June 2024 Updates

Graduating from school, Canada, and year 22. Stepping into a different everything.

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Let’s catch up sometime :)

What happened this month

1. I graduated from the University of Toronto. It’s been a long time coming (and my mind definitely walked across the stage before I did) but hey, I did it. I received by HBSc. from UofT on June 11th, 2024. Sitting through this nearly 2hr long ceremony, I had the chance to reflect on the 5 years that was. I entered the institution with dreams of going to med school. I had the opportunity to work on fascinating research projects, build and work at innovative companies, and hear hundreds of unique life stories that have all shaped how I see the world.

2. Shortly after I graduated, I moved out to California finally on a visa. It’s official: I’m here in the US indefinitely on a TN, working 6-7 days a week in person in Palo Alto, California. This month has been especially crazy, with many changes within the company, with shifts in responsibilities, hiring, and an aggressive push to get the V1 of the product out. My team is building intuitive, end-to-end software for clinical trial operations, starting with all the operational workflows for site selection and study startup. We’re actively deploying to emerging biopharma and CROs (contract research organizations) soon, and I’ve been mainly sitting on the product, design, and ops side of it all.

3. I turned 23! It’s officially my Jordan year, and the first birthday that I spent apart from my family in my life. I don’t care too much about birthdays, but I spent this one reflecting on how much of a blessing it’s been to be able to celebrate it every year with those who care about me most. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned from these major life transitions, it’s that you don’t know how good you’ve got it until you don’t have it anymore. Things that I’ve taken for granted (eg. my family’s ultimate support, the deep friendships I’ve built, the stupid conversations and laughs with your highschool friends) were suddenly replaced by a void of opportunity, leaving me juggling with two opposing emotions of longing for what was vs. looking forward to for what’s to come. It’s just different, and year 23 will be, I’m sure, all about different: being different, being in different, accepting difference.

What I’ve been thinking/learning about

1. Your environment makes you. This has not become more obvious than my time here in Silicon Valley, where there’s frankly not much around. I’ve limited myself to the radius of my second-hand Fuji roadbike (which is pretty much to the Stanford basketball courts, my calisthenics park, the office, home, and some essential groceries). My environment is extremely small right now and as a result, certain parts of me are missing, but also certain parts of me are heightened. I’ve been hyperaware of this, and seeing which aspects of myself the environment caters towards, and which aspects that it really doesn’t. It’s always harder to do things that the environment doesn’t cater towards, but a necessity to keep that part of myself (eg. creativity here in South Bay). It’s something top of mind right now, and would be interested in hearing how others are approaching this.

2. It’s been hard hiring great people. I use “great” loosely, because there are great engineers and operators here in the Valley with some pretty cracked experience, but they almost always come with high egos. Or they’re tied up with other gigs. Or they just don’t care about what you’re working on. But one thing that I’ve found was that if you do find that one person, that one good person, the people around them are more likely to be good people. It’s a pre-baked filter: a low-ego, funny person usually has low-ego, funny people in their circle. It then becomes a game of finding just a few really good people, no matter how long it takes, and then letting the network effect do it’s thing. And then it’s also a bit of effort on your end to actually maintain that relationship once you find it.

Lmk if you are (or know someone who is) working on or thinking about the above!

What’s next for me

1. Spending July heads down (as always, it’s the new reality for me) pushing hard to get the V1 of the Biogenesis study startup product out soon.

2. Doing real adulting stuff in the US: setting up various accounts, getting credit cards with a score of 0, looking into a first car.

3. Calling home more often. To family and friends, and trying my best to experience their world while I am over 3,000km away.

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Thanks for reading this month’s update. Would love to hear how I can help you this month (maybe I can make some intros, work through some thoughts with you, or otherwise). See you next month.

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