The Story. How I Got to Utopias.

My journey into finding a problem worth solving. How I decided to tackle the problem of creating utopian organizations.

Whilst on the journey, I spent a lot of time writing pitches of all kinds in various ways but in the world of “tight” attention it’s always been writing short snippets. Making emails click-baity for attention. Honestly, it’s been frustrating and my point-of-view (POV) is that it’s not the length. I believe if it resonates, people will care and get interested. Length, is not a barrier for the believers.

So, I decided to solidify the idea in a single, long stroke.

It Didn’t Start With Dislike.
What I've found to be surprising from speaking with the vast number of folks in 'tech' are that they all assume I disliked investing in the public markets. They actually approached it like it's something someone should dislike.

That baffled me. It's the same for accounting as well. They all think it’s expected I quit such a field. I actually believe I would've been quite great pursuing a career in audit. I wouldn't have loved it but plenty of the leaders of professions are filled with people who do not "love" it. I would guess a vast number of people in ‘tech' do not love what they do either.

It’s just prudent to gravitate towards something one loves to do because, in a long enough time horizon, the advantage resides with the person who loves what they do.

But what I've found ridiculous is the hubris of the masses I speak with who "knowingly” say aloud a career like accounting should be quit, as if they have any idea what such a career field pertains. It's an odd lack of curiosity and over-confidences covered in ignorance.

Then, if I genuinely enjoyed investing why was I not pursuing it in the public markets? Why go on such a wretched journey talking to a bunch of people, starting projects like a podcast and blog, and having the world constantly spit in your face at your foolish idea?

Greed, the good kind.
It's greed really. Greed in wanting more than contentment. More than mere fun.

Investing quenched my thirst for knowledge. From my experience, there is no better occupation that will give you a greater overview to the question of “How does the world work?” more than investing.

Also, the way the game is designed, affluence comes in tandem from being an investor (most of time). I mean, it's a business of making more money with money.

But the appeal for pure money wore off thankfully. My introspection process (discussed below) revealed I was no longer feeling motivated. I wanted more. I didn’t know what. I just wanted something more out of life.

Following Curiosity.
Investing had been, what I considered to be, the first love of my professional life. It was the first career field I had fallen in love with as being in the realm of “Something I could do for a living that I enjoyed.”

It’s the first pursuit I had into the realm of “passion”. The first pursuit for work that did not relate with the perspective of peers and the world around me but to do something I actually wanted to do.

Following the inner curiosity drove me to this field and I only think the realm for “purpose” only opened up after as a result of this. But I didn’t become aware until I reviewed the notes of my own self-observation.

The Introspection Process.
It started with analyzing my journals. Four years of daily writings on my thoughts. It included analyzing countless pieces of feedback on strengths and weaknesses collected from friends and colleagues.

Another crucial database was an assessment for major activities I did. Activities I kept track of to rate my level of engagement and energy overtime in an attempt to identify things that put me in a state of flow.

They became starting points to help determine what excited and motivated me.

I continued to dig into my memories by asking extensive amounts of questions. Reflecting on books I read, childhood dreams, childhood hobbies/obsessions etc…

I had no psychological training whatsoever and relied merely on the books I read.

The result was a massive brain dump. Things like my childhood desire to be this explorer with a rifle, riding a jeep in the desert. My obsession with travel bags, copious studying of maps, history books, and animals.

I went deeper into conducting interviews and sessions with friends and family members to distill how my preferences and behaviours led to their external perception of my desire for structure, control, order, individualism, and independence.

Tying in all the dystopian novels, ancient civilization, love for aquariums, the teenage desire to be an architect, what it meant to run my high school, how I liked to travel, my investing patterns etc…

As you can tell, just a hodgepodge of information gathering and an effort to connect dots. Connecting dots to create a list of hypotheses that would be worthwhile to test out.

Finding An Edge.
“What’s your edge?” It’s a common question in investing, though it should be a common question for many things in life.

With a wide list of possible hypotheses, the parameters of finding an ‘edge’ helped create constraints.

An essential part of capitalism is to find your unfair advantage over others. It can be anything from genetics, geographical, societal upbringing and all kinds of things. The fact being that no one achieves success without the use of an unfair advantage. That’s what investors call “sustainable competitive advantage."

An obvious example in investing was my ability to read Korean financial statements. It was a distinct advantage over Western investors when investing in companies that only produced annual reports in Korean. But this wasn’t a complete advantage because there are many factors to business analysis and I wasn’t great at all of them.

I wanted to have an edge related to my own strength areas. The ones I had identified as part of my introspection process. It just seemed intuitive to focus on things that were effortless for me but not to others.

What did I feel I could be the best at? What qualities shined out? It was a mix of: challenging conventions, building systems (i.e. which seemed to masquerade as being disciplined, and execution minded), and empathizing with people (I,e. Having deeper one on one style conversations).

I figured, to have an edge… I need to incorporate this in some way with the things I was passionate in.

Arriving at Utopias.
“What excites me? What’s the passion?”

At work, it was learning about small obscure companies. Companies that were boring but dominated niches. I was particularly excited by learning about remote and bootstrapped companies like Basecamp.

It may have been the influence from Buffet to look for the ‘unsexy’ stuff because that’s where the opportunity lies but I also think my personality for being unconventional made me look for companies that weren’t popular.

For example, learning about unicorn tech companies never excited me. Nor was learning about the investment funds that specialized in these kinds of companies. Heck, I’m also not interested in large hedge funds but rather the tiny obscure ones that do weird things. It’s a natural belief for me that big is boring. Small is where the excitement was. Most of the venture capital hype just bored me.

This resonated in my personal life too where my excitement came from learning about people in the world who had very unconventional career journeys. But the great thing about my career as an investor was that my life and job were one so my excitements always corresponded to finding obscure people and companies.

This revealed a pattern. A philosophy around investing in people and achieving optimal human performance. It appeared obvious to design a company with employees first and seeing the company success become a result of that. Taking Buffet’s discussion of competitive advantage further, I believed that an environment that can foster human trust and creativity would lead to the people within building said competitive advantage.

All these were staggered notes but it all came together slowly.

As I put together my love for civilizations, unconventional leaders, unconventional companies, the beauty behind small businesses, my obsession with performance, my career of challenging conventions, my default to building systems, the initial desire to be an architect... it all equated to an idea of building ‘worlds’.

This became the pursuit for what I decided to call “utopias”. It’s considered to be unrealistic and fictitious so I decided it most fitting to use it as an image for that which I imagined and dreamed of creating.

The Opportunity. Does it Make Sense?
Now, just because I want to do something… doesn’t mean it’s sensible. It didn’t need to be ‘realistic’… for most great investments are outside the realm of societal realism but it needed to make sense. At least to me.

The 'Secular' Sense.
What gave me further conviction was what I considered to be a secular shift in the formation of businesses.

I could see a world where countries were mere ideals of the past. One where the archaic borders set in the pre-digital and pre-nuclear weapons era represent nothing but the primitive nature of people to mark territories like dogs do by peeing on trees. I could see companies filling the identity void of countries and taking on more and more responsibility and influence over the lives of people. A world where the company you worked for mattered more than the country you lived in.

Technology is not an industry and it only makes sense that most companies in the future be digital in some way shape or form. As Marc Andressen says: “Software will eat the world.” This will change how companies will look like. Balance sheets will have minimal tangible assets like factories. Many will be “asset-light” from creating digital products.

What this also means is that the greatest "assets"... where all capital will be allocated to for the "long term" will be in people. The engineer or marketing person you have is going to be the one that builds the product that adds value to its users. It’s the creativity of such individuals that form the building blocks of the company’s competitive advantage.

Further pushing the change in economics is the likelihood of the rise of major oligopolies that will run multiple industries. South Korea’s economy is practically run by a few major oligopolies and I foresee this as a possibility for the globe. I believe this will create a long tail for thousands of small businesses that can dominate small areas that are not of interest to the large hegemonies. Adding to the opportunity for such small utopias to arise.

The 'Skill Gap' Sense.
Additionally, I saw an inefficiency in the modern-day allocation for “who is responsible for this kind of work.” The common belief is that it is Human Resources but modern business culture considered this function to be mere administrative and compliance work. Some companies were making changes to it but it was clear a gap existed.

Not only did a gap exist in the non-existence of a function responsible for such people and organization development, the HR department (closest kin) was not a place where the top performers of an organization went to. Many can argue this but the clear litmus test is that it is not the department the smartest college grads go to. It’s not known to be the place you go for great career success and nothing is revered about it. Rather, management consultants look at it as the first place to make cuts in cost-cutting projects as “non-essential personnel”.

Even in tech, I’ve met numerous entrepreneurs who tell me HR tasks are administrative chores they need not hire anyone for and should be automated with ease. This is true for most tasks. Just not in HR but in other functions like finance as well.

But it’s the long-lasting organization development work that cannot be automated. Given how crucial developing individuals and an environment is, it only seems to make sense that the most highest performers work in that field. This may show some ego and narcissism on my part to think I am the person but I worked with high performers all my life and this was going to be the battlefield for me. If you’ve read my story before, you should know that I was considered unqualified for every career I ventured into.

I believe most smart and ambitious people ignored this area because it's not "prestigious" to be working with people. Even the word "HR" carries toxicity in the realm of the young Type-A community and there is no way these kids will change their minds a decade later. To give you an example, getting an HR minor was so easy that it became the default option for everyone in my business program. You got to take a bunch of bird courses to get a free minor. That's what people viewed HR as. In consulting, any "human capital" project involved firing a couple of hundred people to help the company meet the bottom-line expectations of investors.

Now, I want to be clear I’m not saying the people in HR now are not doing a great a job. I’ve met folks who are outstanding but the reality that they are so few in-between and that this is such an obvious opportunity speaks to how in 90% of cases, this is a place for improvement.

I felt this was the big contrarian opportunity. Paired with the secular shift in business and my passion for human performance, it made sense. Finally, I could wrap it a bow with a ribbon of my strength areas. It just seemed my ability to create systems and love for forming deep connection with people would be great for this. It all seemed to add up.

How I Knew It’s a Problem Worth Solving.
In the spring of 2019, a year into this journey, a friend asked me if I had a deadline for when I would “stop this”.

The question took me by surprise. Then I told him I had never considered stopping it… and that I didn’t know what else I would do with my life. It’s how I felt at the time.

I worried whether I was falling to some sunk cost fallacy but I wasn’t doing this in the hopes of anything better. I wasn’t pushing on out of fear of the time invested… for it would’ve been easier to stop now and go back to any job with some big organization in some cushy business position.

I would be lying if I didn’t consider other things. But I also know that I’m the kind of person who will not do things he doesn’t like. It may be seen as disobedient, stubborn, selfish etc.. but that’s who I am. Besides, I view everyone as either knowing they are self-interested or denying they are. I’d rather be the former.

You might ask “Dan, who doesn’t want to do things they don’t like?” But let me tell you, most of my friends, colleagues and peers have been people who’ve been good at things they dislike. Most of my classmates do things they don’t like.

My experience in the first few years has been that most of the world does not care for what I’m trying to do. The barrier to entry has been steeper than I expected. I had completely misjudged the irrationality and pomposity of the old guard in the industry.

But despite the difficulty, the incessant rejections, people telling me it’s a waste of time… that what I’m trying to do is unrealistic… that no one will pay for this even though they all admit it’s a problem… that I’m not qualified to do any of this it’s become a continued driver for me that this is something I need to be doing…

I guess that’s been my litmus test. I’m either crazy or they are but I’m only crazy until I succeed.. and well:

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” - George Bernard Shaw

I will be the unreasonable man.