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It’s one thing to talk about starting a company; it’s another to leave a well-paying job to do it.
In 2019, I had been talking for about six months to two former New York University classmates, Jeremy Huang and Daniel Chen, about starting a company.
We had identified a possible solution for one of the most persistent issues analysts at financial firms face: how to extract data from earnings releases and populate Excel models fast so that the analysts could better prepare for conference calls.
We believed we could solve a problem that most analysts thought was unsolvable. We knew that it was an acute pain point shared by a large number of people.
I told them that this was never going to happen unless we committed to the project.
In December, I told Jeremy and Daniel that I was setting a deadline to leave my job by the end of the year. They agreed to join me.
It was hard because I had a solid job and a career I liked.
Moreover, it’s not something a lot of people on Wall Street do. Even among analysts who study successful companies, you don’t see many professionals go out on their own.
Jeremy helped frame the question by asking me if I thought it was “rational.”
My answer was that it wasn’t rational at all. It’s rational to get a secure job.
Financial analysts are well paid. Why give up security and prestige for a 2% chance the company will succeed? If you stay in a corporate job you have a high probability you will do very well financially. Why jeopardize that?
Jeremy claimed that starting a company seemed rational. He argued that the upside was unbounded, while the downside is limited.
My motivation was driven more by an innate desire. I have always been that person who gets very focused on solving problems.
My family and friends weren’t totally surprised. A majority of them had heard me talk about wanting to start a company for years. They expected some kind of craziness.
Four years since we launched Daloopa, Jeremy and I still argue over the rationality of wanting to start a company. It’s become a bit of a running joke.
He was in town last week and brought it up again.
He reminded me that “you don’t have to agree that it’s rational to want to do it!”
