I was thinking a lot about where I was when I was in you guys' shoes and what I needed to hear.
The title is how to make it from nothing.
So there are a couple assumptions I'm making about you guys.
Number one, you're hungry.
Number two, you're ambitious.
And then number three, you really want to make it big.
And then lastly, because this is Wharton, I'm going to assume that you don't want to waste your life in financing and consulting, like the rest of your peers.
So, with that being said, I spent a lot of time thinking about what was it that I needed to hear in that context.
What would actually be helpful to me?
And my goal for today, for the presentation, is to specifically give you the playbook on how to quote unquote, make it.
Because I think there's a really large problem you all face in whether or not you become successful, especially at a place like Wharton, where they hype you off that you're one of the best of the best and they give you the quote unquote best education.
You have all of the tactics, the case studies to be successful.
You have every case study you go through.
You can watch every Y Combinator video, you can listen to every podcast and all the tactics that are required to scale a quote unquote starter for a business.
But there's actually one key ingredient that precludes whether or not you're actually successful.
And it's not something that they teach at school, but it's actually the most important piece of this.
It's a higher level concept and a container in which all of these tactics will live.
Whether or not you're successful is not whether or not you know those tactics.
It's actually something that's even higher level than that.
And so that's what I'm gonna go through today, because that's actually what matters when you think about how do I build a multi-billion dollar company.
How do I build an organization that scales?
And so what I mean by this higher level concept today, I'll break it into three specific pillars.
Number one is what is your purpose?
So what's your passion?
What drives you forward?
What do you actually get up in the morning?
What's gonna actually have you do this stupid thing called entrepreneurship?
Number two is what is your differentiation?
It's one thing to have a passion to be woo-woo about what do I want to do in this world.
It's another thing to actually win.
It's another thing to actually really critically think about.
What is my strategy so I can build a truly scalable business.
And then number three is what is your persistence?
What is your conviction?
Why are you gonna keep going in a time that you are constantly going to be shit on, for lack of a better term?
And so these are the three things I'm gonna go over with you guys today, because they're actually what I've learned matters in this journey of building a multi-billion dollar company.
And so we'll kick off first with your purpose.
Where I remember being in you guys' shoes and I was in finance before and private equity and when people would say things like oh, you know, we're a mission-driven company or you know, we have a passion, we have a purpose to me, I would kind of like laugh at that right.
I was like, that's so silly, and this is like LA woo-woo girl of me.
But what I've learned over time is that this thing is actually truly what matters.
This is what precludes a successful entrepreneur from one who gets in for the right rational reasons but just can't make it through.
And so, when we think about passion, one of the ways to best describe to you why finding your purpose is so important is actually to consider the inverse model.
So let's think about the flip side.
What's at stake if you don't know your purpose?
And we'll actually, we'll use me as a case study.
So this is me growing up.
This is baby John.
And baby John specifically grew up in the South.
And so I imagine many of you guys as well grew up in scenarios where you didn't have much or you didn't fit in right.
And so what do you do when you don't fit in?
As a kid, all you want to do is not be bullied and be cool in school, right?
So you do everything you can to find validation.
And so for me as an Asian American immigrant, what does that mean?
Well, you gotta crank on SATs.
You gotta like succeed.
You gotta go be a doctor, a lawyer.
You gotta go to a good school.
And so just like all of you guys here, I hustled really hard.
That was me before in finance, really cringe.
I also had it really hard to take on student loans and go to a great undergrad university.
Then on top of that, I called Commodore a job on Wall Street.
I went to a top VC firm afterwards and then what did I do?
I did the same thing you guys said, which was like I checked another box and I went to a great business school.
And I'm sure many of you guys have found, actually raise of hands for any of you guys who've found, as you've gone to all these places, you're like wait a minute.
This, I feel like a little bamboozle, right?
This is like nowhere near the hype that it was.
In fact, so many people here at these institutions are actually quite miserable.
Is that the case for anyone?
Just me?
Okay, never mind.
And in that process, I think, I had this very jarring moment, actually.
I still remember, I was at a Vegas steak dinner with my managing partner.
I was in private equity.
I was like the earliest senior associate promote the firm had ever had.
I was so hungry to make it.
And I just sourced the largest deal we'd ever done, which was like the thing to do as an associate right.
And we were walking in to meet with this founder that I had sourced, and my managing partner and I were really close and he turned to me and he goes.
You know John, like one day like this could be you.
And the dude clears, like you know, a lot of carry, like tens of million dollars of carry, at least a year.
And I remember in that moment very viscerally feeling this feeling of like, holy shit, I would rather blow my brains out.
Like that was not the path that I knew that I wanted to go down.
And so in that moment, if you think about and project out, do I do this career?
That is the right thing on paper.
I'm gonna grind for it and I know it's an expected value outcome.
That's pretty solid from a financial perspective.
But dude, we've got one life to live.
Oh my god, I cannot imagine spending decades doing that.
And so the question I had was number one, I need a job that I actually like.
And number two, I needed cooler hair.
So, with that being said, I want to paint to you the landscape that I had when I first started business school.
So this is deep COVID.
So you guys have the luxury of like hanging out in person in officially sanctioned and supported parties.
We were like going dorm to dorm room like we were like middle schoolers or kids at Andover.
Point being is when I first started creating content, this was when we were all doom scrolling TikTok in our rooms, right.
We were all allowed to go outside.
And so I remember seeing this creator thing and being like, this thing seems pretty cool.
I was like, the ability to maybe work for yourself, pursue your passions, all that kind of stuff.
And so I started to ask myself, you know, I want to start my own thing one day.
Why don't I try this creator thing?
And for me, I was like, OK, if I'm going to make content, why would someone watch it?
It's like, oh, how do I give value to this world?
And so for me, that was like, how do you as an underrepresented kid get your first dream job?
Did anyone see these TikToks back in the day?
Yeah, shit, Alex did.
So they were really fucking cringey, right?
But they worked.
And, more importantly, what I learned from this process is like holy shit, this job is really really cool actually, if you can make it work, which is specifically for the first time in my life.
It's a little embarrassing to admit, I was in my mid-20s, but as an Asian American, I'd never really been creative in my life.
It was a silly thing, but I was like, this is really cool.
Number two, I could be passionate about something.
This is something I really care a lot about, this topic of democratizing access.
And then lastly, I was like, fuck it, I could work for myself.
That's really, really cool, and I'm helping people.
And so in that process, I built my very first store.
And in that, this is the first version of Stan.
I vibe coded this before vibe coding was a thing.
Alex knows how bad of a coder I am.
And I made my first few sales and I was like this is really fucking cool, this whole concept of entrepreneurship where you put yourself out there on the internet for all to see and for all to laugh at, for all to judge, and you get through that process, the insecurities of it, what have you?
And then the other side you sell something which is like an artistic manifestation of yourself in the world to some degree, and you can make money from it.
That's really cool.
And as I went across that process, I realized that my purpose was helping other people feel those feels.
To go through that entrepreneurial journey, to even get to your first post or your first dollar online.
Think about how much mental work you have to do on yourself and how much you have to face your own fears and your insecurities.
And giving people that sense of agency is what personally drives me today and still will.
And so I say all that to say, why does that matter?
Because your purpose is actually just another way to say the problem that you're solving.
Your job is to take someone from point A to point B.
When you build a business, when you offer a service.
And so in that context, your customer is saying, I have a problem, and I need a guide.
And who's that guide?
Well, it's you, because you're super fucking passionate about what you're doing.
And the reason why this matters.
If you think about the most valuable, most successful entrepreneurs, whether it's an Elon, a Bezos, what have you?
They all the consistent founders.
They all solve a problem right.
The people who get paid the most are the ones who solve the most valuable problems.
And as you think about how am I going to win in this competitive of a market, you have to recognize that your purpose being your problem to solve gives you an unfair advantage.
Specifically, the more purpose you have, the more passion you have.
That means the more obsession you have to stay up late at night.
That means the more time you think about the specific problem.
That means you have the more clarity on how to solve this problem.
And the reason why this little equation here matters is there's a really core premise to succeeding in business.
I want you guys to remember this.
If you take anything away, it's probably this.
Actually, there's two more things you take away after this.
But it's specifically the depth of how well you understand the problem is directly proportional to your success.
I will say that again, because I believe this with my whole heart.
I've earned this insight over years.
Please listen to me.
The depth of how well you understand your problem is directly proportional to your success.
How much you spend at night obsessing over this problem, how much you live, bleed and breathe this problem, how much you know the subconscious corners of the human experience related to this problem, is directly proportional to your success.
And do you guys believe you can do that with some random thing that you don't care about?
Now, I'm going to give you guys a really tangible example here.
I want us to compare the clarity.
So I think about this meme all the time, specifically this brain meme.
And so I want us to think about the average E-club person who says they want to start a startup but actually never will.
So I want you guys to be in the other camp, the people who actually build real businesses.
We'll be like, oh, I want to start an app one day.
What the fuck does that mean?
In the same way for here, Let's talk about someone saying fitness is cool.
I want to start a fitness business.
I want to do something here.
The next stage of that is I help people lose weight, meaningfully different than the value problem.
But then I want us to think about someone who is obsessed about the problem, who's hyper passionate, who's done the introspective work of like where will I win?
They'll say something like I will help you lose weight as a busy parent by delivering healthy meals to your door, providing you quick workouts you can do in between errands at home and then lastly, calling you until you get the fuck out of bed and get your ass to the gym.
Quick raise of hands, who do you think is gonna win?
Is it the last one? by a long shot, right?
You guys see the difference in the clarity, right?
Who's actually gonna build a successful business?
And you don't get to that level of clarity on your ICD, on your customer, unless you obsess over it, unless you think about everything about them, unless you think about the problem.
You deeply understand in this case that parents don't have time.
And then you know the grooves of their life, their schedule, to then fit in within that time.
And that only comes from passion.
You can't do that.
You can't go through things unless you have that passion.
It's not worth it in life in general, too.
And so I want you guys to recognize why finding this whole concept of purpose is so important is, if you find your purpose inherently, the reward you have in that is you also find your billion dollar problem.
And that's the first step that you need to succeed.
Now, of course, we've got two more steps that we've got to figure out which.
The next one is finding your differentiation.
So quick raise of hands.
How many of you guys constantly feel FOMO or anxiety over, like holy shit, there's so many people out there already building startups.
I'm like so cooked with AI, all that kind of stuff.
Cause I feel it all the time, right?
It's like this 17 year old vibe coded an app in two weeks is now making 3 million ARR.
I'm like, what the fuck dude?
Like it took me years.
And so the question is in such a competitive world, where you're competing with a bunch of crap 16 year olds who can make super vital content and make a super viral app overnight, how are you going to win?
That's a real question, right?
There's billions of people out there all using cloud code, while we're being slumps doing a presentation right now.
We're getting vibe coded out right now.
And so to give you guys a little bit of ease and help you think about how am I going to win in this market, and whatever I do, I'm actually going to tell you guys a story of myself.
So when I first started Stan, Stan just started with an entry wedge of the linking bio.
But I also want you guys to recognize the time in the market in which I started Stamped.
So that was 2021.
It was like multiple years after all the large creator economy companies have been established.
And so there were over 50 other LinkedIn bios before I started Stamped.
There's LinkedIn bio.
There was biolink.
There was bio link.
There was link bio.
There was link pop by Shopify.
There's 50 others.
And then on top of that, there was every other website builder in the world, right?
There was Squarespace, there was WordPress, there was Skillshare.
And then lastly, there were all these companies that were specifically creator economy focused, raising monster growth rounds by huge private FBVC firms.
And none of them, by the way, gave a shit about creators, but I want you guys to recognize the landscape in which I considered starting this company.
By all warden NBA standards, it was fucking idiotic to start this company.
Like talk about first mover advantage.
We're talking like hundredth mover disadvantage is what I had.
In this, why would someone start this?
It's not rational, right?
But me being the idiot kid that I was making cringy TikToks on the beach to get people's attention.
I asked myself how am I different?
Why will I win?
And so I wanna take a step back now, and now we can all do a case study for ourselves, which is I want you to go back to your roots as a person, as a unique human being, and I'm gonna share two aspects with myself, and we'll see how those led to differentiation.
So number one, as I mentioned to you before, I'm an immigrant kid.
And I didn't grow up with them much.
And so we just grew up going to Walmart.
We couldn't afford much more.
But then there was the holy grail of immigrancy, which was Costco.
I'm looking around at the immigrants around the room like dude.
It is my opinion that there are few things more American than a Saturday morning at Costco, every immigrant family hustling around trying to find a fucking deal and me shoving hot dogs and pizza in my face.
That was peak immigrant.
But what does that actually mean about me?
Specifically, it means that I really care about giving people value.
I love giving people a good deal.
It's very critical to me that whatever we offer the market is 10x the value.
Whatever you pay, you'll get 10x the value.
That's just inherent to me as a person.
And so then on top of that, what's another thing about me?
Is like, I'm a computer science nerd till I die.
Like I bought my first computer when I was like 11.
And so when I see shitty software, and when the internet doesn't work, I blow the fuck up.
I care a lot about building something that has ease.
In that process.
If someone charges me hundreds of dollars for core software or to host a marginal more course for two more megabytes, like another 50, I'm like dude, fuck you.
I know exactly how you built that.
It's also shitty, clunky software.
That doesn't sit right with me.
And so in that side, this is what my life was like before Stan.
I had a Shopify store in front.
And then I had this core software that was super clunky.
Then I had to pay for a link in bio.
And then I had to do email.
That was really, really bad.
Then I had a calendar feature.
I had to sell digital products.
I had to pay a fee on if I wanted to offer some sort of community.
It was a web of shitty software.
And so what did I do?
The first version of Stan is I just replaced it all and made it much more affordable.
$500 a month of software for $29 a month.
Those are my core immigrant values, right?
It was like, how do you get a good deal?
And then me as a techie was like, this is really miserable as a customer experience.
Let's bring it all in one place and make it way more simple and easy.
And so you ask yourself like, okay, so you came in, but what were the results?
So we've gone from zero to almost $40 million in revenue on very little capital raised.
More importantly, we work with the very best, like all of the top creators and entrepreneurs, all the future generation of our founders who are online all work with us and want to work with us.
Most importantly, We've made over $500 million for our creators.
And so that's something I'm really deeply proud of.
And so in that context, you can ask yourself the actual defining quote, the thing that actually matters.
So, as you guys think about how am I going to be successful amongst all these people out there, It's with this one specific quote, which is escape competition through authenticity.
There's always gonna be someone who's smarter than you, who's cooler than you what have you?
But what actually really, really matters is that there's no one else that's like you.
You are the best version of yourself out there in the world.
There is no one who's better at being you than you, even on your shitty days when you're hungover.
And so in that process we're gonna start to figure out what is our differentiation and why does that matter to a business?
Because your differentiation is just the process of figuring out who you are.
And so in that, when you ask the question, who am I?
It sounds really woo woo.
But if you ask yourself these questions right now, number one, what am I disproportionately good at?
What do I love doing on top of that?
Then what are my quirks?
What are the things that make me unique?
Those are things that I really want you guys to ask yourself.
And then lastly and I think secretly sometimes most importantly that most people don't do is what am I ashamed of?
That could actually be my strength.
Because for me as a personal sharer, I was ashamed of my background growing up.
But now that I've harnessed that as something I'm proud of, it's very much so.
One of the unique attributes I can tell in my story that calls people to work with me.
As you guys think about this for yourselves, I want you to think about how this actually plays to another next level game.
Because we're not here to just do like woo-woo self-reflection.
We're here to build multi-billion dollar businesses.
So in that process, I want you to recognize that your differentiation is actually your strategy.
So when you ask reflective questions like, what do I love?
What am I disproportionately good at and what are my quirks?
I want you to recognize what that actually means at a hundred million dollar scale or a billion dollar scale.
These translate to questions like instead, what is my competitive advantage?
What bets do I make for my business?
How am I investing my millions of dollars of capital into different bets?
On top of that is what parts of my business should I double down on scale?
And then I think most candidly, the best way to put it what is my unfair advantage?
That I should blow the fuck out?
So you guys see how we start with these really introspective personal questions and we translate that into something that's actually a business and a strategy.
Because if you go back to the Greeks at Delphi, know thyself.
Because if you know thyself, if you know yourself and you also know the market, then you inherently pretty much know your strategy of how you're gonna win.
We have the formula for success in this point.
We have two steps of it.
Number one.
You have your purpose, your differentiation, and now we need to unlock the message born at peace.
So this thing here, above all, this is actually the thing that you should take away more than anything.
If there's one thing I leave you with, it's this last section.
Because I promise you you could even skip the first two technically, and if you have this last one, I do believe you will find success in your life.
All the time, people ask me, John, like, how do I start a company?
What do I need to be successful?
And I can tell they're looking for some silver bullet complex formula that gives them the dopamine and gives you.
Oh shit, I have the answer.
I can go do it now.
How many people feel that way constantly?
I still feel that way all the time, right?
I'm gonna tell you the single thing you need, and it'll go back to my story again here.
The only thing that you need, I learned from my mom, is absolute, sheer fucking persistence.
Because for me, when I think about what persistence looks like, that is like I can't even imagine raising a child in America having no context on the culture, having no community, no connections, what have you?
On top of that, I included a couple photos of my mom here, of specifically Like she survived the Cultural Revolution.
Then she survived the deadliest earthquake in China.
Then on top of that, she got her PhD in mechanical engineering.
She was the only woman in her field for decades.
And when I think about that, I'm like, oh, of course.
Because the last thing on top of that that she always made sure to do was show up every single night, no matter how shitty her day was, and make me a home-cooked meal.
And so when I think about why I get to stand in this place in these shoes, it's because of the person that role modeled that for me, which was absolute sheer persistence.
And I know you guys have the same stories with your parents of what they sacrificed for you.
So, as you think about how you're gonna end up being successful, I'm gonna make you a couple promises of what will happen in your life if you were to pursue this journey.
Number one, you will constantly get socked in the face.
Number two, you will constantly question whether or not you're gonna be successful.
Number three you're gonna really really doubt yourself because there's so many days for myself as well, where I want to quit, I doubt myself and have a really shitty day.
But I want you to know that's not what gives you the success.
Everyone wants the funding announcements, the revenue targets, the awesome team and they want the championship.
Everyone wants these things, right?
But no one specifically realizes that your rewards are an output. of your work.
I want you guys to let that sink in because I think about this still all the time.
If you want some sort of outcome in life, you have to put in the inputs.
And most people don't recognize they want the stuff on the left.
They don't recognize that they have to put in an immense value beforehand.
And the only way that you're going to get there is if you put in the work and if you have persistence.
Everyone's looking for some complex formula.
You're like I can't wait to watch the latest AI skills video on cloud code and co-work or what have you, so I can vibe code my thing.
I've learned, when you play the long game, when you've been doing this long enough, the skills and the tactics.
They come and go.
If there's a single thing that I can leave you with, it's this.
If you wanna be successful, it's just this, it's to persist. is to never ever give up.
I have spoken to so many billionaires, so many entrepreneurs who've been successful, so many famous actors, so many famous teams like.
Whatever it is, the key pattern between all of them is not that they were smarter than you, that they had more privilege than you.
It is a single specific thing is that they never ever gave up.
And so if I can leave you with any specific energy today, it would be that.
And specifically for all of you that are silly enough to go on this journey of entrepreneurship, who want to make an impact in the world, who want to make a dent in the universe.
I will leave you with this for the inevitable hard times.
I think about this specific graphic all the time.
This is pointless.
There are so many times in your journey where you're going to be questioning yourself, especially in the early years, because you don't see the compounding happen.
Compounding takes years to happen.
And so if there's anything I can leave you with, it's this graphic is to persist and to know that you're going to make it if you just keep going.
So thank you guys.
