Al Russell changed my life. I'll explain. Most decisions in life are small.
Two years ago I walked away from a job at JP Morgan and a $300K founding engineering offer at another startup to go work with my best friend. Since then we've spent time across continents from London to San Francisco, walking away from everything I knew. That's the definition of going all in.
Big decisions compound for decades.
I grew up convinced that life was like a video game with one optimal route: study, university, work at a prestigious job.
After my first month at JP Morgan, I remember going into the office everyday, looking to my right and left, feeling too comfortable and seeing there was little upside to spending the next 10 years of my life here. I realized quickly I was not going to be there long.
Most choices are small. A few change everything. You want to optimize to take asymmetric bets.
It's fine if things don't work out stop letting bad outcomes invalidate good decisions. Focus on the process by which you made each decision. The outcome is just one sample from a distribution of possibilities.
A single bad result doesn't invalidate good decisions. Evaluate your process, not your luck. Each outcome is merely one data point from an infinite range of what could have happened.
Here's how I made my decision to found throxy (yc x25).
When you're early (in your career) you should optimize for rate of growth. Most corporate jobs offer a high starting point (y-intercept), but the growth slope is not steep. You are not learning fast enough, everyday feels very similar.
This was me at JP Morgan, I wanted maximize my exposure to outlier wins. But you need enough runway for the probabilities to work in your favor.
That's why it's important to figure out what you want to do earlier, even if it's just directionally correct, that was LLMs and startups for me.
It's not easy to take the leap on big decisions.
One day, I called my mum and told her I was leaving on the table my JP Morgan job. She worked incredibly hard all of her life to give me the opportunities that led to where I am today. She felt I had lost it and all we'd worked hard for.
In immigrant families, children are born into an unwritten agreement where you have to climb the corporate ladder high enough to honor their parents' sacrifices.
A few days after, Al cold-emailed me and after a two hour chat wrote us our first-cheque, pre-product and pre-revenue.
And for my mum, she thought I had a real job again and was willing to speak to me. Without Al and his support we would never be where we are today.
Al is now full-time with us and I could not feel more grateful to spend late nights with him.
Make decisions. Most are reversible.
Move to that city.
Defer that year from university.
Take that job.
You can just do things. So go do something great.