So, there's a few. So, Mumbai, Delhi are the big ones. Then you have Kolkata in the East. - Oh, okay, I'm very proud of that. - Yeah, it's not very central to India, but it was very important. I mean, for centuries, it was a big trading post, that's a major big, and then Bangalore. The other one would be Hyderabad, which is also in the south. - Okay, okay, okay. - It's actually gotten really big recently. - Wow, okay, okay. - So those are the big five, I would say. - Right, okay. And if I were to go to Bangalore, what would I do? - You would go out a lot. - Oh, okay, nice. - I didn't experience it much. - 'Cause you're a kid, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's also called the Garden City of India. - Garden City. - Beautiful, um, parks. - Right, okay. - It's like very, it's very San Diego weather-wise as well. It's a temperate year round. - Oh, that's amazing. - You probably need a very thin jacket at best. - Yeah. - You're round and never gets crazy weather. You have a monsoon season where it rains quite a bit, but it's still like very pleasant. - Okay. - Never too hot. - Is that a luxury you get 'cause you're in South India, or is it? - To some extent, yeah. - Okay, okay, okay. - So, you have more temperate weather in the south and on the north, like deli, summers are brutal. - Yeah, that's my image, yeah. - 50 degrees in a case, like 110 river affair, and it's bad. - It's much nicer, climate-wise. - Much nicer. It's also a little bit of a plateau, which I think helps you. - Okay. - And there's a bunch of beautiful hill stations within driving distance. - Okay. - South India is very different. - Hill station. - Oh yeah, hill stations are, I guess maybe that's an immune term, but it's just like call it vacation spots that are more mountainous, more remote. - Oh, okay, okay. - Like you have food of a four or five hour drive away, which is like a coffee plantation center of India. - Oh, okay. - Beautiful, incredible coffee. - So, it sounds like there's a lot more of the suburbs as well, right? There's a lot more nature than you would imagine from a typical Silicon Valley type. - Yes. - Okay, okay. Oh, cool. Moving forward. Let's go to Texas. - Yeah. - You went to Utah, Austin. - Yeah. - Okay, okay. Is there a Utah somewhere else? - Yes, there's many. - Oh, there's many here. - You two are like the UCs of Texas. - Oh, well. - There's seven. - How many are there? - Eight, maybe a little more. - Okay, 'cause I hear the Austin one, the most I feel like. - Yeah, so Utah Austin is like a Berkeley. It's the flagship, it's the first, it's the most well-known. - Okay. - But you also have Utah's, which is close to where my family lives. You have an Arlington. - Is there something special about having eight campuses or like schools? - So there's completely separate universities. - It's completely separate. - Completely separate. - Funding all comes from a centralized place. So the really cool thing, which is the alert is safe. But the UT system, when I was in college, had the second biggest endowment after Harvard. - Oh, wow. - Yeah. - Holy rich. - That's crazy. - All the crude oil. - Okay, so in the back end, it is supported by the same network, but-- - Independent universities. - Independent universities. - Yes, yes, she was its own B. Like we were our own mascot. - Now, tell me all about UT. For someone who's never been to Texas. - It's an urban campus, honestly quite similar to Penn. So it's in-- - Like pre-central. - It's like, I feel like awesome was kind of built around it. - Oh, wow, wow. - Like a mile from the river or a river, really pretty people kayaking. And because it's an urban campus, student life is really fun. Student, like the club activity stuff is really rich. But there's also the entire city to explore. - How big is the student body? - Huge. So my class size alone was like 9,000. And undergrads plus grads together, there was like 50,000 students. - So 9,000 times four, right? So about-- - Plus the grad student. So-- - Right, right. - So just undergrad alone about 40K. - Yeah. - Okay, exactly. So big, big campus. We call it the 40 Acres. - Oh, okay. - Like UT's called the 40 Acres and that's how the campus is, but like a big student body. So there's no way you're gonna know everybody. They kind of divided by colleges, which is more manageable. So I studied, I did a dual degree in chemical engineering and finance. So I was in the engineering school and the business. - You did both? - This is the whole story. - This is the whole story we could go through. - That's not common, right? - Okay, okay, I'm killing myself if I had to do that. (laughing) - I'm drop out. (laughing) - In our class of whatever 9,000, I think there were seven or eight of us. - Oh, yeah. - That's okay. - Yeah. - That's okay. - Thank God, that's not a normal thing. - No, you actually had to actively fight administration to be allowed to do both of it. - Yeah. - In my case. - Okay, look at you. (laughing) - I was trying, things have changed, things have changed. - Obviously your schedule was pretty packed at that point. Did you spend most of your college's life studying? Well, the two. Real D.R. of it is, I actually almost didn't get into college at all. Okay. Moving from India, I ended up in three different high schools in 10th grade and it kind of messed things up for me a little bit. You went to three high schools. In 10th grade. The second school, the first Texas school I went to, we moved a week or so into school starting already and the academic advisor I got was new. I was first in an actual case, so you can have no idea what to do with my transcript. Right. Till D.R. the GP conversion. I like did well in school in English. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was talking to my class, blah, blah, blah, blah, and when I moved things got mistranslated I think and so it took us a semester to realize that and by then it was too late to fix. So it was not great. I kind of had to climb my way back up. Yeah. I was figuring it out. I applied to colleges, only got into Texas public schools, which are required to grant you admission if you have a certain rank. But UT was the best school you got into. That I got into. But I did not get a major, which is not. So public schools usually you applied directly to the program you want to study because there are so many people, they can't afford to let people in and then choose their major. Can it be like the sciences or is it like chemistry? Yeah. Oh wow, okay. And you can't change your major. You can, but it's a bit of a, it's a bit of a, which is probably what you did. It depends how competitive the major you want to move into is like you want to do geography less demand. You can probably just go. But all public schools in the States, you have to declare your major before you go in. I don't know if it's all, but it's common. Like UC Berkeley, same thing. That's like, you have to apply to that department. That's like London. That's like Europe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, really? I'm probably Japan too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You don't have a lot of flexibility that the private school is here before you. So I applied to Biomedical Engineering, did not get in. Oh, okay. But I still was admitted to the university. And so my family actually, it was a little of a hard week, but it was like wait, so if not for the Texas State Legislature of like the rule being since you're getting funding from us, you have to let a certain percentage of students in. If not for that, the running joke is like, I would have gone from top of my class to zero college admissions. But you probably had backup. No? No, no, no. I mean, my backup was UT Dallas, which I did get into, but like, yeah, that was also the running joke is I only got in because of that same state legislator. Right, right. Okay. If not for that, we have no way of knowing whether I would have gotten into college or not. Wait, but you got into the university, but not the major. What happens then? You are a crack in the system, less than 3% of all students are in that situation. It's like a wait list. Yeah. It's a soft note. It's a way of saying, we're forced to admit you because this state legislator, like state gives us funding, and you are the top ex percent of your high school class, so we have to let you in, but we're not all we need to do in that major. Oh, that's what you meant by a legislature. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What eventually happened? So my best option was to go to UT undeclared to be one of those 3% of students. And then you went, and then you declared once you got it. So you have to apply. So I spent my freshman year undeclared. I went to the 16 academic advisors, all 15 of them told me, make your life simple, just pick an easy major you're getting to, graduate with some degree, and then maybe go to grad school and like, try to rebuild your life, essentially, like this is a bit of a. Oh, go to grad school, okay. I mean, it's a hard place to come back from. If you like. Can't you. You can't graduate without a major, no? No. You can. No. Oh, you can't. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You need a major. You need a major. Oh, so that's why they told you to get an easy one. You have to graduate. Yeah. Because you could apply and you could get into a competitive major, but like the year I was a freshman, the inter. We call it internal transfer. It's getting very academic. (laughter) But like, this was like a big. We lost half the audience, but it's okay. (laughter) That's fine. But like, the second treats to chemical engineering and finance, my freshman year, were 4%. I would imagine it's one of the hardest ones. Engineering is known to be one of the hardest. Yeah. And so my advisors were like, pick it easier around, but like my 16th academic advisor, I don't know why, I'm just so busy. But. I didn't know there were that many. Probably because. I was hunting them to be like, surely there's a way for me to study the thing I want to study. And you got into both and you're like, "Screw it. I'm going to do both." I'm going to do both. And then I had this big eureka moment during COVID, where I was like, "I'm living my academic dream." But also, I feel like there's so much of the world that haven't traveled. There's so many random ass wanting things that haven't done that I really want to. And the world opens up again. I'm saying yes to everything. Okay. And then you enjoy your remaining two years. Okay. I said yes to perhaps too many things. Okay. And so it makes sense that perhaps continues. That's good. That's great. How is UTI Austin? What's your mascot? It's called a longhorn. A longhorn. Is it like a deer? Yeah. Think Texas. Think branches like cattle. It's like a bowl thingy. Yeah, it has really long horns. Which way? This way or? Kind of this way. Okay, it's like a buffalo. Yeah, sure. Longhorn. It's like a lot of cattle, like similar variety. They're cute. When someone asks you where you're from, do you go UTI at Austin? Or like, what to do? Look, I could be from UTI at Dallas, no? Fair question. You say UTI. We originally would come and say UTI Austin, but everyone just knew if you said UTI you mean. But what is someone from UTI Arlington? They say UTI Arlington. Oh, so you got UTI. We got UTI. And that's established amongst all the schools. Anywhere in Texas or even actually beyond Texas. If you say UTI, people who know the UTI system know you mean UTI Austin. UTI Austin. Okay, so you guys are top of the class. And your color is orange? Yeah, like a burnt orange. It's actually really pretty color. Wait, so you guys are the basketball school? Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. Kevin Durant? Yes. Oh, Kevin Durant, UTI. Oh, okay, okay. So, big sports scene. Big sports scene. Yeah. The gates are huge. I mean, it's such a big stadium. I'm assuming it's a big stadium. It's a fun time. Florida, once at a free concert for us. For a vlog game? You see for me? Oh, okay. Did he fall in? Did a photo show for UTI students on campus? Oh, it's crazy. Tell me how the campus is like. Yeah. So, you've got this main street kind of like locus, but much, much bigger and longer. It's called Speedway. Speedway? Speedway. And that's where everyone goes to class from dorms. It all happens there. Yeah. Okay. Were there like traditions that you guys did and stuff? The one big thing that everyone has to do on graduating is up to the fountain. And it's disgusting. You have to jump into it? In your grad robes at night, what is cold? Everybody, did you do it? Yeah, of course. One of the iconic picks you have to take is like, you're in the fountain in your grad dress or whatever. Yeah. Champagne bottle pop. Right, right. So this fountain by graduation is Champagne infested. Okay. Thousands of people have been in it. Yeah. It's disgusting. You don't want to fall in this. You don't want to. But you will fall. Jimmy Fallon fell in the water. That's awesome. That's cool. That's a big one. Yeah. Was that your early job? Yeah. How long were you there? Two years. Oh, you're. Oh. Yeah. What? I did a different MBA. You're different. Oh. You're like the baby. I'm a baby. Oh, wow. I also, because of the whole dual degree thing, I took an extra year of college to make it more doable. So I actually enjoyed college. So I took five years in college instead of four. That means you applied in undergrad, right? I did. But it just means on the same age as consultants who did three years of work in MBA. And that's why you're not sponsored? No. Because you're a deferred. Because I could still be sponsored. I didn't take sponsors. Wait, if you're deferred, right? Yeah. And you apply in undergrad, you get into BCG. Yeah. And later they tell you, oh, we'll fund your MBA. Is that using our works? Yeah. Okay. But you did it. Okay. So the sponsorship conversation usually have right before you're leaving for business school. Oh, right. Oh, okay. It's last minute. How was BCG? I liked it. I mean, I kind of knew going into BCG, but I was not going to be a career consultant. Okay. Because my thing has always been this health tech longevity science. Yeah. Affordableics, that's a little health care blah, blah, blah. For the reason this dual degree happened in the first place. Right. Because I don't think one degree can teach me all the things I want to learn. So I knew I wanted to go to consulting to learn how the world works. Okay. Travel a bunch. Yep. Kind of try a bunch of different things. And then eventually go to business school, which I had locked in. Right. That was always a plan. Yeah. The question was, I always say BCG over-delivered. Yeah. Like, I think that things I wanted to get out of it in three years I got into. Okay. I love BCG feeling very, I did nine cases in two years. Over. Like, I actively solved for doing shorter cases. So I could experience working with a bunch of different companies. I had 11 managers in two years. Wow. Okay. 11 managers. Wow. Is that like case dependent? Like, every case you get a different. Not always. Okay. You can choose to stick with the same teams you're over here. But I actively, which sometimes is sad. Like, sometimes you really find a manager you love. Oh, yeah. And they'd ask you to stay on for another project. Yeah. I mean, there were times I. Do you have a say as an ad? Sometimes. Yeah. As an analyst or whatever you guys call it. Like, do you build credibility? Yes. Oh, okay. So you can be like, I want to do this. Well, I don't want to do that. Oh, okay. And sometimes around upon, like, there were some decisions I made where I was like, I want to do something different and people were like, why would you not just. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I knew I was solving for variety and experience because I knew I was not here forever. Wait, when that happens, like, top down say like, oh, BCG got this case. Yeah. Who wants to work on it? Like, is it. It's not like a top down. You. It's you. So MBB work a little differently across the board. Okay. Bane is a lot like that. Okay. Where your staffer kind of. Maybe gives you some say, but for the most part, it's you are going on this case. Right. You're put on the case. At BCG, you kind of network your way onto cases. Um. What if you don't? Do you just get a random case? Your staffer will put you on something random. Yeah. Okay, okay. So if you don't have anything on your plate. Yeah. If you don't take anything, someone will put it on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the baseline utility expectation. Interesting. So you could be on what we call the beach for a while. You could do a bunch of short-term stuff. Yeah. But eventually, you'll be expected to find a case or your staffer will put you on a case. Okay. And if you've been doing well, cases will also see you're available and ask to have it. Okay. There's six 10 years at BCG. Okay. PL is three. Uh-huh. They're usually the ones responsible for staffing a team. Okay. So they will usually be like, I'm ramping up this case. Yeah. Staffers, I need your help finding people. Yeah. So look within their own office and sister offices and be like, who are available to staff? And they can kind of see people's resources. Reviews, like here, like the grapevine makes a huge difference. I can speak to your PL friends and be like, "Who have you worked with that was good? "Hey, this person's available. "Do you know anything about them?" And we do the same thing on our end. - When you say available though, if I have one case, does that still make me available? - Yeah. - So everyone only has one case. - Thank God. - The moment the case is done, you're available. Oh, that's so unique to consulting. - Yeah. - Like, no other company works in that way. - No, I know. - I know. - I've done this podcast with many consultants. - And you said you never do this? - No, you can't do this. - 'Cause usually I would hear about like BCG life or like, "How is it working for a company?" I never really understood the mechanism of how people are put on cases. But okay, great, you told me now. (laughing) - I don't know if you ever needed to know this information. (laughing) - I don't know, I don't know. - I'm just curious, and it's a pretty open-ended question, right? But is there a thesis you came to business school with that you think you've resolved or has changed? - I actually had a lot of change in sort of the way I think in view life, but that was never something I expected coming into business school. A business school was a way for me to just escape. - Oh. - Yeah, yeah. Going to Duke, I was a trade argument sax. Moved to Uber when Uber Eats was coming to Japan. Now at work. On paper, I speak English in Japan. I work out, I have content, I have a decent following. People are like, "Oh wow, this guy, I wanna be like him." A lot of my viewers are like kids in their 20s. Both boys and girls who are like, and even a lot of moms watch my channel. I want my kids to be like Rin. But there's always a part of me. It's probably my Japanese side of being very humble and that I'm nothing special. (laughing) And so when I went to Duke, it was because I got rejected to all the IVs that I wanted to go to. Even Goldman, when I got the offer, people were like, "Oh, you went to Goldman sax?" I was only there for six months. The reason why I got into Goldman was because I applied to a shit ton of companies. I applied to 100 plus in Japan, and almost 100 in the States. I applied to almost 200 companies coming out of undergrad. And it was a numbers game for me. - Yeah. - And so for me, getting into Goldman wasn't something that was surprising. It was like-- - You were a little mistaken. - Yeah, and that's something that has been consistent. A lot of like the achievements in life have been, in a sense I was lucky, but also it wasn't my first shirt. Like Duke wasn't my first. Like even Warren coming to Warren, people are like, "Oh, you're so ambitious." Like going to business school. No, I was just tired of my life in Japan. I wanted a reason to not work. - Oh, that's good. - A business school is a great excuse to not work. And just fuck around. - That's true. - And hence, here I am. And I think being at Warren is a good enough excuse. And it's always just being good enough in the moment. And it looks great on my plate, but actually these are just like, I just collected all the things that just happened to come my way. And I was one either lucky or it was in my top choice. And so even when I was at Goldman, life was tough. Like I was a trader, I was waking up early, but I was like, no, like I don't want to live this lifestyle. And I don't think I was built for that type of grind. And back then, I didn't want to accept it. I was like, yeah, I was like, oh, trading, like I could do this. But when I quit Goldman six months in, some of my viewers think I was on probation and I was just like cut off, which was in the case. Like every single person I talked to told me not to quit. My managers, my team, they're like, why are you doing this? You're going to regret this. I remember like the day I was going to quit, I told them day of when I was going to quit. In the morning, I went into the office and I was like, I'm quitting today. Like today, effectively immediately. Yes. It was a crazy moment. We had 50 to 60 people who started at the same time in our class. I was the first one to quit. And I told Rember, telling the head of the HR department, he really liked me. And he was like, you're the last person that I thought would quit in our entire Goldman class, in Japan. And I remember we were on the escalator and he was like, all right, but if it's something you decided, talked to your team. And I was like, yeah, I'm decided. And then my manager talked to me and he was like, are you sure you're going to-- Well, I had some shitty teammates as well. And he was like, dude, and he gave me a lot of work to just grow up work that he didn't want to do. He really didn't want me to quit for a separate reason. Because now he has to do it. But more or less, I was like, this isn't the career that I want, this isn't the lifestyle. And then Uber, people are like, oh, Uber. It was launching in Japan. You must have played such a pivotal role. I was like, no, I went to Uber because it was the company that gave me the fastest offer. And it gave me an offer in like three days. Uber. And the reason why I couldn't take too much time to recruit while I was working is because traders can't take days off. When the markets are open, we're in the office. And so leaves of absences were generally not allowed. So I took all the leaves of absences that I had, which was like, I think five days, I took a week off. And I said I was sick, and I took five days off. I recruited so hard during those five days. And I got, Uber was the only one that gave me an offer. I applied to Airbnb. We worked like new gig work. Yeah, yeah. But again, even that, it was just like six months I've rolled me in on my resume. It was just like, yeah, I went to Uber. It's just 'cause I was running away. That was long, but that's sort of where my-- No, this was awesome. Yeah, that's awesome, sort of. Really? I'm going to go. This wasn't supposed to be about me, but-- No, no, no. I'm slipping on me, OK, sure. No, please, please. I love that. Yeah, yeah. I have many questions, so first of all. So you applied to 100 jobs in Japan and the US. Was that because you were open to working in both? Or because you didn't want to make the decision, you wanted the universe to make the decision for you? What was the thinking behind literally splitting your chances? I think it's common amongst most people at war. And you live a very structured, academic elite life where you're top of your class, wherever everyone's coming from. They're all top of their class in some way. And you can't let yourself or anyone else down. You can't take the lower path because you've invested so much time and effort into it. You not getting into college. It was not, in a sense, acceptable for yourself, right? And for your family, right? And there's a lot more pressure versus someone who just went, you know, didn't really study much. And they don't have that sort of pressure. And so for me, it was that-- and I'm an extremely careful person. When it comes to these things, I prep a lot for a lot of this. And so for me, failure was an option. And the only way to sort of back that up was to apply to a sh-- to the companies. Everywhere, like in two different-- Everywhere. I applied to companies I didn't even want to go to, but it was better than not having anything. The only thing I can differentiate myself is the numbers game. If I can spend every day an extra hour applying to a company than anyone else out there, my chances are going to go up. My resume is not going to change overnight. The college I went to, especially as an undergrad, there's nothing you can change. Your GPA is-- We're making stuff up. Yeah, every semester, yeah, we get a new GPA, but it goes up by 0.1.2. It's not like I can do a volunteering program or do a new startup in a matter of a couple of days or even a couple of months. So the only way I can increase my chances of getting into a better company, my resume is fixed. My cover letter is more or less fixed. The only way I can do that is to apply to more. So that was my strategy. But what it's interesting to hear you say that your only differentiator was-- or you thought your only differentiator was your ability to play the numbers game, because-- In the moment, yes. OK, yeah, yeah. OK, because to me, I think-- tell me if you disagree. But I think Goldman and BCG share a little bit of the high pressure, hierarchical. Here are the unwritten rules, kind of ways of operating. And there are things you do a certain way. So for you to be the first in your class to quit, six months in, highly unorthodox move, I think takes courage. And I think coming from someone who is sometimes delusional, you're optimistic, and that's not a good thing. Always, I spend a lot of time thinking about when you need to know to cut your losses. It can be hard for me, honestly. It seems like you're a lot more comfortable with that. Even if the reasons don't make sense to a lot of people, you know when something's no longer serving you, and you're able to walk away from it. I think that's pretty incredible. I think that's something to be proud of. Yeah, I mean-- I'm serious! I need that. It's like a realization that I feel like a lot of people experience at some point in their life. People who have worked out top tier firms as a corporate employee, whether it be BCG Goldman, Google Meta, it's the safest route to success. It's to be employed by a top tier Fortune 500 company. And at some point, most people realize that it's not worth it anymore. And hence, they go start up. They start taking more risks. They have an established career where they can go out of the conventional resume and explore something that they enjoy doing. That's why you see, like, I don't know, senior partners or, like, associates just go off and do something crazy and people are like, oh, he's ex-schoolman or he's ex-BCG. I just had that six months into the job. There's a part of me that just wants to go rogue and try all kinds of things that I want to do. But also, there's a big part of me that wants to say in the US, which comes with a visa, which comes with a corporate life. And so that's my biggest struggle right now in wanting to-- What are your current, like, stresses in life? The blessing and the curse of optionality. Kind of similar to you, if you look at my life in hindsight, it looks like I've checked a lot of the right boss. This is, right, like, some degree of the team, BCG, Wharton, Deferred, M.A., blah, blah, blah, blah. But like, life almost never went as planned. And like we've talked a little bit about the classical college graduate transition part. I think things have always worked out though, and I haven't taken enough advantage of the fact that things seem to always work out. So right now I could go back to BCG, which is probably the safe thing most of our classmates are probably going to do that, which makes all of us up in the world. I could go back to where I was this summer, which was Paul Alter that was SF. It was a well-kind of company. It's the biggest cybersecurity company. Cybersecurity company? Yeah, so it's very B2B, which is why many of us probably haven't heard of it, but the bleeding edge of tech with applications and health care thing, that age that I have to scrap, I'd love to get closer to that. It's so nice that you have a strong mission like that, because most people in the world don't, and it's hard though, because I agree. It's nice to have something that, not just on dramatic, but it makes you wake up in the day being like, "That is something." Yeah, it's that close to day by day, but it's also hard because when you are not feeling like you're actively making progress, it kind of haunts you. You feel like you're not living up to your potential, or you're not being true to yourself, or you're letting yourself down. So like if I was on a BCG case, and I actively jumped around between industries as well, but if I was not on a case that I felt like was serving me in my dreams towards health care, I was pretty miserable. Okay. I can see how that can be stressful. So I think it's a blessing in a curse. It can be a good incentive to be like, "You don't have a choice, just get behind it and stick with it." But there are times that's not feasible, or it's valuable to pick up other skills in other places. People who ask me, "Why are you in service, Carrie?" But you don't think about how, of all the industries in the world, the ones most susceptible to be cyber-attack, or financial services, and health care, because that's where the most sensitive data is. So it's a good thing to understand, but even then it's not directly related to health. There were days I was like, "This is really cool." Then there were days where I was like, "Why am I not working at like a stem cell startup?" Do you have a take on free will versus determinism? I would like to live life, thinking it's free will, regardless of which way it might be, determinism, whatever. But I feel like I'll stop trying. If it was already meant to be, then why would I try? So I do like to enjoy the thought of me being accepted to a certain university, but aside from that, I think luck is such a big part of this world. Obviously, some people happen to be more lucky than others. Oh, for sure. There are, for example, soccer players in Africa who are really good, but was living a small village, and some player came and found him. There's like crazy stories about people who are extremely lucky. For example, a homeless man and some creator came and he just gave him a bunch of money and became successful or something. That's not because he tried. It's not his efforts. It kind of relieves a lot of your stress. Being able to think that so much of your life is out of your control. I can try working so hard, but if Trump tomorrow was like, "We're screwing all the visas?" I can. No matter how hard I try, I'm not going to get that visa. And so being in business school now, also having this whole fluffy lifestyle right now where I don't know where I'm going to be in a couple of months, that's what I tell myself. Ren, you might not get an offer, you might put in that 20% of effort just in case you're going to need it. If you don't put in that 20% luck won't come your way. I hear you. I hear you. I think we grow up, I don't know if you're related to this, but I think it's a very collectible society thing. Like the tug of war almost, where it's like, "You have to work hard. You don't have a choice. You have to work hard. You have to go to school." But also, the world is greater than you are. There's a lot at place like, "Say humble." Because I think the whole luck thing also keeps you humble. But as I've grown up, I think I've realized it's kind of a loop, the luck effort thing. Because you can be lucky and still squander it. You can have something be given to you that you've not earned. And you may be because you haven't put in the work, you don't have the capacity to hold it. It's like those lottery winners that won millions of dollars, spend it all. And then just starts just like, you know, versus if you've worked really hard and seen a lot of failure, but suddenly you have the right opportunity. You've built the capacity to hold the rewards that finally come to you. So I think I like to think each of us are guaranteed a few opportunities in life, where the thing we are dreaming of or the thing we really care about, like there's a window where it can't happen. It's on us to push through. So I like to think if you consistently work hard and ways that are treated yourself one day, you don't know when, and likely in ways you don't see as luck, things will happen. It also ties to the idea of our people born equal. Oh, we're getting used to it. I mean, I'm typically the type to sit and ponder about these thoughts, actually. Yeah, I'm like a pretty introspective. There was this one time my teacher came up to me in middle school, and he's like, "Do you think people are born equal?" And I was like, "Yeah, yeah, equal opportunities. If we all work hard enough, we'll all be successful." And I was like, "Oh, it's interesting you think that way." And his reaction kind of stuck with me. And I was like, "I really thought about it." I was like, "Oh, as a kid, I was like, people aren't born equal." It's so true, but it's not in a bad way. People are born into some household who has some level of income. I could be born in like a very poor country, in a poor family, or in like a really rich family. And bullshit us out, we are in relatively fortunate families. 100% If I am fortunate enough to be, you know, living a relatively good life and being able to afford college and everything, I have more responsibility to myself to sort of make use of that. Because we're starting on slightly higher grounds than people who might not have that opportunity. It doesn't make sense for me to not use it. Especially also doing social media now. There's a lot of viewers who don't have the same opportunities that I do, who would write like, "Hey, comments." And a lot of it would be, "Oh, yeah, Gacha in Japanese means." Gacha, gacha, is like the, "Have you been in Japan before?" I've seen the capsules that you put in a couple coins. Yes, it's like the gumball machine. Oh, yeah, yeah. But like, and that's luck. You don't know what you're going to get. Which one do you want to get, okay. And oh, yeah, it's parent. So it's like when you're born, it's like a gumball machine. You don't know which parent you're getting. That's the same. And so it's like a hateful way of saying, "Oh, you just had a good family, which is why you're just privileged." I think it is part of who I am as well. But also, like, it makes me want to work harder because I know that I was fortunate enough to have the things that I had. So, yeah. This is not crazy. But that, like, that hits hard. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That hits really deep for me. Yeah, yeah. It's something I hold very true to who I am. Okay. I'd love to hear more about what you do. In my case, I'm the first working woman in my family. Okay. And that is, in no worry, in no world do I deserve that credit, right? Yeah. If my grandfather had not gained an education and moved from our ancestral village to the city, and if my dad hadn't, worked really hard to get into one of the best engineering schools in India and moved us here, there's a decent chance I'd be in our ancestral village in India, married with two kids at this time. Oh, wow, okay. Living a very different life. Right. Not necessarily a bad one. Yeah. Just not the life that I dream of living. Yeah. So, I'm also the first daughter. And on the day I sat in my family in seven generations. Wow, okay. Seven, yeah. Seven generations of sons. Oh, wow, okay. So, I take it as the opportunity of several lifetimes. Yeah. To be living the life that I live. And I do treat it as a huge responsibility. Yeah, yeah. To make it worth it. Because I have second cousins in our ancestral village who live a very different life from me. Yeah. Whether or not they're happier can be debated. Because I think the whole like how much money you need to be happy debate is when we can have some of the lot of time on. But they definitely do not have the kind of optionality and opportunity that I have. There's no contest about it. Yeah. And I feel like it is my responsibility to make good on the sacrifice that's made by my mother, my aunts, my grandparents, my dad. There's so much that went into me living the life I live today. And me feeling that responsibility of making something of it does not feel like pressure. It feels like an honor. But it is something I think about every single day. Wow. So, that hits part of it. Yeah. I'd love to hear more about your interpretation. No, no, no. That's crazy. I feel like you would have, you have like a crazier benchmark. Because I wouldn't be like, you could apologize to fans. I was like, okay. We're so afraid of failing. I feel like when you lose everything, people have so much power to succeed. There's this channel called School of Hard Knocks. I don't know if you've seen it. People who interview billionaires is like, who goes out on the streets. I think I have. Yeah. And oftentimes they'd be like, have you ever been in debt or like, have you where do you come from? It's like, oh, I come from a poor family. A lot of people say that. And you see a lot of the CEOs and entrepreneurs. They're not from well-off families. Some are. But like, a lot of the people who have worked their asses off is because they have nothing. And when I see that much power in people around me who are entrepreneurs, who are doing crazy things. They don't have a strong education. They didn't go to good schools. But it makes me think, even like athletes, right? Like a lot of athletes come from like nowhere. The only thing they could have done was go to the soccer field at night and practice more than people. Yeah, we don't have that grind mindset mindset. And that's something that I've always wanted. But it's so hard to build on yourself because it's more of something that environment shapes you from such a young age that, I don't know, to this day, if someone were to ask me what's something that you would want as like a skill, like a skill for yourself, it would be that grind mindset to be able to be like, what to be like. Tomorrow, I might not be able to pay rent, so I'm gonna grind on this today. I think that hustle mindset is something that is so powerful that you don't actually see a lot in places like business school. We are in a bubble. I feel like a lot of people say, oh, Warren's such a special place. You can network with so many people who have gone to great companies, who can obviously pay tuition to be here, but for me, the people who can't be here and are grinding their asses off to obviously, things like capturing the American dream and all that. I respect those people like so much, and those are sort of the people that's hard to find, but also like, it's only those types of people who have that sort of grind mindset. So I, obviously I'm not that kind of person, but like I try to sort of lean into it and like try to hear their stories and all that. Yeah, I don't know. That was just coming from the whole, our people born equal and because some people aren't, they work extremely hard to get to the level that we are. That brings me to the hard work and luck thing is like, sometimes I think it's yes, the luck you are born with, the luck you get, but also what you make of your circumstances. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Some people are privileged, but they do, they squander that. And other people see adversity and they make a decision, they can either cry about it and be very valid and feeling underprivileged or they can, I mean, the way I think my dad did, they can just find work incredibly hard, have some luck support them, but they're driven my work and then, I totally agree. And you can never take that mindset away from them. I totally agree. Also, I do though, I think 200 job applications and taking your five days off as a trader to hustle, I think you do have, maybe it's my induction, but I see some of that hustle mindset in you and I hope you cut it yourself. Oh, no, thank you, thank you. I think it's just me trying to be that way. Like I always try, like whenever I'm put into that situation, these are sort of the thoughts that come through my head because I have a safety net, because tomorrow I can still eat and sleep, why not take the risk? Is sort of how I'm trying to shift my mindset? Yeah. If anything, we should be the ones that are taking more risk, but we can't because we're, we're, yeah, yeah. Like the golden safety nets of our previous jobs and like accolades, we seem to have collected. We, I literally had such a long conversation about this recently where it's like, you should be able to use that to be like, I can now do anything, knowing if I fall, that is the lowest of all, but instead we get trapped into being now I only need to climb higher. Exactly. And like we're so risk averse. Like we're so scared of taking risks. No, that's good. Thank you so much. (upbeat music)