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 :)