MBA program. Post 3/6 - (Shanghai Nov 2015)

I arrived in Shanghai early November 2015. The prior few weeks were pretty crazy. Sosh, which was a startup based in San Francisco, where I had help an executive team role for about 15 months was going through an acquisition.

Below are pictures of the Sosh office, which was based in the Twitter building of San Francisco. A beautiful office and very typical layout and style of must venture funded tech startups in SF.

At the end of October 2015 the company was acquired by Postmates. I knew well in advance it wasn't for me, so I didn't have the added stress of interviewing or worrying about my own acquisition. It was an exciting and never dull experience though, going through the process.

This meant when I arrived in Shanghai, I had a wide open blank canvas of what the new world could mean for me. I was feeling a combination of excitement, nervousness, anxiety, and freedom.

Luckily, while we were winding down things with Sosh, my boss let me preemptively start consulting for other startups, which was a huge boost to my monthly income and helped tremendously with the big grad school tuition payments. By the end of the program, I would have have spent over $130k to cover tuition, travel, lodging, meals, etc... It also gave me freedom to kick the tires on what would eventually become Nearshore Systems. More details below.

I was also excited to travel to Shanghai for this session as it would be the first time we were all out of our element. The majority of the class either lived in Singapore or LA, so this would be time for us to bond. It was also an opportunity to stay in a hotel, which was the Le Royal Meridien right downtown Shanghai on Nanjing road, a pedestrian mall. My hotel was the tall illuminated building with the 2 spires.

I arrived around noon on Thursday and was exhausted from the trip, so after room service, I passed out for about 12 hours, and woke up at 1am on Friday morning. I was wired and ready to go, as it was a busy day of work before class started. I was scheduled to meet Soul Htite for the 2nd time. Soul was a wildly successful tech business executive who I was in early discussions with to potentially take over a consulting business called "Scale Options" he had founded years ago.

I was picked up from the hotel by Angela, Soul’s assistant and she took me to the office in Shanghai on a damp and foggy morning. I met Soul in his office for about 2 hours and we chatted about business, strategy, and went over a slide deck I had prepared. It felt pretty exciting to be having that kind of conversation on my own, rather than being the HR guy. Usually I felt my role was lacking oomph or status to be an integral part of conversations, it was usually the "last man" on the leadership team while the guys in finance, BD, and strategy held court.

After the meeting with him, I went to meet one of my SF clients at their Shanghai office. Also a first for me. We spent about 2 hours together chatting about how I could help the HR leader there, and saw their engineering office.

Afterwards I ran into my classmates. We had dinner together before the first session. It was fun eating oily Chinese food and hearing stories about not drinking the water. I had a more interesting story going on with the investor meetings I was having, so people were kind of piqued.

During the 2 weeks, I still wasn't fully confident in front of my classmates. Some days were great, which were usually the ones speaking about the unknown future and my investor discussions. Many of my classmates seemed genuinely excited, while others weren't sure what to make of me. The less confident days were when I didn't feel secure enough in my future and felt like an unemployed HR guy. My introverted nature still held up and I was not super comfortable speaking in class. I did have a few times I added some value to the HR class and the startup entrepreneurship class. This was a session I learned a lot of classroom items that were valuable, including corporate finance, which dealt with valuation of a company, incredible relevant as I put together the pitch deck for Soul a few weeks later, which included fundraising terms. Also, going a bit deeper on term sheets, and doing the inspirational speech for HR class and thinking about the “why” while we also watched Jack Welch videos were all great for where I was, as a potential startup founder.

There were a few nights out that ended up being a fantastic time.

At a rooftop bar with Juliana (Columbia) and Ben (Singapore)

View of the bund from rooftop bar

Most of the group made it out to this bar. I'm in the middle.

From L-R, Vicknesh (Singapore), Warren (South Africa), me, and Rob (US)

Playing foosball with the guys: From Left: Warren, Drew (US), Tom (US), Juan Pablo (Chile), Vicknesh

In the mornings, I would relax by taking advantage of the public Chinese baths, switching from cold to hot.

When I didn't do the bath, I would go out running by the bund. On some mornings the pollution was terrible and breathing the air was disgusting. You quickly realize what you take for granted in the U.S. when you realize the creature comforts of the developed world, such as safe food, air quality, drinkable water, etc...

We also started our practicum project, which involved several of my classmates and was a consulting project for Rockwell Collins, an aviation software conglomerate. Outside of class, we went to tour a few companies, but none were super exciting. I got to spend more time with guys like Rob, Maresuke, and Kaz, and became a helpful resource to James as he ventured into the startup world. I also got to talk more baseball with Phil and Benson.

At times I felt a little left out and other times I felt in the mix. It’s funny how confidence can play such a key role. My stutter was still a bit there, but worse was getting stuck on the first word and still being so worried about what others would think. This was still my primary downfall.

Self photo during an evening on one of the skyscrapers in the bund.

During the evenings I worked a bit on the stuff for Soul and some homework, but I skipped a few nights where I could have partied with the others because I just needed a break, so I would order room service and watch a movie. Similar to LA, if I could go back and do it again, I would have tried to join for more of the bonding experiences, because thats how the relationships are built.

When I felt more relaxed and comfortable I was excited to talk about what was going on, but I was never as comfortable in my skin as the others were, and still questioned my belonging. The imposter syndrome was still prominent in my psyche.

The classroom portion ended up with hits and misses. I got a B+ in Corporate Finance, A- in Leadership/Org. behavior, and a B+ in Operations Management.

There were some interesting days and of course some days which accelerated dream time for my classmates! Eyes became heavy and the sleep began.

On the last night, I had one of my absolute favorite memories of the entire grad school program. I was riding back to the hotel with Nitin from Singapore in a tuk tuk that was basically like a lawnmower with a carriage, getting around Shanghai in a fog of traffic at a speed of about 10 mph. We laughed hysterically for about the duration of the 20 min ride, which forged a nice bond with him.

Nitin (Singapore) and I

Our driver after dropping us at the hotel