Chief Change Officer - From Mechanics to Money: Gagan Sandhu Engineers Financial Independence into Visible Reality

Episode Date: July 11, 2024

Is financial independence a realistic goal or just a marketing myth? Join us as Gagan Sandhu, a mechanical engineer turned fintech founder, challenges conventional wisdom alongside host Vince Chan in a spirited Chicago Booth-style debate. Gagan Sandhu emigrated from India to the States 20 years ago. Just two years ago, he launched a fintech company called Xillion aimed at empowering millennials and Gen Zers to achieve financial independence—a concept he and Vince will vigorously explore and debate. Expect to hear Gagan’s unique insights on navigating career paths, prepared meticulously despite his busy schedule. His dedication to understanding the show’s scope, seeking examples, and sharing his experiences in advance promises an enriching dialogue. Stay tuned for the next 45 minutes—you’re in for some serious learning. Episode Breakdown: 02:29—Meet Gagan Sandhu: Indian Immigrant Who Believes in the Power of Determined Change 08:00—Thirst for Knowledge: The Secret Sauce Behind Career Makeovers 14:59—Financial Independence: What is Gagan's definition? 25:54—Devil’s Advocate: Vince Probes Human Psychology and the Reality of Financial Independence 28:16—Debate Club: Gagan Makes His Case for the Liberating Power of Financial Planning 32:57—Who’s on Gagan’s Help List? Unpacking His Mission 37:45—FinFluencer Frenzy: Gagan Weighs In on the Social Media Buzz 41:05—Career Curveballs: Gagan’s Guide to Navigating Layoffs and Skill Shifts 45:40—Merit Over Age: Gagan’s Hiring Philosophy at Xillion Connect with Us: Host: Vince Chan | Guest: Gagan Sandhu Chief Change Officer: Make Change Ambitiously. A Modernist Community for Growth Progressives World's Number One Career Podcast Top 1: US, CA, MX, IE, HU, AT, CH, FI Top 10: GB, FR, SE, DE, TR, IT, ES Top 10: IN, JP, SG, AU  1.3 Million+ Streams 50+ Countries

Hi, everyone. Welcome to our show, Chief Change Officer. We are a modernist community for progressive minds around the world. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Today, I'm thrilled to be speaking with my Chicago-bu MBA classmate, Gargan Sandhu. Like many of my previous guests, Gargan is an immigrant who moved from India to the States about 20 years ago. With a mechanical engineering background, he began a fintech company aimed at helping Gen Y and Z achieve financial independence. Speaking of financial independence, I've always been skeptical of it, seeing it more as a myth or a marketing buzzword. In true Chicago Bulls style, Gargan and I will be exchanging viewpoints on this topic,

agreeing to disagree while appreciating and understanding our different perspectives in a sensible manner. On top of that, Gargan will share invaluable insights on managing career paths. I really appreciate that before our interview. Despite his busy schedule, Gargan made it a point to thoroughly understand the scope of my show. He asked for examples and even took the time to write down his career insights to share with me ahead of time. So for the next 45 minutes, I guarantee you'll learn a lot from him. Let's begin, shall we? Hey, thank you so much, Vince. Thank you so much for reaching out and rekindling old memories from business school. And I'm so happy to be doing this with you. And I'm a fan of you and what

you're doing. So thank you so much. You're really a key part of this bigger journey you started off some time ago. It feels like just yesterday, maybe a year or two back, when we got on that call as you were beginning your venture. You had just left your corporate job to dive headfirst into your new endeavor. But before we dive into that, let's take a step back. I'd love to hear more about your background. What have you done before this? Let's explore some of the major milestones, moving across borders, adapting to different cultures, and how you've embraced change throughout your life so far. Let's start there.

Great. So my story is not very different from a typical immigrant to the U.S. and the U.S. is a big magnet for immigrants. So I came here in the early arts 2001-2002 to pursue grad school at Arizona State and I like the way things are here. I got a job. Incidentally though, even though I came here to do something related to tech, my undergrad was in mechanical engineering but I'm undergrad was in mechanical engineering, but I'm like, yeah, mechanical engineering, a lot of innovations happened in the 20th century. I should switch to something related to tech. So I went to grad school for that.

By the time I graduated, nobody wanted to hire in tech because we were going through a huge recession. And what happened, I ended up again working in the mechanical engineering industry here in the U.S. That was my first job. But I kept at it. I kept working on the side and just doing things on my own, which helped me secure a job in tech, actually. That happened back in 2005. I know I'm dating myself here, but that happened in 2005. And one quick note I want to share with the audience, given that people are looking for nuggets in terms of career and how to grow. I do want to share that by the time I got into tech, I was 29 plus years old, so close to 30. I was married and I had a child by then. So I just want people to realize and know that you can change

careers and nothing's going to stop you if you put your mind to it. I remember when my wife was pregnant with our first child and I was preparing on the side, I would take printouts, read all the time. I would install software on my laptop and write programs and write code and all that. And sometimes when my wife would have to, I would have to take her to the doctor's appointment for the wellness checks and all that. While we were waiting for the doctor, I would be combing through the notes and the PDFs and all those things and just studying, just reading and all that paid off. I got into tech in 2005. I moved to Boston, worked at a tech company called Akamai Technologies. I worked there for many

years, first as an engineer, then as a a manager then I realized that Boston is too small for market which we will talk about in more detail but I realized that since I was 8,000 miles away from where I was born and where a lot of my loved ones lived moving a couple thousand miles within the US wasn't going to make a big difference to me. So we moved about this was around the time when I was still in business school we were still at Chicago booth and I got a job and in Silicon Valley and I moved about 10 years ago to Silicon Valley and I've here, I've been working in many different companies. And then

two plus years ago, I decided to launch Xilion, which is the name of my company, X-I-L-I-O-N. And we'll discuss more in detail in a little bit. But the idea was, I became financially independent. And I looked around and I saw that other people were, especially people who were similar to me, people who work in, you know, comfortable jobs, have decent income. And I looked around and typically immigrants, I'm like, hey, I think I'm ready to hang up my boots, so to speak, to take a leap and build something on my own. They're like, how come? I'm like, I think I have enough to, as you said, I have enough to achieve financial independence. And then they're like, but I don't. And I'm like, okay, here's the things I

did. Have you done the same thing? They're like, I didn't know that I needed to do those things and I kept talking to different people, kept getting similar story and then I realized that actually there is need for something like Zillionware which can help people make great financial decisions and become financially independent sooner. Reflecting on my career, there are lots and lots of twists and turns, much like yours and those of many guests I've had so far on this show. I always ask this question. As we progress, often without realizing it, we uncover themes, motivations, or drivers that push us from one milestone to the next. Although these stages might not appear linked on the surface, they are often connected by underlying forces. So it's clear our choices aren't as random as they might seem. Something is always guiding us.

Have you thought about what drives you? What are your key motivators? What recurring themes have you noticed in your journey? Yeah, great question. I think if, as I said in the first question there, I started as an undergrad in mechanical engineering. And what I realized was I worked in the industry for three years after college in India. And one of the things I realized while working, it was an automotive manufacturing facility. My biggest learning there was that a lot of the innovation

in manufacturing and automotive had happened. Pinks of innovation had slowed down considerably. If you go back, and I'm talking about 98, 99, 2000. Around that time, if you think about it, the internal combustion engines were running really well, highly efficient. A lot of the electronics was already factored in. A lot of innovation had happened. And when I looked around, I felt that by graduating from college as a technical person, even if it's mechanical engineering, I was hungry for knowledge. So I realized very early on in my career that I am a knowledge worker. And for me to continue to be successful as a knowledge worker, I had to consistently update my knowledge. And that

actually has been the theme of my career all along. What I mean by that is that once you realize that something is critical, like in my case, I figured it is knowledge. So after about a year of working in mechanical engineering industry, I decided that I needed to upgrade my skills and get into this new industry. Back in the late 90s, tech was brand new. Internet had just started to become popular and a lot of things were happening, exciting things. So I decided that I was going to get into tech. So I decided to come to the U.S. So I took the GRE exam for grad school and started my journey. That journey took, if you think about it, 98, I graduated from college. In 2005 is when I actually entered the knowledge industry, the tech industry. The journey wasn't simple.

It wasn't straightforward. It wasn't even a straight line journey. It took many different turns, many different jobs, two different continents, many different cities. But I was able to make that journey. But one thing that was consistent and constant in that journey was knowledge. And this is something I would like to share with all your listeners,

is we actually are in the, I would still say in the beginning, but definitely our generation, Gen X and Gen Y and Gen Z, we are firmly in the knowledge economy. Unless you are doing something with your hands, let's say you are a construction worker, or you are a gardener, or you are a farmer, that's different. But if you're not, if you're working in

any other kind of job, whether it's a research associate, or a professor, or a tech person, data scientist, we are part of the knowledge economy. And you always have to seek to increase your knowledge, to improve that skill. And that doesn't come automatically. You have to always go for it and find new super specialist in your area, or it could mean going broad and finding more about certain areas, or it could mean looting one area and picking totally different area and learn more about it because you might have learned most of the things that had to be learned in your previous role, in your previous avatar. So to answer your question succinctly, I would say seeking knowledge has proven for me to be the ultimate success criteria. And every time I've increased knowledge, the dividends have been

tremendous. And I should add add here since you and I share that background for me going to business school was purely a knowledge decision I didn't go there to change careers I was working in tech I continued to work in tech I didn't expect a huge jump I was working as a senior manager then I became a director after that it was a a pretty linear path. But I went there to learn about things that as a person working in tech, certain things like economics and marketing and finance and accounting, those things were my blind spots. And as I was growing in my career,

I realized that I needed that knowledge in my toolbox to be able to have a coherent conversation with some of my business partners at work. Even if I'm the tech person, I'm still expected to know a little bit more about how accounting works, how the basic unit economics of certain product work, how the cost accounting work. And for that, I went to business school. So that has been my constant journey and even starting Zillion. One of the reasons was I learned a ton while working at different companies and I'm like, my learning has slowed down and plateaued.

One of the best ways to learn more is to start something from scratch. And so I would argue that even starting Zillion was a step in that direction, which is to actually increase knowledge at a rapid pace. You've become financially independent and then decided to start this company to help others achieve the same. This makes me wonder, what does financial independence mean to you? I'm very eager to hear about your personal wealth philosophy. The term financial independence is heavily used online. In fact, often misused or reduced to just a buzzword. But I'm interested in your genuine perspective and practices. How do you interpret and apply this concept in your life?

Yeah, absolutely. And I agree with you that there is a lot of noise around this term. Financial freedom, financial independence, financially independent, retire early. There's a whole fire movement. And also, especially ever since the social media became a dominant force in the society, there are just too many people out there trying to almost, some of them sound like snake oil salesmen. They're like, oh yeah, I'm financially independent. I just have this social media or I do X, Y, Z and I make enough money, blah, blah, blah. So I'll tell you what my criteria was. It was fairly straightforward. And I would actually contextualize it, right? I'm careful to use the word financial independence and not retirement.

Because those two are different terms, very different context, and very different overall outcomes. For me, financial independence meant I could leave my corporate job and go work on my own and build something from scratch. When I was able to do that, I said, I am financially independent because I can do what I want with my time. So I earned that independence and I don't have to be beholden to a paycheck to do that or to something else, right? In this case, it was paycheck. And for me, it actually, I'm an engineer after all, and I actually did a very mathematical thing. I figured out how much money I would need to sustain for at least five years so that I can build something on the side while not starving my family. And I did some math, and not super rigorous.

We are all pretty good at doing basic math. And I did that. I'm like, okay, five years, our yearly spend is about this much. My kids, one of my kids is going to go to college in this much amount of time. So here's that. And also while I build, I will not have an income.

So my retirement account has to be in a certain shape or form that I'm not insecure about that. So that's going to be another amount, let's say X and Y is going to be the amount that is going to be needed for just maintaining and sustaining for five years while I build something. And Z is the amount that is needed to send, let's say, one or two kids to college during that time. So X plus Y plus Z, I felt that once I reached that number, that would be my financial independence. And what I realized was that it was a number, right? I think the specifics are not super important.

I think everybody's circumstances are different. And what I realized was that it was easy for me to do this almost like a mental math, but for a lot of people it was a much hard calculation. Not because the math is hard, but because I think the reason it's easy for me is because I am able to keep track of things much, much better than an average person. For instance, I know well what my monthly expenses are. I've known it since I was in college, and I have always maintained spreadsheets. I can tell you what my monthly expenses were in 2005, for instance.

I'll maintain spreadsheets. So it's very easy for me, right? I don't contain spreadsheets. So it's very easy for me to do that. It's just a habit. The second is I'm pretty decent at also managing cash flow and investing. So all of that combined, it became pretty, I would say, attainable and achievable goal for me, personally personally and me and my wife as a family, as a unit. But what I realized is for a lot of people, it's much harder because A, a lot of people don't know how investing early enough to actually gain the compounding effect,

the magical compounding effect to actually see their savings grow. And that actually also stops them. Or C, this is relevant very much to the question you specifically asked. A lot of people actually go in directions that they are told that will lead them to financial independence, but it's not. For instance, a lot of people are like, hey, I only buy real estate because somebody told me that's what I should do. If you're going to own only real estate doesn't yield cash returns, which means you'll be cash poor, but asset rate. That's not financial independence. So understanding those things helped me build my viewpoint. And now my goal is to help others see that viewpoint and

build financial independence in a way that works for them. And actually, in that respect, another thing that, you know, because you and I went to a really good school and some of the things were hammered into us completely while we were at Booth, which is the stock market returns, right? I think you can wake up any UChicago Booth alum in the middle of the night and say, hey, what are long-term S&P 500 returns? And I think before they even gain a little bit of sense of the world, say, what are long-term S&P 500 returns? And I think before they even gain a little bit of sense of the world, they'll be like 10%. That's a hell of a thing. And I think what I realized is that very few people actually know this very fundamental thing

that you can get these kinds of returns. And also if you diversify a little bit better, you can probably get a little bit more, or if you're conservative, you canify a little bit better you can probably get a little bit more or if you're conservative you can get a little bit less but what we did at zillion was we helped people realize financial independence so we built tools within zillion and we actually call this tool financial independence to the fit so how fit you are or how, when are you likely to hit financial independence? As soon as you tell us what you own and where your money is and how much you earn

and how much you spend, we can actually tell you exactly, hey, you're going to reach financial independence in 2034, for instance, or 2037. And you can change things. You're like, oh, what if my income increases by 20,000 per year?

How will that impact? We will show you how will that impact. You're like, oh, what if I have to pay 100% of my child's college education? How will that impact my financial independence? For those of us who are not very good at mental math we built this tool so you can just plug that number in say okay my child is going to go to some xyz college 200k expense coming up in five years how will that impact

my financial independence so we actually made the thinking part super easy and we took the assumptions out. Also, how will inflation impact my financial independence? Like I can say, oh, I need a million dollars to retire because that's the number thrown around. These days, it's I think 2.2 million. That's the number that's thrown around. But hey, if I'm going to live for another 40 years, is it going to be enough? How will inflation impact that? You can actually adjust

for that so the overall thing we have done is what i realized is some people are very good at this math but a lot of people are not and what we did is we made the math so easy and so good role and so easy to understand and and play with, that now financial independence should seem like a tangible thing. So much so that a customer of ours, I was meeting with them, and it was in a social setting, and I was explaining what we do, and I was talking to somebody, asked a question, hey, Gagan, how do I know how much money I need? I'm like, we built a calculator exactly.

We built a product just for this. And a customer of ours, he was also in that. He was also right next to me. Oh, is that the number I see on the top right corner? I'm like, yeah. So the idea, the thing is that we made it this whole complex thing. And we simplified it. And we made it visually so appealing and so easy to

use that people are able to now see what financial independence would mean for them and whether and when they are likely to reach that and also once they reach are they at the risk of running out of money or not. If somebody decides I want to send two kids to college and retire at 42, and I want to travel the world, and I'm going to have no income, our product will show them if they are likely to run out of money, maybe by the age of 65 or 70,

or they're not going to run out of money, and they can comfortably even retire. For them, financial independence might mean retire. For some, it might mean they go from full-time to part-time. Or it might mean they, rather than just working for money, they can now pursue a passion where they will have a lower income. Let's say some people want to, one of my co-workers at Square, he quit his corporate job and became a teacher. Now following that passion,

I'm sure he took a huge pay cut, maybe 60, 70, even 80% pay cut. But my guess is that this person is really good at doing the math and they can say, yeah, I can do this. One of our customers, they both work and one of them decided after using Zillion, they're like, hey, listen, one of us is going to quit and focus on family and just take some time off because we know our financial independence is not at stake. Our tools help people do that. Let me share my take on financial independence if you allow me. Interestingly, I don't actually believe in it. And my reasoning isn't about the math. It's about human nature and psychology. We humans have desires at every stage

of our lives, whether it's craving the latest iPhone when we are younger or simply needing a functional phone as we grow older. Our desires shape our financial behavior. I believe as long as we have desires, we can never be truly financially independent because our decisions are influenced by our pursuit of these desires and the financial means to fulfill them. I consider myself a philosopher at heart, despite studying finance and accounting, and spending a decade in financial institutions helping people manage money. I'm fundamentally a humanist. Life is not only short, it is unpredictable. We might plan to achieve certain things by a certain age, but there's no guarantee we'll have the time. So for me, it's about focusing on the present, like building a good show here. Yes, I need to make and spend money to sustain it. But I do stress over really long-term financial tune out the noise and adapt to changes around us.

That's my perspective on financial independence. I think we are talking about the same thing. Maybe we are talking about the two different sides of the same coin. What you are saying is living in present one fact i think we both have to agree on in the modern world the concept of money and wealth is enmeshed with our daily lives we just can't separate right how we live our lives. It's influenced by money, whether we like it or not, but that's how the world is structured today. To your point, living in the present, I agree with you 100%. Knowing about independence does is it helps you define that present and it helps you be very conscious about that. So one example that I gave you was my coworker who left a very comfortable

corporate job to become a teacher. Now that person, they actually walked away from a lot of future wealth. But they pursued passion. Now, the idea is that financial independence let them pursue a passion and shape their today and their tomorrow.

They are living in the present, so they didn't wait until, a lot of people wait until they retire to pursue their hobbies and their passions. This person, probably in their late 40s, walked away from a corporate job and is now working with the kids. Another couple that I mentioned, for them, living in the present is that their kids are young. And they actually, until now, they were thinking they need to keep earning a lot of money because they just need to have a lot of money because they have two kids and they live in a very expensive area here in Silicon Valley. And they just can't keep up. And knowing for them, financial independence was something

they couldn't wrap their heads around because of the way their thought processes worked. But by knowing what was needed, they were able to sift the signal from the noise, and they were like, oh, okay, we can actually spend more time raising our kids and building the family and building the foundations of the family and not just keep earning more, because we have reached a point where financial independence is within reach. So my point is, even if you want to live in the present, I think being aware of the pitfalls and also the possible rewards of financial independence, I think knowing those two is of extreme utility, is of extreme usefulness.

So let me finish your thought, what you started on the financial independence part. I would say, yes, we provide assurance, but more than that, we also actually infuse knowledge in the product that is otherwise not very well known. For instance, a lot of people are like, hey, I have three or four properties,

so that should do it. What we provide is, and people generally, it's not, as I said, like people, most people don't know S&P 500 long-term returns. Believe it or not, even though to us, it's always at the tip of our tongue and it's always at our fingertips. We know it. And people don't know what the returns are for real estate in the long term. I'm talking about American markets. Asian markets are different, but American markets. So we bake the data. We also bake hard data. If somebody has XYZ amount of funds in their 401k, which is the retirement account in the U.S., and they have some stocks in their brokerage account, and they have some real

estate, and they have some treasury bonds, and they have some treasury bonds, and they have some cash. We are able to put all that together and say, we know real estate grows about 3% to 3.5% per year. Based on what you have, here's where you can expect this thing to grow. You have some cash that's not going to grow exactly. You're going to lose value.

You have some bonds. You have some of this thing. So we are able to build that model. So there is the math there, even though I said it's easy for people like you and me. But for most people, it becomes very complicated very quickly. And that's where we come in and we help. When it comes to the customers you've worked with, I'm curious about something specific. What's the persona of your ideal customer? Who's our ideal customer? Our ideal customer is someone who is earning a

decent amount of money. We say $100,000 or more per household. Typically a young family and also quite often an immigrant family and they are so busy working full-time jobs raising kids that they don't have time for pretty much anything else and when they see Zillion they're like okay this helps me because now I don't have to do all the research all the time. You guys do all this for me. And I am able to spend five to 10 minutes a week. And Zillion will A, tell me whether I'm on a, you know, sustainable path to financial independence or not. B, if I'm not, Zillion will tell me, hey, we have too much cash here. Invest that stocks what kind of stocks here are the stocks you can invest in also you have a 401k account that is actually you're paying too much fee there change that and optimize it in such a way we actually show step by step so a typical customer will get

a lot of value because they're pressed for time. This is the money thing is, it's always like item number five or six or seven on their list. But their number one is don't get fired in this economy. So keep working, keep putting in long hours. Number two is make sure kids are raised properly and the groceries are done. And other things, meet with certain people

so you're not a social zombie. So by the time you come to, okay, I also need to look at all my finances and see what I need to do. It's always number five, number six. Maybe during tax time, it bumps to number two or number three, or we have to file taxes.

But planning for financial independence is, and I would encourage you to talk to some young parents and to just to validate this on how much do they actually are able to think about these things. And that's where we believe our opportunity. Young families and also I would say some of the Gen Z, especially who are not yet married and have kids, but they're like, okay, I am finally making some money,

and I'm able to pay off my student loan, or should I pay off my student loan? Or should I invest this money and pay the minimum in student loans? We have tools for those people as well, and they are also a big part of our audience. They're like, hey, should I buy a house with this cash I have? Or should I invest somewhere else? So what we do is, our pitch is, if you are a professional, and I could go back to this,

if you're a knowledge worker, and today we are in the knowledge economy, the best use of your time is to increase your knowledge and increase your earnings to improve knowledge. We help you by taking care of a lot of your financial nitty gritty. We help you to stay focused on increasing your knowledge so that you can accelerate your career more and accelerate your earnings more. And that's where we are seeing the success. How do you position your company?

Is it mainly a software development company, a money management firm, or something else? So if you're a software company, you pay a small fee, and it's $19 a month. And with that, you get access to all our tools so that you can manage money like a professional Wall Street person. You'll have the same tools as those available to the Wall Street big egos. And you pay us a small fee. But if you're like, hey, listen, I also need to talk to someone because for money, I don't just trust some numbers blinking on the screen.

I also need to talk to someone. We offer you that service as well. You can talk to a certified financial expert and you pay us $79 a month. And it's a straightforward, simple, we're not an education platform. Everything happens through osmosis, but that's not our goal.

That's not our desire. We believe that there is enough content available just on YouTube itself and overall on the internet that anybody who really wants to learn, there are plenty of avenues available, plenty of resources available for you to learn. We are not here to teach you.

We are here to help you. And that's how we position ourselves. In your industry, there's a new type of stakeholder known as finfluencers, financial influencers. The younger generation often turns to them for money management advice via social media. It's easily accessible, and they seem to crave all kinds of information. But there are growing concerns about potential conflicts of interest and the creditability of these influencers, especially since they may lack formal financial education. Given this backdrop and considering your goal to help people become more knowledgeable about managing their money, which also positively impacts their lives, what's your take on this trend? How do you engage with these influencers,

perhaps promoting a product? And how do you assist your clients in becoming better decision makers and effectively multiplying their money as your tagline on LinkedIn suggests? The term is new, but the concept is not. If you go back, there are a couple of people who come to mind. Dave Ramsey, I don't know, I think he's in the late 60s or maybe early 70s. He's been an influencer for finance since like the 80s. Suze Orman, and there are many others, right? So influencers have always been there. The memory keeps changing.

Before that, there were newspaper columnists. They were always there. People would write letters, hey, what should I do this? How should I do that? So there have always been influencers. They started with newspapers and magazines, then to TV, then to cable,

and then to TV, then to cable, and then to internet, and some user groups and discussion boards, and now to social media. It hasn't changed so much, but it has fragmented. There's one Bill Ramsey, one Susan, and there were probably like a dozen of them, say, 30 years ago, and there is probably thousands of them if not millions now. I think there is a place for them they provide bite-sized wisdom. I am in my own very small right I'm also a finfluencer I post my videos on LinkedIn, Twitter, TikTok, everywhere you can easily find me Zillion or Gagan Asandri if you search for it. So I post nuggets as well.

But I believe that influencers, they do have a motive. Typically, they're typically tied with someone. They're either selling, hey, this JP Morgan bank account is really good. You should get it. And they get some money. I think that model has a place. We are not doing that. We don't tie up with influencers or influencers. We believe that it's less authentic. I would rather be

selling our own product and not just using an influencer. We want to be an influencer ourselves rather than use other influencers. As we near the end of our interview, I think it's the perfect time to ask this question. You made a conscious decision to leave a tech company in your 40s and dive into entrepreneurship. Yet today, many people in their 30s, 40s, or even 50s are facing layoffs and still compelled to change their career path.

They are also concerned about ageism in the workplace. Could you share some practical advice for these folks? I think some of the things that I'm going to say are probably going to be controversial, but I'm just going to say it anyway. There are many aspects of this. I'll focus on one or two. Regarding ageism, I think I'm less worried about that, but the way I think about it is, as compared to, say, 20 20 30 years ago today in this economy especially in the US and maybe in other places as well but career is not it doesn't span 30 40 50 years anymore a typical career this is my reading is about 10 years every 10 years or so you need to rediscover your career. I have done it. I

started as a mechanical engineer. Seven years later I became a programmer. Another five years later I became a manager. Another 10 years later I became a leader in tech overall and five years later I started a company. So I have changed career basically three or four times in the less than two and a half decades that I've been working. I think this is going to be the norm. And it's less about ageism, it's about discovery. For instance, right now we are in this hype cycle, which is somewhat real, but definitely we are in the cycle,

I shouldn't say hype cycle, we're in the cycle where some of the old guard technologies are getting replaced with new guard technologies like AI, for instance. If you are, whether you're food or you're 20, if you are not exploring AI as a technology, as potentially an enabler of new opportunities for you, then you're falling behind.

And what happens is, I think the ageism is the name we give to the skill gap. Someone coming out of college is probably well equipped with the technologies that have come out in the last couple of years. AI being one of them. Somebody who's been working in corporate and doing certain job is less likely to have used those tools because those tools are new and their job didn't require it. So I think as an individual I think it I think the onus is on me to discover those things and learn those things on my own so that ageism doesn't become a place for me to put the blame on. It should be skills, and skills are something that we unfortunately or fortunately live in a time when skills have to be updated and upgraded constantly. That's one.

Second thing is, I tell anybody who I've worked with, anybody who's been on my team, I ask them to work hard. Jeff Bezos famously has said, work hard, work smart, work long, and you can't choose between them. When anybody joins at Amazon, they're told they have to do all three things. You have to work hard, you have to work smart, and you have to work long. I think what happens is when once we start working, get married, we have kids, we have more social life, we have more obligations. I think the work long part falls off, which is natural, but I think we need to find those times in your career,

in our careers, where we can work long for periods of time to build more equity, so to speak, with our employer, or to build more skills. So maybe we are not, the work long part is we are doing somewhat long at the work but also we are putting extra time to learn more skills and that way we can actually I think we can mitigate this the side effects of ageism a decent bit. Does that make sense? Yes it makes sense in recruitment, there's always a focus on cost. HR and CEOs might lean towards hiring younger individuals because they offer lower salaries,

even though the older candidates might be more experienced and competent. Sometimes they come up with their own justification that younger people are simply more creative or tech-savvy. This happens quite often in tech ventures. Given that you run a tech venture as the CEO, would you consider hiring someone in their 40s who's been pushed out of corporate life and is looking to start a new chapter

by building a tech venture with you? Will I hire someone who's older? So let me address that. So Minxie also asked whether I would hire someone who is, let's say, over 40 and comes to Zillion. I think the honest answer is yes, I consider everyone. And one of the things I learned early on in my career is to hire the best person for the job.

So if right now, if I'm looking for, let's say, a marketing person who can come in and really take our marketing to the next level, I'll be looking for the skills that will help us get there. If those skills are in a 23-year-old or a 35-year-old or a 47-year-old, doesn't make as much difference as what is the specific thing I'm looking for. And sometimes experience is an asset there, and I would definitely look at it. So I don't think it's ageism as such. I would put it as it's skills. If you have those skills that I'm looking for, and again, we are a small company. We are a startup. Our needs, our skill needs might be different from, let's say, Google.

That is a 27, 26-year-old company. They might own probably even 30-year-old company at this point. Our needs are different and our skill needs might be different as compared to some of the established ones. Gargan, I really enjoyed our conversation today. I know we've gone over time, but you have so much valuable insight to share. I didn't want to cut you off. I truly appreciate your time and all that you've shared with us. Oh, thank you so much, Vince. This was so much fun. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you like what you heard,

don't forget, subscribe to our show, leave us top-rated reviews, check out our website, and follow me on social media. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Until next time, take care.