So it’s official. Tomorrow is my last day at Morgan Stanley and in the weeks that follow, I begin the process of leaving New York behind to setup my new home in Washington, DC where I join Hillcrest Labs, a young technology startup.
A lot of people have asked me why I am doing this and naturally, I expect the same reaction from a lot of my readers. It’s a fair question and so you will hear my reasons.
I first came to Morgan Stanley in Feb 2004 after turning down an offer from (interestingly enough) the same company – Hillcrest Labs. Back then when I was in graduate school, it seemed like there was a whole world of possibilities out there. I still remember sitting through all those nights in St. Louis talking to Booze about the exciting world that lay ahead of us. I had all sorts out of ideas back then. Maybe I wanted to be a consultant at McKinsey. Maybe I wanted to work on Wall Street and delve into the world of technology for financial services. Maybe I wanted to do an MBA from a top business school after a few years of work experience. Maybe I really was just a technologist who enjoyed building products.
When you’re 23 years old, you can be forgiven for not knowing exactly what you want to do when you’re 35 or even 40 (because nobody really does). You can be forgiven for being carried away by all the things that are glamourized in today’s world – MBA graduates coming out of elite business schools and making a beeline straight for all the investment banks and consulting companies of the world. When you’re 23, it’s okay to experiment.
And that’s what I did. I came to Morgan Stanley because up till then I had only lived in a world that breathed and slept technology. What would it be like to be in a world where technology was being applied to solve business problems? Where technology was merely an enabler and not the end in itself?
The last year and a half have taught me a lot. About the glamorous world of Wall Street. About what I enjoy doing and don’t. And about what I really want to do. Much of it also had to do with just seeing more of the world outside academics. It’s also had to do with all the different people I met, the books I read, and things I came across that really inspired me.
I learnt that I really don’t enjoy the world of finance quite that much. What excites me is technology innovation, not bonds and swaps and spreads and basis points. I like building technology products, not providing a service to some trader who won’t lose the first opportunity to lose his temper at the slightest technical glitch. I learnt that I don’t like working in an environment where the technology guys do what the real bosses with the control of the purse strings – the finance chaps – tell them to do. I am fascinated by technology companies. I want to work in one and I want to build one someday. So the question was, should I continue doing what I was doing?
It became quickly apparent that I needed to leave Morgan Stanley and go back to what has always been my true calling – the world of bleeding edge technology. But I didn’t want to join just another huge firm like Microsoft or Google where things are very well structured and your role is pretty tightly boxed already. I wanted to be in a startup where one learns a heck of a lot and gets to do a lot more than what your job description says you should be doing. Perhaps about product development. Perhaps a little about sales and marketing.
So that’s what I hope to do (and a lot more) at Hillcrest Labs, a young company that is building products to deliver the next generation of cable/television home entertainment. There is a fair amount of embedded systems work in additional to user interface and hardware design. The team is an excellent and experienced one (this is their second startup after a successful first) and the innovation energy is tremendous. I really look forward to starting with them soon.
But as with all things in life, there is always something you give up. Leaving behind New York is turning out to be so much harder than I thought it would. To think that I am so much in love with New York only after a year and a half here! But any way you look at it, it’s true – New York City rocks and will always remain to me perhaps the greatest city in the world. If you ever get a chance to come and live here, don’t let it pass!
So here I am on the verge of a new stage in my life. I am 25 years old and have made a choice that, for me, is about pursuing a dream – of doing what I really want to. I dream of being somewhere someday and this decision is the first in the long journey to getting there.
I guess I share Robert Frost’s sentiments at this point but will I be telling this story with a sigh many years from now?
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
— Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken.”
Time will tell.
