Various Startups

I turn 29 today. This past year has been the most important one of my life. I quit drinking, met the love of my life, quit my job—and went all-in on building a company—taking it further than I ever imagined I’ve learned a lot about taking risks, managing relationships, building wealth, and motivating myself from people much wiser than me. Today I’m sharing the 28 lessons I learned at 28. Hoping one of them be helpful and can impact you in a small way. (𝐅𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐢𝐧 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬) 1. Learn to do things with fewer moves. 2. Being kind is the ultimate life hack. 3. Find your playground. 4. Build your naked skills. 5. Like attracts like. 6. Problems are opportunities in disguise. 7. Find asymmetric risk. 8. If you’re about to write an angry email, wait. 9. Nobody is thinking about you as much as you think they are. 10. Motivation is overrated. 11. Building your own routine is overrated. 12. Saying “I don’t know” is underrated. 13. The whole point of your career is to build an awesome life. 14. Lift heavy things more often. 15. You do your best work when you’re not working. 16. Tell people you admire them. 17. How to manipulate time. 18. Big things take the same amount of effort as small things. 19. Chase awe. 20. Trust is earned in drops and lost in buckets. 21. Record more stuff. 22. Fire your boss (or your client). 23. Don’t plan further out than a year for your career. 24. Trust your gut. 25. Useful, not true. 26. Host events. 27. You’re capable of more than you think. 28. Don’t listen to me (or anyone else). *** 👉 Click repost to share this with your network and follow Andrew Yeung for more. 📌 Want all of my best ideas one place? Join 30,000+ other readers on my newsletter (see comments below).

At 20, I dropped out of Claremont McKenna College, where I studied Economics and Computer Science (through Harvey Mudd), to build Paysail, an instant global B2B invoicing and payments solution. At the time, I didn’t even know what a startup or venture capital was; I simply had a passion for building products from the ground up. My co-founder, Liam, and I shared the lofty goal of disrupting legacy payment rails and making it possible to send funds anywhere in the world within seconds for a fraction of a cent. Deciding to drop everything to pursue this idea was a no-brainer—I knew there was no better timing to build it than the present. After raising $4M, hiring an exceptional team, and processing cross-border payments in <5 seconds for ~$0.001, the collapse of FTX left us faced with a difficult decision. We ultimately realized that consumers had become skeptical of cryptocurrency and our goal of enabling traditional businesses to leverage stablecoins for their most important, high dollar-value payments would be an uphill battle at that point in time. That, combined with the challenge of working with crypto-friendly banks and on/off ramp providers for seamless currency conversions led us to pivot away from our original idea. We rebranded as Syro and built an end-to-end secrets management solution for storing, accessing, and rotating credentials after experiencing issues firsthand with removing access while building Paysail. We reached out to 8,000 engineers and spoke with hundreds of DevOps, Infra, and Security experts, understanding the issues they faced. Following onboarding early stage beta customers and finding a lack of engagement, we moved upmarket and focused on a specific problem that continued to come up during conversations—secrets rotation. After the most fulfilling and educational 3.5+ years working on Paysail/Syro, we’ve made the difficult decision to wind down operations and return remaining capital. I want to thank (1) our investors for taking a bet on us and for their patience, support, and guidance through every up and down, (2) our employees: both those who spent a part of the journey with us, and Drayton D'Silva and Taimur Ayaz who have been there from beginning to end with relentless optimism. It has been a privilege to wake up each day and learn from and with them, and (3) to Liam for taking a chance on me when I was an inexperienced college student. It’s been a pleasure growing and learning with you throughout this journey. As this chapter of my career comes to an end, I’m excited to move forward with the same tenacity and intellectual curiosity in my next endeavor. I remain deeply passionate about building innovative products and playing a role in crafting what the future of technology will look like. As I explore what comes next, one thing’s for sure—I long for the same inexplicable feeling of urgency and enthusiasm I felt when Liam first shared with me the idea behind Paysail, and I can’t wait to find that again.

Want to learn the playbook on scaling a startup to $250M? On July 29, I’m sitting down with Ankur Nagpal, Founder of Teachable (acq. For $250M) and Carry for an intimate fireside chat on building, scaling, and selling his co - and his advice for founders building in 2024. It’ll be at the Antler office. A huge thank you to Kaila J. Lim for having us! We have 100 spots. Apply here: https://lu.ma/250M

We are officially just one month away from our biggest event of the year: The OOO Summit (Owners, Operators and Outliers) A full day event in NYC featuring the most badass entrepreneurs I know, with lots of side events before and after Here's the full list of events and activities so you know what to expect: August 13 - Builders, Besties and Billion Dollar Dreams, for female builders & investors in NYC attending OOO (open event) August 14 - Friends of OOO Summit Soiree - For friends, sponsors, and the OOO team at my house (invite only) August 15 - Founder dinner hosted by me & Andrew Yeung at a private dinner club in East Village (invite only for Seed / Series A founders) August 16 - Speaker and VIP Reception, VIP ticket holders are invited to hang & mingle with the speakers at Maxwell Social August 17 - The big day! The OOO Summit, the Flagship Entrepreneur & Founder event starts at 10am and goes all day with a happy hour to round it up August 17 - The Ultimate Tech Party at night, which is the closing party for the OOO Summit at a location to be announced August 18 - Unwind at Othership Flatiron to close out an epic week -- The room will be packed with 500 other founders and business owners so we'll leave plenty of time to meet interesting people If you want to come, we still have a few tickets left, you can DM me for a $99 ticket See you all there!

Last Friday, I hosted a virtual workshop called "How to Build a Personal Brand From Scratch". 600+ people from around the world tuned in! What I covered: - Figuring out your niche - Tactics to optimize your profile - How to convince others to listen to you - How to never run out of things to write about - How to make $$$ through this platform (and many others) I'm sending out the recording + slides for anyone who wasn't able to make the session. Want it? Comment "BRAND" below and fill out this form: https://lnkd.in/eKyBCuiU

Check out all the upcoming events I'm hosting! - July 31/August 15 - private founder dinners - August 17 - the flagship entrepreneurship and founder conference - August 17 - the ultimate tech "party" - & many more... Hope to see you around.

Last Friday, I held a virtual workshop called "8 Steps to Build a Personal Brand From Scratch". 600+ people from around the world tuned in! What I covered: - Figuring out your niche - Tactics to optimize/tweak your profile - How to CONVINCE people to listen to you - How to never run out of things to write about - Best examples of people who are doing it flawlessly - How to make $$$ through this platform (and many others) I'm sending out the recording + slides for anyone who wasn't able to make the session. Want it? Please COMMENT on this post and fill out this form: https://lnkd.in/eqSx--kK

I’ve met a shocking amount of millionaires who are unsatisfied with their lives. These are the folks who make upwards of $300,000 a year, work less than 40 hours a week, and have healthy social and romantic relationships - yet are still unfulfilled. In my latest newsletter post, I share why: https://lnkd.in/e3VPSmyZ

Tomorrow at 9:15 am ET, I'm teaching a virtual workshop to 800+ people on "How to Build a Personal Brand From Scratch". Can't make it? Sign up anyway and I'll send you the 50+ page deck and notes after the session. Sign up link: https://lnkd.in/eApB6Zt8

Beware of shadow careers: (h/t to Steven Pressfield)