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by Brian Wu

2021: A Year in Review

Introduction

After spending much of 2020 confined to my bedroom, I resolved to make 2021 my year — one in which I would experience growth, social connection, and most importantly, as much of a return to normalcy as I can make it.

And what a year it has been.

To characterize 2021 as the “best year ever” would be quite an exaggeration. But at the same time, 2021 was one of the most transformative years in my life. I experienced numerous personal triumphs, and also faced numerous failures and setbacks. Even during the depths of the Pandemic, I took strides in putting myself in unfamiliar environments where I knew I’d be uncomfortable — and I thrived in them. But most importantly, I grew as a person. Very simple, but I grew — and that’s all that matters to me.

If I had a chance to go back to my past self at the beginning of this year and tell him what was on my mind, I’d be hesitant to say much, for fear of spoiling all the fun that’s to come. Rather, the only advice that I’ll give is the following: “View every opportunity as if it’s serendipitous, and take the leap when it makes sense, so don’t let yourself be defined by anyone else’s opinions about journey except yours.”

Without further delay, let’s get started.

The Beginning

In a move that would be quite reminiscent of 2020, Stanford canceled in-person classes for Freshmen during the beginning of the year (with just DAYS left before the start of the quarter) and told us to expect to spend the rest of the year home, citing rising COVID cases in the Bay Area. At that point, I had already finished off the first quarter of online school, which, due to me taking way too heavy of a course load that I could handle (with CS, Physics, and Math), I resolved to never do again because the home environment was not conductive to retaining information.

So I decided to change that, with the help of the Special Circumstances Housing process. In late January, I arrived on campus as a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Freshman, without the fanfare and family that would have accompanied a traditional move-in. It didn’t matter that the traditional hustle and bustle of campus wasn’t there — I had at least made it to Palo Alto.

Campus life wasn’t like what one would expect in To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, but it was campus life. All of our classes would still be held online, meals would be delivered through grab-and-go containers at the dining halls, and twice a week we’d all trek to Tressider for a mandatory PCR test. While there wasn’t much to do in terms of in-person activities, the insane courseload that I made a terrible mistake of selecting (for Stanford students: PHYSICS 63, PHYSICS 64, CS 106B, MATH 52, PHIL 20N, CME 193, and CS 106L) assured me that it’d keep me busy.

(I would later resolve to never do something so stupid like that again in my Stanford career.)

During school, I was active as part of Student Government (shoutout Frosh Council!), and to describe the experience as “incredible” would be such an understatement. We started out planning virtual events to bond the Class of 2024 together, and as people got jaded and tired of Zoom hangouts, we shifted into advocacy. Our meetings with admin were tense and frustrating, but in the end, we had gotten many steps closer to accomplishing our goals: programs introduced this year such as Sophomore-only Dorms and Sophomore Convocation + Welcome events were the direct brainchild of our work.

And then came Sophomore Class President Elections. At Stanford, Class Presidents are elected in slates of 4, and in the beginning of the process my slate and I were faced with unexpected difficulties with one of our members defecting early in the process to join a rival slate, but I’m happy to report that we were able to fill the remaining slot and work hard to accomplish our goals. Right away I realized how much of a popularity contest the Class President elections were — to say that the process was full of drama would certainly be an understatement. We saw rival slate members drop out, attack each other for differing values and accusations of cheating, and try to challenge election results. Amidst all of this noise, the most important lesson I learned from this process was that being on the same level with your classmates matters so much. What I mean by that is that when someone is in a position of authority, they tend to forget that being on the same level with whom they are working with (as opposed to directly above) is critically important for gaining support and achieving your agenda. While we definitely could not have won the popularity contest, towards the end of the election period my team and I wrote personal messages to as many members of the Class of 2024 as we could to encourage them to participate in the election. And while some of the people we contacted stated that they were going to vote for a rival slate, most welcome our message and indicated to us that we had earned their vote. While we did not end up winning the election in the end, the lessons that I learned will always stick with me — and, in quite an interesting twist, have already influenced my strategies in startup investing. I’ll be sure to touch on that interesting connection in a future article.

Pinnacle

To me, it seems quite strange to start off this section with a failure. During the Summer, my colleagues from McGill University that I built my first startup — Vitol Drone — with and I agreed that now was not the ideal time for us to be building a drone delivery startup. While we had gotten many pieces of the tech in place, the market — one being extremely regulated — was just too hard for us to tackle. So we put down our pencils and decided to take an extended break from the project — when the market conditions will become just right in the future, we’ll continue to build.

During December of last year, I was scrolling through some emails when I found a link to join Romulus Capital’s Venture Fellow information session during the first week of January. I was so inspired by Partner Joey Kim’s presentation, enthusiasm, and conviction for inspiring more people to get into VC that I knew it was a no-brainer that I had to apply for the Venture Fellowship. And what an interesting application process it was — the first stage consisted of a 2-page written report of a company or technology that we found interesting, and the next stage was preparing a deck on a hypothetical company that Romulus was considering investing in, and explaining why or why not we would invest.

Those rounds of interviews were grueling (I have many fond memories of Joey absolutely grilling me for my presentation), but one night at Chick-Fil-A, I got a call from Joey explaining that I had been offered a spot in the program, and that would be a call that would change my career path.

During the Venture Fellowship, I dove all in to learning about Venture Capital, a field that I had no previous experience in (when I started, I didn’t even know the difference between public and private equity). Taking advantage of Romulus’ network, I threw myself into as many live deals as I could, and ultimately played a role in the Due Diligence for Reconstruct, Inc.’s Series B, which we invested in over the Summer. I enjoyed the work at Romulus so much that I was offered to continue on full-time starting at the end of the school year, which I gladly accepted.

When June hit, it was time to head back home. I started out the day on June 4th with a sunrise on the West Coast, and ended the day with a Sunset on the East Coast. Then, less than 24 hours later, I was back at the airport and on a flight to Reykjavik, Iceland, where I would spend the next week with my parents and some family friends. Iceland was the essence of natural beauty — I don’t think I’ve ever connected as much with nature as before, and being far from human civilization for the most of the trip gave me enough headspace to think, imagine, and let my mind wander.

The day after I flew back to New York City, I jumped into a WeWork by Grand Central and began my first official day at Romulus. Right away, I was put into sourcing — identifying new companies that we thought were interesting, talking to the founders, and figuring out whether or not we should invest our resources into Due Diligence (and later, the company). I was put into leading Due Diligence multiple times, with one of them cumulating in Romulus’ investment into Soil Connect’s Seed Round (of which I later angel invested in as well). Most importantly, I was given freedom to do whatever I pleased with Romulus’ resources — figuring out new ways for us to make our investment process more efficient. I built a knowledge base, worked alongside colleagues automating our investment pipeline tools, and helped build a data warehouse to benchmark every company we’ve looked at quantitatively with each other.

The other fundamental way in which I took advantage of Romulus’ resources was to expand my horizons and get to know as much of the Tech Community as possible. In late June, I went to my first tech party, which was hosted by Floodgate’s Shawn Xu for NYC-based VCs. I was in awe of all the talent that I saw, and for being a 19-year-old, it certainly was intimidating. That was the start of a series of events in which I established numerous new friendships, learned about what other people like me who were so passionate about tech were building, and dreamed about the future together. I and a few Stanford classmates would hang out with other college-age founders and investors in a club on 14th street during a Thunderstorm; another time, I found myself on Spring Place’s rooftop, watching one of the most gorgeous sunsets I’ve ever seen in my life with NYC’s startup community. Perhaps the most interesting party of them all was joining Launch House’s New York debut on a Yacht that they had rented — I can’t remember the number of “Brian’s signature drink” (Malibu Coconut Rum, Pineapple Juice, and Blue Curaçao) that I consumed.

Throughout this time period, it was most fascinating to see how New York’s startup scene. What was always known as the epitome of Old Money had, over the Pandemic, attracted a plethora of world-class tech talent — with FinTech and Blockchain being a brand new focus. I was constantly in awe of how everybody in New York City had a vision for the future, and they were so ambitious about building it that they were willing to give up a lot of what they had in the past. As such, I resolved to achieve that level of conviction in something that I’m willing to build one day, and go out and build it, no matter what it takes.

This is a huge theme for me. For the first (and only time), I have the capacity and ability to learn as much as I can about anything that I want, wherever and whenever I want. I want to surround myself with those smarter than me so that I can aggregate their insights and use them to construct the future that I envision. I’ve never felt more excited for my future, no matter what it takes to get there.

Denouement

After what seemed like too short of a Summer, it was time to return to school again. This time, our return was not plagued by the events of 2021 — everyone, for the first time since Early 2020 would be allowed back to campus. Instead of living alone, I had a fantastic (and extremely smart) roommate, Ian. All of my classes were taught in-person, and I was more than happy to forget the sensation of Zoom classes. I met my classmates for the first time and was able to match faces to social media accounts — one of the downsides of online school was that everything you knew about everyone was mostly from their social media accounts, and when you get to finally meet them in person, everything about them seems so different, in a good way. I concluded that Social Media was just too toxic in that we’re all more likely to be a “faker” version of ourselves online, and I scrubbed my social media accounts (except for Tech Twitter) in order to not be dragged down that trap.

This quarter was one in which I experienced many fundamental lessons and realized the value of staying true to those who really care about you. What most people don’t know about me during this quarter is that it was uncomfortable. I have had to grow in ways I could never have imagined, but thankfully, I was never alone during this process. These thoughts invoke a Tweet I recently saw, which stated that “everything is your fault” — in that no matter the situation (and even if you think it has nothing to do with yourself), there is always a way to reflect and grow.

The first lesson that I learned was to be excited, but never too eager. There were so many moments in which I found something exciting, and wanted to jump as much as I could on the idea without holding back. In conversation, this translated to me being extremely eager to cut into conversation and offer my opinions and thoughts on a topic that I cared about, while disengaging at other times when it was clear that I was not interested.

I think the conclusion of the first lesson fits perfectly into the second: always stay engaged. Be in a position where you are genuinely excited about others and their interests; otherwise, you’d come across as someone who isn’t empathetic at all despite you having nothing but pure intentions. I spoke with many people who were much better at staying engaged than I am, and I’d like to summarize it all in one sentence: When you are in conversation with someone, no matter if they are a new acquaintance, your closest friend, or Elon Musk, you want to pretend they are the most important person in the world. Treat everything they say to you with grace, and ask questions about what they share. There is nothing that makes a person more happy when they find that someone else is interested in what they have to say and share. This principle, while seemingly obvious, has already made a profound impact in making me a better conversationalist.

These two lessons collectively have taught me that the best conversationalists are, quite ironically, the ones who say the least. They are the ones that don’t say much at the table, but seem to lead the conversation with thought-provoking questions. They are the ones who are comfortable with putting other’s needs and egos before their own. Yet, they turn out to be the people who everybody respects the most. This is who I aspire to be — to start being a better speaker, I have to start being a better listener. The article “High Bit-Rate People” explains this idea further.

I have many people to thank throughout this journey, but one person I’d especially like to give a shout-out to is Justin Lin. We’ve known each other for a few years, but I only met him for the first time this past May and was impressed by his wealth of knowledge and deep, philosophical thinking. He was there for me when I was put into uncomfortable situations and had to grow, and I resolved to myself that I wold be there for him no matter what happens. I’m currently working on a cool new project with him — stay tuned to hear more about it in the new year.

Parting Thoughts

Inspired by Ndamukong Suh, I’m not going to set New Year’s Resolutions for myself. Rather, I’m going to list out three key words that I want every decision, every relationship, and every day in 2022 to be governed by.

1. Kindness
2. Connection
3. Engagement

At the same time, I will use my experiences in 2021 to challenge myself in ways I’ve never seen before in 2022. One of these is going to be strong, rigorous technical learning. I plan to eliminate distractions in my life through learning as as much as I can about fundamentals in Mathematics and Hardware Engineering — with these tools, I believe I can learn to build anything that I want by myself. Another is going to be establishing close relationships with those who matter most — I’ve met a lot of people in 2021, now it’s time to really establish deeper and stronger relationships with those who have had the most impact on me.

So what are some challenges that you’d like to challenge yourself to in the New Year?