Vincent Song

One of North America's greatest strengths has been its ability to attract immigrants. While some may view the supposed "American Dream" with a great deal of disdain, its hard to deny that most people would still rather immigrate to the US vs China, Russia or even Germany.

People also mistakenly believe that workers from specific countries are simply more industrious or hard working than Americans. I think this is a somewhat flawed assumption. Immigrants are hard working, but are also outliers in their home countries as well. It takes an above average amount of self-confidence, willingness to work hard, and appetite for risk to  relocate to a completely foreign country with no friends and few resources. It's the fact that they are willing to immigrate that makes them exceptional, not where they immigrate from.

Incidentally, children of immigrants also have an advantage. Like it or not, we are strongly influenced by the people we spend time with. As a kid, you spend a lot of time with your parents, and you inherit some of their behavior and viewpoints. Children of immigrants are more likely to be scrappy, ambitious and have high risk tolerances. However, this "immigrant mindset" effect seems to fade after a one or two generations.

One thing I've been thinking about lately is how to make sure this "hunger" is passed down without immigrating to a new country. Its also worth noting that this is not a general statement, just an observation I find interesting and have noticed among my friends. For example, extremely wealthy immigrants who enter another country with little personal risk and lots of resources lack the scrappiness and industriousness most commonly associated with the traditional "immigrants mindset". 

Something I care a lot about is surrounding myself with good people. That's easy to say because it's a cliché. This doesn't mean it's a bad thing but it does means I need to be intentional and specific about who I spend my time with. People is something that heavily sways many of my decisions: where I go to school. who I hang out with, who I look to for guidance. It's something that is worth putting significant thought and reflection into.

My view on what makes folks impressive has changed a lot over just the past eight or nine months. In fall quarter at Stanford, I was initially dismayed at the apparently "unimpressive" pool of peers that surrounded me. They seemed to be no more than ordinary high-schoolers, a far cry from the world class builders and thinkers I had expected. In hindsight, this was a flawed judgement for a couple reasons.

One, I had only encountered a small sample size. Less than 200 freshman were on campus at the time - roughly 10% of the incoming class of 2020. Second, I was judging people based on their previous achievements as goals. While this is certainly an indicator of impressiveness, it's not the most important one. The most exceptional people have a high rate of growth which means consistent, incremental improvement over time.

I was looking at the y-intercept instead of slope. You want to surround yourself with high delta people. Y-intercept is often influenced by a variety of factors. Slope is normally driven by the person themselves.

Instead of selecting for people who looked impressive on paper, it much more valuable to spend time with people who are introspective and curious. These types of people tend to have the highest slopes as they are good at determining their own next steps and working on interesting things. Even if they aren't impressive on paper now, they will be in the future. But even more importantly, kind, introspective people will ultimately make your life more enjoyable and help you truly live in the moment. Everything else will come with time.

There is little else more frustrating than trying to work with school administrators. In fact, I firmly believe that the frustration I felt from my time "collaborating" with my high school's Head of Innovation was a major contributor to my current political views (sadly I'm only half joking).

In senior year, a group of friends and I decided to create a simple app for students to help manage their schedule. We decided to work in partnership with the school hoping it would make be easier to launch the product and gain access to school resources. Instead, the school administrators were stifling, constraining our ability to iterate quickly and perform beta tests. I think that was one of the most frustrating experiences I've gone through.

But in retrospect, I've gained a better understanding of patience. During the app development process, there was a lot of time between releases as we waited for the school administration to approve the new features. But instead of waiting passively, we used the time to talk to other students and learn about pain points. 

This sort of "active patience" is super valuable. Most people mistakenly associate patience for laziness. But, active patience is the opposite. Like a Lion stalking it's prey, you stay crouched in position, poised to strike when the opportunity arises. You're alert, your ready and your muscles are tensed.

Patience of this sort is difficult to cultivate. It's also hard to know when you are teetering into inaction. A high level of self awareness is needed. But, accepting and engaging in active patience is essential to staving off frustration when you need to move slowly. 

I think a lot about why people have kids. A little while back, I received an interesting response: having kids freezes time. At the moment, it seemed nonsensical. Thinking back, it makes a lot of sense.

Most of the time we live in the past or the future. We are rarely actively engaged in the present. It's incredibly easy to get stuck imaging the future or reminiscing the past. These pockets of "true awareness" are fleeting but immensely powerful. Every sensation is felt and burned into your mind; be it the smell of firewood or the brilliant orange of the setting sun. Time moves in slow motion, the world flowing around you as you watch the rush of the world go by.

When these moments happen, you truly experience reality as it is, with a unusual clarity and peace that's hard to put into words

Having kids seems to make these moments happen more often in even the most mundane events. Things like tucking your kid into bed, or watching them dig a hole at the beach become immensely fulfilling. You feel like you don't need to be anywhere else. You don't need to look any further than where you are now.

The price we pay to exist and experience all the world has to offer is time. It's the one finite currency that cannot be increased, refunded or earned. Make every attempt to slow down the rate at which you spend it. You only have so much time.

Even before you have kids, this still applies. Do things that slow time. Get really good at noticing when these moments of "true awareness" happen and do more of whatever created it. For me, this means spending time with people I love and doing high intensity activities like paintball or scuba diving.

I used to think I didn't want kids, and that they would slow my momentum. I'm not so sure now. Though life is long, it also really isn't. Time the most important resource I have. Do I really want to spend it so quickly?

I get asked a lot why I don't have a driver's license. I've started to wonder that myself. I've always considered myself as mature and "grown up". Oftentimes, getting your driver's license is synonymous with freedom, and represents the first stage of adulthood. After all, what sensible, functioning society would allow children to drive? So why didn't I feel a need to get one?

I couple of weeks ago I was in a rut. There was a sense of frantic movement but I didn't feel any sort of progress or inertia. When I brought this up, a friend told me,

"You're pretending to be an adult. You're doing all the things you think adults do."

Thinking back, this was completely true. I had drowned myself in "adult" activities and mindsets. I internally judged those I considered "immature" or "naïve". I buried myself in TechCrunch articles and tech twitter tweets. I focused on noise and "pop culture" news instead of trying to genuinely challenge myself with deeper topics.

More worryingly however, this mindset of being "grown up" extended to how I viewed my family as well. In wanting to see myself as independent I intentionally de-prioritized seeing my siblings and parents back home. To me, being an adult meant being away from family and not needing their support.

Now I don't think I actually want to be an adult as much as I tell myself. I've also realized I have no clue at what point you truly move into adulthood. Its more than just talking about rent, taxes or stocks. Perhaps it is patience, which ironically is the opposite of rushing to grow up.

TLDR; they are investments in people rather than companies. Formidable, high delta individuals become incredibly impressive over time. Early-stage investing is a way to promote long-term learning and relationship building.

How much capital do you want to deploy?

Currently, I've set aside $6000 USD to invest. This gives me 1-3 shots on net. Monetary return is a nice to have, not a must. I am considering my investments a sunk cost. There are many easier ways to make money (I'm looking at you stock market).

What are your goals if not for investment?

Everything I do is guided by one goal: to surround myself with high integrity, high trajectory people (Linus Lee has a great article on these so-called "sprinters").

Sprinters are people who grow and improve at what they do exponentially, because they use every new project and experience and mistake as a way to improve at the next one. They really just care about figuring out what they want to work on, and then spend all their time getting better at that thing.

Writing angel checks gives me the opportunity to work closely with sprinters. Investing in their companies gives me the opportunity to be deeply involved with their learnings and obstacles. I get to experience the highs and lows alongside the best people I know. If growth compounds over time, the 10 year commitment is more of a blessing that a curse.

I'm more than willing to take chances on young, unproven talent. Many sprinters I know are working on their first companies, and whether or not their companies succeed, I'm happy to bet on them for the long run.

I genuinely believe that interesting people work on interesting problems. Investing is a way to gain exposure to different and unexpected problem spaces. There is so much I don't know about the world and how it works. I learn best through "excited accountability", in which interest in specific topic is fueled by some sort of deliverable. Equity is an exceptional motivator and source of accountability.

What kind of investment terms did you have in mind?

Honestly, at the size of current angel/seed rounds, the amount I can invest makes certain terms like anti-dilution/liquidation preference unimportant. Ideal is a standard valuation capped SAFE. The goal is something clean and simple - I just want to have some small stake in the company (lawyers are expensive!).

There aren't specific terms that I feel are worth negotiating. At the end of the day, the company and founders I am investing in are more important. I'd much rather have a sub-optimal term sheet with a high integrity, high quality founder than amazing terms with a crappy one.

A third party contract with an existing investor (secondary sale of shares at an agreed upon price) is also something I have considered.

How are you investing?

I see who the most impressive people I know would work for. Among students, who can convince exceptional engineers to work together on a project. And have a high rate of growth in self-awareness and self-reflection.

Special thanks to Leo Mehr for inspiring me to write this. His questions were very informative for my thinking.

[This idea was first introduced to me by Daniel Gross's article of the same name. You should give it a read. Its very good. This post is a summation of my personal interpretation as a university student.]

There are two types of games in life: structured and unstructured games.

Structured games have clearly defined rules and outcomes. Highschool is a good example. It has a clear win-condition (get into a prestigious university) and specific objectives (get good grades, join the right clubs, etc). This type of environment makes it easy to measure progress and identify next steps.

Unstructured games are much harder and more frustrating to play. Winning is often poorly defined and it's often unclear how to make progress. It becomes easy to adopt arbitrary rulesets to give yourself a sense of momentum and inertia. This is really dangerous, as you can end up spending a lot of time optimizing for things that ultimately don't matter.

In many ways, university is an unstructured game. If you're not following a established pre-professional or academic path, progress is hard to define and its extremely difficult to figure out what you actually want.

But how do you find your personal win condition? How do you create your own set of rules and metrics? For young people, figuring out the answer to these questions is the most important thing.

Note however, that it is unnecessary to actually find these answers while you are young. Long term vision can be blinding and often leads us to chase goals that we don't actually want. Instead, it is much more valuable to develop the courage to try (and fail) many things and hone the ability to be very good at self assessment.

Get really good at being honest with yourself and filtering quickly for the things and people who genuinely make your life better or more exciting. Remember, the days are long but the decades are short. Be bold, be brave and be truthful.

You're doing all the right things.