When Theres a Will Theres a Way

[Applause]

next month

it’ll be five years since i graduated

from bentley

and coming back here this weekend makes

me incredibly nostalgic

i’m not only nostalgic of how amazing

college life was here

i’m actually much more nostalgic when i

think back to the person i was

when i was sitting in your shoes as a

bentley student and i constantly notice

how much i’ve changed since then in

spirit and in mentality

if i had to summarize my five working

years out of bentley

in one phrase it would be this

when there’s a will there’s a way

i think that quote speaks to me and our

generation

because pursuing seemingly impossible or

unattainable goals

is both exhilarating and a real

challenge

it pushes us out of our comfort zone

to try to overcome adversity and achieve

something difficult

that you can be proud of i’ve also

learned

in painful depth that for every crazy

and ambitious goal that you have

there’s going to be a personal price you

have to pay

that price might be physical emotional

social

mental or similar but you have to pay it

i have three life stories i want to

share with you today from my past five

years

out of bentley and the lessons they’ve

taught me that i wish i knew when i was

sitting in your shoes

in this auditorium three stories that’s

all

my first story is about my time in

investment banking at one of the world’s

top five banks

investment banking is considered the

holy grail for entry-level jobs and

finance

everyone and i’m sure at bentley will

have heard that it’s the shiny industry

where everyone wants to break in because

it opens up tons of doors

it’s very high paying and it’s

prestigious

the problem is it’s very hard to break

in

it’s very hard to break into investment

banking because

they only want to recruit from the same

10 to 15 schools

unfortunately excluding bentley they

have a few hundred spots every year

for tens of thousands of applicants and

it’s very hard because the top banks

want to recruit from their own pool of

summer interns

and the competition for those

internships can start as early as your

freshman year when you don’t even know

what classes you want to choose

when i was a junior at bentley i knew

nothing about this industry and i had

just started learning about it

i kept hearing how shiny it was how

amazing it was

but i had none of the requirements that

they look for and to make things worse

i was an international student which

puts you at further disadvantage as

we’ve heard today

due to visa paperwork that employers

just don’t want to deal with

but somehow i had gotten obsessed that

investment banking was the right move

for me

so i created a plan and started reaching

out to people

like crazy i reached out to hundreds of

alumni

from bentley and other schools just to

ask them questions

how did you get your job how do i mold

my resume

how do you get noticed and how do i sell

myself

this process was the least glamorous

thing you can imagine and many of you

probably can relate

for every 100 messages i sent i’d only

get a handful of replies

some of which were rude or just not

helpful

but alas some of those replies did help

they led to introductions and those

introductions led to interviews

and slowly i started seeing results in

the end

like most of my stories today i got a

little bit lucky

my parents are indian but i grew up in

ecuador so i’m a native spanish speaker

and the latin america mergers and

acquisitions team at bank of america

merrill lynch

needed someone like me i still remember

the final round interviews for that

group

were eight ivy league candidates with

prior banking internships

and me luckily i was selected

i’m very proud of that experience

because i really obsessed over it was

the first time i achieved something of

that nature

the price that i paid to get the

investment banking job

was simply to hustle and be persistent

but the price i paid once i was on the

job

was unexpectedly brutal i’m sure many of

us

have read the stories about how

investment bankers work 100 hour weeks

and

and you know they’re living in the

office et cetera i don’t think the

stories

do any justice until you actually have

to live through some of this

until you your boss comes at 10 pm at

night and gives you work

where you know that means you’re not

gonna sleep tonight when that’s all

you’ve been dreaming about for the past

three weeks

sleeping three four hours a night

investment banking was a really hard

experience and it took a toll on me

but once i lived through it after 18

months i came up with the courage to

quit the job

i realized it wasn’t the right place for

me

my big lesson from the story i want to

leave you with is that you have to learn

to separate appearances

from reality investment banking was the

shiny thing

that seemed amazing from the outside but

i got swayed by it and i didn’t realize

if it was really the right place

for me as you pursue professional

opportunities experiences

i wish for you the wisdom to separate

appearances from reality

so you can find the places that are the

best for you and allow you to be your

best selves

my second story is about my time making

a 180 degree shift

from investment banking and finance into

the world of technology and

entrepreneurship

when i was sitting in your shoes between

2010 and 2014

companies like snapchat uber instagram

were bursting seemingly out of nowhere

reaching multi-billion dollar valuations

overnight and some of those were founded

by young men and women

in their 20s how hard could it really be

i remember my naive self thinking so i

took my banking savings

and i took an eight month sabbatical

where the goal was to try new things

and ultimately come up with the startup

idea

i still remember the fall of 2016 is

when i officially ended the sabbatical

and came up with my big idea i knew i

was going to be

the next mark zuckerberg

six months later i painfully realized

this idea would not get me to zuckerberg

levels

and that this was going to be really

hard i had to let that idea go and shift

courses radically to a new one

that leads me to the lobby the lobby was

a simple startup idea

what if you could buy a 30-minute

coaching call

with someone who worked inside the

company that you were dying to work for

but had no connections in i felt it was

a powerful idea

i was incredibly passionate about it i

felt it was simple and it was connected

to

a personal problem i had had for myself

and dozens of my friends

after the initial glamour of coming up

with the idea faded

i started telling my friends working on

the idea and interacting with people

i respected in all honesty this period

was quite depressing

if any of you have tried to do something

new or risky

you will know you will get pushback from

everyone around you or at least

most i still remember nights where i

would come home

and not be able to sleep because of an

innocent comment or joke a friend made

about my startup idea or that i was

spending my time and savings on stupid

things that would never work

little did they know that my identity

was so wrapped up in that idea

that all these comments and jokes were

lethal to my peace of mind

the closest thing i had to a mentor or a

north star in the startup world

was the fact that i would spend

ridiculous amounts of my time

consuming content from one organization

called y combinator

for those of you who don’t know y

combinator is largely considered the

world’s best and most selective

startup accelerator they’ve been around

only over a decade and have launched

over 120 billion dollars

worth of startups and products that many

of you use today

such as airbnb dropbox coinbase quora

and many more they have tens of

thousands of applicants every year and

only fund a few hundred companies

the acceptance rate is rumored to be

around one percent

and is rumored to be five times harder

than getting into stanford or harvard

needless to say getting in was a dream

for me

but this time i was at an even worse

disadvantage

having read all of y combinator’s

content i knew they had a strong bias

against solo founders like me and an

even stronger bias

against startups where none of the

founders are programmers

so that one percent acceptance rate was

even lower for a company like mine

but this time my obsession was 10 times

stronger than when i wanted to be a

banker

so i created a plan and did the same

thing i started reaching out to anyone

who would speak with me

i think i spoke after hundreds of

outreach with 30 yc alumni

i consumed all their content and i knew

they were looking for businesses that

had launched

that were growing and that had a huge

market opportunity

i did everything i could and in the end

over a dozen of those alumni

ended up recommending us internally and

i was able to get in as a solo

non-technical founder

i think it’s the only time in my life i

can truly say one of my dreams came true

i still remember crying for 30 minutes

outside of the san francisco caltrain

station

when i got the call that they wanted to

fund me

this moment was pure and sheer joy

my biggest lesson from this story is

that daunting and crazy goals

seem impossible when you look at them

from day one

but if you just get started and count on

the fact that little wins every week and

every month

they will compound over time and get you

closer to the goal

as you guys chase your dreams just get

started

go bit by bit and persist because the

little wins eventually add up to the big

ones

at the end of y combinator we raised 1.2

million dollars from some of the world’s

best investors

we recovered on techcrunch bloomberg

tons of other publications

and i was being invited to panels and

conferences and my inbox was flooded

with people asking for advice

on how to build the next big startup we

had made it or had we

after we closed our seed round in the

lobby about one year ago

we did what most startups do we made a

list of ideas and

initiatives that we would have to

undergo to grow the business to achieve

its full potential

we started burning cash we grew our team

size to over 10 people

and we just started going after six

months

of trying every possible thing i could

think of

we realized it wasn’t working no matter

how many experiments we did

how many initiatives we tried the

numbers that mattered for the business

just would not go up and i knew it was

time to make some very tough decisions

i had to let go of all of those 10 team

members

including someone who moved from new

york just to join our itty bitty startup

a few months ago

and then i had to start telling my

investors

imagine having to tell people that you

admire who gave you money for your dream

to build your dream only six months

earlier and say

hey this isn’t going to work out and by

the way

i might take your money to do something

totally unrelated

for what you funded me for

this led to another one of the hardest

decisions i’ve ever had to make

i was not legally obliged to offer my

investors money back

but i realized we have to think long

term and i made the hard decision to

offer them that option

this entire process was one of the

darkest periods of my life

after spending all my savings after

spending a lot of time

killing myself to reach this point i

felt

i had let everyone down and that we were

starting all over again

this was the lowest point right the only

place we could go was up

so eventually things started taking an

interesting twist

my investors humbled me and about 60 of

them stayed

with a handful of them increasing

tripling their investment just a few

short months later

fast forward again only a few short

months we’re now building something in

the international logistics space

which is incredibly close to home for me

because it’s something my father worked

on for 30 years

and it’s creating jobs in the u.s and

latin america the two regions that have

molded my entire life

our team is again 10 people in a much

faster time span

our revenues this month will be five

times higher than the best month we ever

had at the lobby

and all of those numbers are set to

double or triple in the coming months

i have never been more excited since i

graduated from bentley

my biggest lesson from this story is

that if you’re going to try

big and audacious goals you have to

combine that with an intense sense of

reality

when things aren’t working

pivoting our business entirely and

offering money back were two of the most

anxiety inducing

and painful decisions i’ve ever had to

make but are now the things i’m most

proud of when i look back on my

experience

i wish for all of you when you try new

and bold things

the courage to shift course radically

when you deep down know

you’re not going down the wrong path

because that will happen

my three stories from today are the

reason i’ve become much more ambitious

than i was when i was a student here at

bentley

every time i set a crazy or goal that

seemed relatively impossible

some delusional part in my brain kept

telling me there was a way

it kept telling me when there’s a will

there’s a way

every time i i spent a lot of time

identifying the right goals for myself

and when i found them i ran towards them

and i did everything i could

accumulating those little wins until

they became a reality

when i realized things weren’t going

down the right path

i was willing to make bold and radical

changes whether that meant restarting my

career and quitting banking

or restarting our entire business

i wish for all of you the ability to

find the goals that make you

feel that they’re the right place for

you right goals the right experiences

to separate appearances from reality i

wish for you the courage to try bold and

new things

and persist accumulating those little

wins which will eventually turn into big

ones

and i hope you have the sense to change

course radically and have courage

when things aren’t working or are not

right for you

and if things get unbearable or you feel

hopeless or lost

please know that i’ve been there

everyone i admire has been there

and you can power through when there’s a

will

there’s a way thank you