Goldman investor turned Tech CEO

Author

Vincent Xu
October 20, 2024

TalentGeist Newsletter

Immediately-actionable career insights for ambitious individuals.

Read time: 10 minutes

Today’s issue will be slightly different. Instead of me yammering on, I’m super happy to bring on my good friend Brian Ip to share more about his career journey and leanings.

Hopefully, these mini-interview series give you a more well-rounded perspective, and democratize learnings from those who’ve succeeded at the highest levels professionally.

First, my initial impressions of Brian when we met almost 3 years ago…..genuinely one of the most humble and selfless people I’ve ever met. The guy will never say how well he’s doing (and all the cool things he’s accomplished since you last met) unless you ask…..and then you’re like ‘damn, how!? Do you even sleep?’ 😲 😪

Today — let’s break down some of Brian’s key career insights (accumulated across an illustrious 10+ year career), in under-10 minutes.

➡️ Brian, you’ve worked in Investment Banking, Private Equity, and now a venture-backed Tech business…..the pinnacle of a ‘successful career’ by most means. Please — top 3 insights on what’s gotten you this far in life.

Thanks Vincent for the feature! Well, if I have to narrow it to 3, they’d definitely be:

No. 1 – YOUR NETWORK IS YOUR NET WORTH. 

If you don’t have friends who can make intros, pick up the darn phone and cold-call! Or cold-email. I made literally hundreds of calls, and met dozens of bankers for coffee, before successfully landing my first IB gig. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I cold outreached to hundreds of industry professionals – 300+ to be more exact. 

Equally important in networking – my top goal is to be as genuine and helpful for the other person as possible. Whatever my personal agenda is, comes at a lower priority. This builds an immense amount of goodwill and rapport with those I meet with. 

No. 2 – Absolutely nail the fundamentals. 

Here’s an analogy – we all know sleep, diet, and exercise is 95% of ‘how to be healthy.’ Yet, many are on the market trying to buy all sorts of supplements when they simultaneously eat extremely unhealthy or never work out.

Same goes for your professional / academic life – sure, getting your name out there and playing office politics may help, but if you haven’t absolutely nailed the work you’re tasked with, then everything else should be a distant-second priority at best.

“How exactly do I nail my work?” may be your next question – Vincent, this is what your newsletter is meant to help with right? Nailing your comms, strategic thinking, presentation/interviewing skills, etc. 😊 

No. 3 – Take intellectual curiosity to the extreme

What I did in my spare time outside of school/work – read the annual filings of every company I admire, go on crowdfunding sites and read managerial presentations, and even deploy a bit of my own money to sharpen my investment intuition.

Needless to say, I learned an absolute TON from doing this, taking my financial knowledge well beyond most peers. Of course, this level of ‘obsession’ also comes across in interviews and networking conversations – professionals you’re trying to impress can sense the level of excitement and commitment you have for something, and everybody wants to hire the person most eager and passionate about the industry.

After my Finance days….aka now….I spend my free time reading up on the latest Tech innovations, especially those relevant to my business (HR Tech). This isn’t a ‘check-the-box’ thing for me – every time I open up a new Techcrunch article, I’m genuinely excited to learn about what other companies have done well, and whether there are learnings I can apply to my own Tech business.

➡️ Fantastic. Where do you see yourself in the next 3-5 years?

I’m in Tech for the foreseeable future. Omni HR especially excites me because it’s not a 1-off product, but rather, a platform that’s ever-expanding.

For example, our customers may initially buy our product for our New Employee Onboarding function; once they install our software, they can easily add on others like Expense Management, Payroll, and even Performance Review. If they need something that we don’t have, we can just build it and add it to our ecosystem of products.

My dream is to own THE ULTIMATE all-in-one software tool for employee management in Southeast Asia (we may choose to expand globally too, we’ll see).

➡️ Tell us your views on working at a Tech MNC vs. startup.

Good question. TL;DR: if you want to work less and just have a traditional corporate job, go with MNC. If you want to work hard, learn as much as you can, and potentially 5-10X your promotion / payout, definitely at least consider Tech startups.

Note that I’m not talking about Tech startups founded yesterday haha — this is usually a common misconception, that startups are just a bunch of people coding in a basement hoping to become the next Facebook. There’s hundreds of fast-growth Tech startups today that have raised millions of investor cash. For some, job stability is probably the same as a MNC, especially with all the layoffs MNCs have been experiencing lately.

For one, at these Tech startups, the amount of ownership you have over your work, the pace of your work, is insane. For example, even juniors might get to launch new products / features WEEKLY (vs. the 3-6 months it might take to get through bureaucratic approvals in MNCs), or influence the direction of the entire company.

Second, at these Tech startups, you can get promoted 5X faster than if you were at a MNC — if you do really well, I’ve seen people getting to Director or even C-level positions, managing dozens of employees, by their late 20’s. At MNCs, don’t even think about leading a team of this size until you are WELL-PAST your 40’s.

Finally, the payout. Yes, you’ll get equity in most startups which may not materialize into anything if the company goes under. BUT if the startup does well, sells after a period of rapid growth, you can expect $10K in equity turn into $700K+ in cash in just a few years (this is literally what happened to early Loom employees).

Anyways, I can go on and on about the ‘Tech startups vs. MNCs’ topic — although admittedly I’m a bit biased because I went the startup route myself. Are we still trying to keep this newsletter short? Haha. Vincent, we can dive more into this in future issues if your audience has any more questions.

➡️ Thank you Brian. Where can we find you on social media?

Feel free to add me on LinkedIn. If you have questions, just respond on this email thread – Vincent will collate all the questions, I’ll have a look, and try to respond to as many as possible! I may also be back for a round 2 podcast/interview, we’ll see 😉

There you have it, ladies and gents! If this or any of the archived insights resonated with you, we’d highly appreciate you sharing the signup link with 2-3 colleague/friends (who would in turn thank YOU for sharing 😊)

Until next time,

Vincent (LinkedIn)

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