Finding My Dragons and Claiming My Throne

After several years of having my Facebook wall plastered with friends' posts about the latest Game of Thrones episode and having no idea what they were talking about, I finally got around to watching all 3 seasons of this popular HBO show.

All in all, I think it's a very cool world with a lot of really interesting characters, and the show has gotten me thinking a lot about my own life and what I have to do to get what I want these next few years.

For those who haven't yet watched Game of Thrones (henceforth "GoT"), the plot centers around a highly unstable kingdom called Westeros that is in the midst of civil war, as several different leaders throughout the kingdom have declared themselves king after the current King's claim to the throne was called into question, and are raising armies to take by force what they believe should be theirs.

Meanwhile, far away in a distant land, there is a young exiled women named Daenerys Targaryen who also has a claim to the throne, given that her father was king at one point but was overthrown by the most recent king and she is his only living heir. The only problem is she has no army, no allies, no leadership experience, and is a woman living in a man's world playing a man's game. Not only that, while the civil war rages on in Westeros, she is stuck halfway around the world with no clear way to get back home.

The gradual way in which Daenerys, with a little luck and lot of saavy, is able to gain an army, gain allies, and become a formidable contender for the throne is one of the central storylines of GoT. In fact, her character has been a major inspiration for myself as well, as I attempt to pull off something similar here in Silicon Valley.

I won't lie, I also want to become King one day. It's definitely one of the items on my bucket list. But that's not what this blog post is about.

What I want right now is simple - I want to make something of myself, I want to use my God-given talents to put a meaningful dent in the universe, and I feel that the best way to do so, for me and at this point in history, is through startups, in the startup capital of the world, Silicon Valley.

I know what I want, but the only question is HOW to get it. Right now, not unlike Daenerys at the beginning of GoT, I'm in a situation where I have very little going for me...

• For starters, I am totally new to California and the San Francisco Bay Area, and I can probably count on a hand and a half the number of people I already knew reasonably well upon arriving here. I may be back in the US, but my real home is in NJ/NY, so in a way I've traded one foreign land (Korea) for another (San Francisco).
• I want to work in technology, but I am not an engineer and I don't really know how to code, and whatever relevant experience I might have had in Korea is not valued that much here. My resume simply does not stand out compared to the other people here, so I won't be able to get a top startup job by just cold-applying to companies. I've already tried and it didn't lead to anything. Rather than blindly applying to hundreds of startups, I'm going to have to identify a few that I really identify with, show up at their doorstep, and then do whatever it takes to show them that I'm an awesome guy who can do great things for them.
• I want to build my network here and get to know a lot of smart, talented, and accomplished people, but right now I have nothing in my resume or my history that would necessarily make *them* want to get to know *me*.

Given all this, how could I possibly hope to stand out and make something of myself? Believe it or not, watching Daenerys Targaryen do her thing in GoT actually gave me a lot of inspiration.

The show starts off with Daenerys being married off to a powerful and greatly feared warlord named Khal Drogo in the hopes that his army of 40,000+ warriors can help her take back the throne at Westeros. Early on, this plan seems to be working out pretty well, enough so that even the current King at Westeros acknowledges them as a threat despite them still being thousands of miles away.

However, things don't work out as planned, as Khal Drogo is killed in a freak accident and almost all of his warriors and followers abandon Daenerys, as she was merely seen as the queen of the warlord Khal Drogo and not a leader in her own right.

I also had hopes of a similar "alliance" with my previous employer Croquis Inc., a Korean startup with global ambitions, great engineering and design talent, and makers of "Biscuit", the Bronze Medalist at Evernote's 2013 Devcup. I ended up joining them through a chance introduction from my wife, and at first, it seemed like a match made in heaven. They wanted an international person who is passionate about technology who could still fit in and communicate comfortably with Korean coworkers, and it seemed like the perfect way for me to gain experience and make inroads into Silicon Valley.

I thought working with Croquis could be a launching pad for my new startup career, but for reasons I won't go into here, it didn't quite work out the way we'd both hoped, and so now here I am in San Francisco, starting over from scratch.

In GoT, the turning point for Daenerys comes when she realizes that despite having no army, no friends, and almost no followers, she discovers that she does have a very special ability that no one else possesses - The power to breed, control, and manipulate dragons, mythical creatures believed to have been extinct for many years.

Once word gets out that Daenerys is the owner and mother of 3 newborn baby dragons, her legend starts to grow and things start going her way as she gains allies and starts building an army. Although her dragons are still young and too small for battle, it's their storied reputation for destroying entire armies and their potential to turn the tide of the war that gets the other wannabe kings shaking in their boots.

That got me asking, what is my dragon? What is my one killer "power" that can help me get the ball rolling? I have several definite strengths, but it's hard to tell which (if any) of them are my "dragon". I know I'm very analytical, I know I'm good with people, I know I'm a good writer and public speaker, I know I have a good sense of humor, and I know I'm pretty creative. But it's hard to say which (or what combination) of these strengths will be the key to making a name for myself here in Silicon Valley. If technical skills are the "army" of Silicon Valley, I have none right now and I need to find a way to use the strengths listed above to acquire such skills bit by bit, whether it's my own or others'.

Once I've found that one thing, my "dragon", I have to believe that everything will naturally fall into place.

The 3rd and latest season of GoT ended with Daenerys winning a critical mass of loyal soldiers and followers and officially becoming a force to reckon with. Whether she'll triumph is anyone's guess, but the fact that she's even able to get into a position to do so is supposed to be extremely impressive.

But I am not at that point yet.

There's so much I have to do these next few months - I need to find a startup to work at (or start my own), I need to meet lots of new people and make new friends, I need to continue honing my existing skills and acquiring new ones, I need to work on my various personal projects, I need to keep blogging, etc. The list is uncomfortably long, but taken together these are all things which will help me get to where I want to be.

Despite Silicon Valley being a land of opportunity and open doors, a lot of those doors happen to be closed to me at the moment. But that's alright, I knew that would be the case going in. What I have to do now is find a way to get my foot in a door (any door) somehow, even if it means getting paid peanuts or doing grunt work. Because I know in my heart that once I am "in" and become a part of a great team, it's only a matter of time before I start making my mark.

As the great Muhammad Ali once said, "I'ma show you, how great I am."

Peter Begins

As many of you may already know, this September 21st I will (finally) be quitting my job at Standard Chartered Bank Korea, where I've been working for the last 4 years and 3 months. It marks the end of what has been a very formative time for me, and the beginning of a new chapter in my life story, a story which will no doubt become a New York Times #1 Best Seller one day, since I am "the greatest" and all.

This was my first full-time job since graduating college in 2008, and so naturally it's my first time quitting a full-time gig as well. Some of you may be thinking, "Hey Peter, what does it feel like to quit your job?" and even if you were not wondering that, I am going to tell you anyways because this is my blog and I do what I want.

To answer your question, it's an interesting feeling, this whole quitting thing. I've been reflecting a lot on my time here and everything that's happened while I've been living in Korea and working at this company for the past 4+ years.

Actually, the first two years of my time in Korea and at Standard Chartered Bank were pretty unremarkable. Not only was it a constant, stress-filled struggle for me as I tried to learn Korean as quickly as humanly possible while also adjusting to Korean culture and Korean work culture, but I was also pretty damn jaded after two years because I just had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and none of the work I had done up to that point was very interesting, nor was it something I could see myself doing for any long period of time.

Like Bruce Wayne in this opening scene from "Batman Begins" (2005), I had come to Korea to experience life in a new land and learn more about myself while gaining some quality work experience, but after two years' time, I had become truly lost.

However, the next 2+ years were a significant improvement. By that time I had become reasonably adjusted to the language and culture, and I had started work on a new project dealing with innovation in online and mobile banking. Even though I'd never done anything technology-related like that before in my life, I soon fell in love with it (technology, web development, everything) and it's the reason why I'm now leaving the bank.

But perhaps most importantly, it was at that pivotal 2-year mark that I was able to find and work for a boss whom I could really respect, someone who I actually wanted to work for and who was willing to mentor me and teach me many valuable skills that I'd been sorely lacking up until that point.

Here is an excerpt from one of my business school essays, which describes how I initially ended up working with my boss and the kind of esteem I held her in:

However, none of this would have been possible had I not met my current boss, who I've been working under since September 2010. They called her “Dr. An” and her reputation preceded her – She graduated from the top undergraduate engineering program in Korea, got her engineering Ph.D. in the USA, was a standout consultant at McKinsey, and had already established herself as a superstar within a few short months at Standard Chartered Bank. She was strong, confident, and ruthlessly efficient, but also meticulous about providing honest, accurate, and constructive feedback to each and every one of her direct reports to help them learn and grow. I learned in August 2010 that she was leading a new project that overlapped a great deal with my own and, believing that she could be the transformational mentor I’d been looking for, I did whatever it took to “join forces” with her and a few weeks later I was working for her full-time on the “Multi-Channel Task Force.”

For anyone who's seen the movie "Batman Begins" (2005), if I am Bruce Wayne then I would consider her my Ra's al Ghul. Not in a bad way, because in the movie Ra's al Ghul and Bruce Wayne ended up becoming mortal enemies later on haha (-_-). Rather, I mean in the sense that, like Ra's al Ghul did for Bruce, so my boss similarly mentored me, continuously challenged me, and helped shape me into the sharp and focused individual that I am today.

Through her, I learned many new skills and techniques that I will no doubt be using for the rest of my life. Drawing from her background as an engineer and consultant, she taught me how to think logically and analytically, how to approach problems and discussions in a structured way, and how to effectively manage a large team despite her youth as a senior manager and despite her relative lack of banking experience (relative to many of her older male peers).

Here is a great scene from the movie that should give you an idea of what I'm talking about:

I learned a great deal from her and will always be grateful that I was able to work with her.

Actually, my boss and I have very different personalities, but I think that may be a big reason why she was such an ideal mentor for me at the time - She is noted for her exceptional analytical skills, super-logical way of thinking, and great attention to detail, which were all areas that I was previously weak in. On the other hand, I have always been and always will be a humanities person through and through, with a knack for thinking outside the box and finding connections in seemingly disparate phenomena, coupled with a deep understanding of human nature and what makes people tick.

As a junior employee, this seeming clash in personalities was actually great for me, because my boss only put me in roles which matched my unique strengths, and so I was able to continue honing those strengths in my day-to-day work while gradually shoring up my weaknesses, as I continuously received often-harsh but always-useful feedback from my boss and then worked relentlessly to implement those lessons in the next go-around.

Similarly, in Batman Begins, Ra's al Ghul's view of justice was very different from that of Bruce Wayne. Ra's al Ghul believed that there are criminals in this world without decency, who must be fought without hesitation and without pity. On the other hand, Bruce Wayne believed that this kind of compassion is not a weakness, but rather is the only thing preventing heroes from becoming villains themselves, which is why later on Batman had a strict code of conduct in which he swore never to use guns and never to intentionally kill an adversary. The latter rule was the one Joker tried to repeatedly get Batman to break in "The Dark Knight" (2009).

That's why, even though I was able to learn so much from my boss, it was this same clash of personalities that made me realize that our mentor-mentee relationship would inevitably have to end, in this case because I would end up leaving the company, not unlike how Bruce Wayne ended up leaving Ra's al Ghul and the League of Shadows so that he could fight injustice in the way he saw fit.

Interestingly enough, my boss seemed to know from the start that I was not meant to continue working in a traditional corporate environment, and she let me know early on, even though I myself did not quite realize it yet. Sometime in late 2010, I was having a conversation with her over coffee about what I might want to do over the next 5 to 10 years. Even though I wasn't exactly sure at the time, I told her that I might want to go into consulting, because I could learn a great deal while I was figuring out what I really wanted to do, while gaining valuable experience across many different industries.

However, she replied by telling me outright that I am not fit to be a consultant, and that working in a "more creative" field would be much more appropriate. At first this caught me off guard, and I remember feeling quite insulted because I thought she was trying to tell me that I wasn't "good enough" to work at a top consulting firm.

But it's very interesting looking back now and realizing that she was totally right, because nowadays I couldn't even imagine myself as a consultant, given how set I've become on becoming an entrepreneur and trying to create something radical and new that could change the world. This is something that's simply not possible within a finance or consulting context.

In a way, I think the nature of almost all mentor-mentee relationships is that they must eventually come to an end. Once the mentee has learned enough from the mentor, then it's time to move on and make your own path. This was the case with Bruce Wayne & Ra's al Ghul, as well as with Mark Zuckerberg & Sean Parker, Warren Buffett & Benjamin Graham, etc.

As detailed in the movie "The Social Network" and in other media, Sean Parker was instrumental in the early expansion of Facebook, but eventually Mark Zuckerberg learned enough and gained enough confidence to take over the reins at Facebook and come into his own as a CEO.

And as demonstrated in this video clip from Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne eventually had to part ways with Ra's al Ghul when he realized that his philosophy regarding justice and crime-fighting was simply too much at odds with that of the League of Shadows.

So starting on September 22nd I will be starting down that new path, one that is sure to be very stressful and full of uncertainty but more rewarding and fulfilling than anything I've ever done before.

I am leaving behind the corporate world and the world of finance and banking, and I am starting from complete scratch to try and become an entrepreneur, i.e. someone who changes the way people live and the way the world works, for the better.

It's funny, I always talk about how I'm Batman, but in fact if I were to measure my own life against Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, I am not even at the halfway point of the first film, Batman Begins. Which means I'm barely 1/6 of the way through my superhero journey.

There's still a long ways to go, but I can't wait to find out what the remaining 5/6 holds in store for me :)

We Are All Superheroes (Part 1)

Why do I want to become an entrepreneur?

It's a very simple question which for me isn't so easy to answer in a very concise way. I could probably write a 100-page essay on this topic, but to put it very simply, I want to become an entrepreneur because I have a fundamental need to not just change the world, but to save it, and I believe that founding my own start-up is the best way for me to do so.

In this entry I will be talking about the first part of that sentence - How I came to realize that my sole purpose of existence is to "save the world" i.e. make the world a fundamentally better place, namely by bringing opportunities to those most in need of them.

There was a point in my life, during my junior year of college, where I hit an emotional and psychological low point in my life. At the time I was diagnosed with a mild form of clinical depression. I went on some meds and fortunately it was right around winter break so I was able to take a break from the daily pressures and stressors of school and life and just think about how I might've gotten to this point.

Looking back now, I'm able to say that the reason I had gotten to that point was because I had lost all sense of purpose in my life. I felt like everything I did was without any real purpose, any real end. I felt like I was always just going through the motions, and that everything I did was only because society said that someone like me was supposed to act like that.

Fortunately, that low point was the beginning of a gradual turnaround for me, in which I slowly but surely was able to find meaning in my life, and I was slowly but surely able to figure out what I was put on this Earth to achieve and what I would have to do to get there.

They say that if you want to figure out what you're meant to do in the future, you first have to look back at your past and the natural story that you have weaved for yourself over time. And at the time I needed that really badly. I needed to figure out what I was passionate about and what I was meant to do, because I just had no clue, I had nothing to live for and this lack of purpose was slowly killing me inside.

And so over the next few years I started looking back at my life and analyzing everything I'd been through since I was a small child. I looked at what I had always enjoyed in my life, what I had always hated, things I had thought I would enjoy but ended up hating, and things I thought I would hate but ended up enjoying. I looked at the moments where I had felt the happiest in my life and tried to figure out what had caused it, and I looked back at the lowest points in my life, where I had felt most miserable and worthless and empty inside, and again I tried to figure out what the root cause(s) might have been.

After all this analysis I started to see some common themes emerge from my life, these little recurring patterns which you lose sight of and forget about in the day-to-day mundanity of life, as the days and the weeks and the months pile on and blend into each other and you totally forget who you hoped to be and what you had hoped to become when you were young and still "unadulterated" by the pressures and expectations of adults and of society as a whole.

I realized that the one driving force behind every happy and sad moment in my life, the one determining factor  which came up time and time again no matter how much I may have blocked out from my memory, was this - I am physically and emotionally unable to be truly happy unless I know that I am somehow making many other people happy first. It was that simple. The happiest moments in my life had always been when I knew that I was making others happy, and on the flip side I had always been most miserable when I had felt that I was living life for myself and for my own wealth, my own comfortable lifestyle, and my own future irrespective of anyone else's.

It all made so much sense, and it explained so much about why I had felt a certain way in certain moments of my life.

It explains the time when I was in the third grade and my school was holding a fundraiser for UNICEF. I was so saddened and distraught when I find out what UNICEF was for, that while other kids gathered up spare change and a few dollars of contributions from people they knew, I went a more extreme route and simply took the $60 or so dollars of allowance I had saved up until then to buy a new Super NES videogame for myself, and donated it all to UNICEF, even though my parents were insisting that I didn't have to donate so much, that even $10 or $20 would have been a lot. I absolutely loved videogames back then and I had saved that money for months on end (which for a child is an eternity), and yet something compelled me to stubbornly refuse my parent's urging and instead go all or nothing with my donation.

It explains my extreme (and some would say absurd) love of superhero films and superhero mythology in general. Anyone who knows me will have heard me tell them of how I have watched the film "Batman Begins" more than 100 times start to finish, easily. And that doesn't take into account the times I'll watch certain parts of key scenes of the movie when I don't have time for the whole thing. I've done this for other superhero movies that I really like as well, yet it's something I never do for any other kind of movie. Something about superheroes strikes a chord deep within me that even I might not have been fully cognizant of until recently. I realize now that I feel a sense of kinship with these fictional heroes because of their self-sacrifice, the overwhelming sense of duty and responsibility that they must live with, and their daily struggle with forgoing a normal life for the sake of a greater good.

It explains why when I got a serious girlfriend in college, I felt so happy and yet so sad at the same time. I was happy because I had a met a great girl who was perfect for me in a lot of ways and who accepted me for all my flaws and eccentricities. But at the same time, I always felt an incessant tinge of sadness, not because of anything she had done, but because I realized that the more happy and fulfilled I was with her, the less focused and motivated I was on helping to save the world. The more I ended up enjoying a normal life, the less I would be able to fulfill my "superhero duties." I've always had this weird tendency where I feel that I don't deserve to be happy or comfortable or fulfilled when there are so many people out there who go to sleep at night hungry and impoverished, physically and emotionally abused, hopeless and desperate. That's why I don't sleep on a bed (random fact about me), and that's why I felt so ashamed and guilty of allowing myself to become happy and complacent while doing less and less towards doing what I was meant to be doing.
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Hope you are enjoying my "Superhero Backstory" so far! Due to the excessive length of this entry, I've broken it up into two parts. Stay tuned for the next installment where I talk about how I came to discover my own various "superpowers," how I plan on using them, and the things one must do in order to unlock the superhero within each of us.

Day 1

Hello everyone.

This is my first entry in this blog which I have titled "A Day in the Mind of a Wannabe Entrepreneur."

I guess I could start out by explaining why I created this blog and what I hope to achieve with it.

This blog will basically serve as a documentary of sorts, chronicling my day-to-day journey and thought process as I go from being a nobody with a dream, to hopefully a somebody who managed to help save the world in a global and scalable way.*

It's a super-exciting time in history that we're living in right now. We as a generation are so extremely blessed to be alive in the same time period as people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Sergey Brin and Larry Page (co-founders of Google), Mark Zuckerberg, etc. who have radically transformed the way the world works and the way we interact with this newly transformed world.

As for myself, through a serendipitous combination of A) Repeatedly seeing these iconic figures working their magic and changing the world and B) Being put on a project at work (since mid-2010) that deals extensively with innovation and trying to come up with creative new solutions to age-old problems, I too have been inspired by this wave of creative energy that we are living in, and I've humbly decided that I would like to give it a go as well, by (sometime soon) starting my own company with a new business idea which will change the world for the better.

However, I don't realistically expect anyone who is an already an entrepreneur to take any interest in this blog. The stuff I will be talking about will be stuff that they already experienced a long time ago and have little need to relive now.

Rather, my intended target audience is all those people out there who (like myself) have always had an entrepreneurial fire burning within them, but who for whatever reason have never really gotten the chance to explore it more fully.

And while I will be writing in great depth about my personal journey to becoming a successful entrepreneur, this blog isn't actually about me at all. Regardless of whether I ultimately end up succeeding or not, I want this blog to serve as a vehicle to inspire others. The people I want reading my blog are those who know nothing about entrepreneurship and innovation but have always had a deep yearning to make a real impact on the world in an unconventional way. I want them to see what I'm going through and realize that it's something that they are fully capable of doing as well. And if you yourself are not that interested in becoming an entrepreneur but you know someone who is (or could be), I would love if you shared this blog with them.

Last but not least, this blog will be talking a lot about entrepreneurship but at the end of the day I want it to be interesting and accessible for anyone who comes across it. I like to think that I am a pretty good writer with a pretty good sense of humor**, and so whether or not you are an aspiring entrepreneur, I hope that you can read my future blog entries and then get on with your day with the feeling that it (i.e. your day) has been livened and improved (even a tiny bit) as a result.

Thanks for reading and I hope you can join me on this scary but exciting journey I'm about to go on :)
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*If you're an American and you're reading this, I'll assume you've seen the critically acclaimed blockbuster superhero film "The Dark Knight." It's an awesome movie about Batman and his battle to save Gotham City from the nefarious Joker. However, what some people might not know is that "The Dark Knight" is actually the second part of a trilogy, and it was preceded by the relatively less popular (but criminally underrated) movie "Batman Begins," which focuses less on [Batman the Superhero] and more on [Bruce Wayne the Human Being]  and his long and difficult journey to eventually become the Batman that we see in "The Dark Knight."

And that's what this blog is. This blog is my own personal "Batman Begins." Maybe one day I will be like Batman as he is in "The Dark Knight" - A grizzled veteran who's been at it for a while and has seen it all. And I'm sure I will become that, in due time. But right now, I am more like Bruce Wayne from "Batman Begins" - A young man with some personal demons who knows he wants to make Gotham City a better place, but just isn't sure what's the best way to do so and how exactly he will go about doing that.

**Those who know me will know very well of my previous blogging endeavors on Xanga, an ancient blogging service which is basically on life support nowadays and has become Terri Schiavo-esque in its slow, painful descent into non-existence. Until now, I've used my writing skills and irreverent sense of humor to write (what I hope were) funny and entertaining posts about whatever crazy things were going through my sick, twisted mind at the time. But as I graduated college and started working full-time, it's become increasingly difficult to find the time to write write humorous long-form blog posts on a regular basis while still maintaining the high standard of comedic quality I want. Thus, while my Xanga will continue to exist and will still be there for me to write in when needed, this new blog is a way for me to still be my normal irreverent and facetiously funny self while talking about a subject that I am very passionate about and which hopefully can inspire passion in others as well.