One Week In

It’s been a week since I started my bootcamp at Launch Academy. During this time I’ve been introduced to the instructors, gotten to know a few of my classmates, met representatives from a few tech startups in the area and received an understanding of both the teaching style and a course roadmap for the next 10 weeks.

The founder and main instructor is Dan Pickett. He’s been a self-described computer nerd his entire adult life and seems to be extremely knowledgeable about, well, just about everything. The best part is that he’s always super positive and enthusiastic; its obvious that he loves what he does. Launch Academy splits our cohort of 36 into three groups and assigns each group a mentor. My mentor’s name is Sam, a goofy, easy-going guy who was formerly a musician and is also an alumni of the program. He’s only been doing web development for about a year but already seems to be really good at what he does. If I’m where he’s at a year from now, I’ll know I’m on track.

My classmates come from a wide variety of backgrounds. There are guys in their 30’s and above, as well as kids that just finished undergrad. There are people with masters degrees, as well as people that never went to college. Off the top of my head, there’s a former english teacher, a nanny, a military ranger, a barista, a musician, a peace corps volunteer, a recruiter, and a number of ex-corporate bodies like yours truly. The beautiful thing about this field is that it doesn’t matter what school you went to, or how prestigious a company you worked for; the only thing that matters is what you can do. You can’t hide behind a piece of paper from a fancy school to coast through. This is both very humbling and motivating at the same time.

The first week has been focused on learning some of the fundamentals of Ruby, the main programming language that the course will be focusing on. I’ve gone through most of the basics on my own time prior to coming to Launch Academy so it hasn’t been too intense so far, although I expect things to ramp up quickly. Dan typically gives a lecture for about an hour once in the morning and once in the afternoon, but most of the day is spent collaborating with fellow classmates on solving programming challenges. One of the things I like most about software development so far is the problem solving aspects of it. It forces you to really THINK, something I missed terribly in my previous corporate jobs in which much of the work could be based on what other individuals had previously done. The emotional swings can be quite volatile though, as one moment you’re feeling confused, inadequate, even hopeless maybe. Then the lightbulb goes off, you find the solution, and you’re overwhelmed by a feeling of triumph and fist-pumping-ness.

Sam made an insightful comment the other day, analogizing software development to making music. In music, there’s a limited number of tones, 12 I believe is what he said. Using those 12 tones, it is up to the musician to mix them in such a way to create original music. Software development is much of the same. The most complicated problems and applications are built using the same set number of building blocks; it just comes down to how you put them together.

One of the most pleasantly surprising things I learned this week is how collaborative software development really is. When most people, including myself, hear the word ‘programmer’, they tend to think of a nerdy guy typing away furiously at his computer, ignoring all human interaction, as programmer and ‘people skills’ typically don’t go together. However, it really is quite the opposite. One of the things Dan and the rest of the staff emphasized this week is how important communication and soft skills really are in being successful in this field. An important industry ‘best practice’ now is ‘pair programming’, in which two people write code together. One person typically navigates the problem, mapping out the approach and the other does the typing and coding. Personally, I found it very beneficial to have someone to bounce ideas off of and talk out the problem with, making it much less likely to end up staring blankly at the computer screen, spinning your wheels.

Tomorrow is the start of week 2 and I can’t wait to see what I’ll be learning next.

Starting From the Bottom

The first time I told my father I wanted to learn how to code, he thought it was a great idea. It was a warm, sunny Sunday afternoon and we were on a Skype call from my flat in Mumbai, where I had moved to a few months back to work with an international development NGO. As the conversation progressed and I elaborated that I was strongly considering changing careers, and going down an entirely new path, I could sense his original encouragement stiffen into doubt and eventually, discouragement. Are you sure? Have you thought this through? You never showed interest in this field before, why now? Do you really want to throw away the last 8 years and do something 16 year olds are better than you at?

Up until this point, everything I had done previously had ‘made sense’. I went to college on time, graduated early, found a job right away in a promising career field, then left for a better job a couple years later. 7 months ago, I left that job in San Francisco to move halfway around the world to India to essentially work for free in a field I felt passionate about. Even that move could be viewed as defensible from a logical standpoint as the role was most likely only going to be temporary and if things didn’t work out, well, at least it would look great for business school.

However, a funny thing happened in India, as I was rolling along this path I had originally set out for myself. I realized looking good on paper does not equate to feeling good about your career. Thinking you know what you want based on what society, peers, bosses, and your social circle tell you does not necessarily equate to what you REALLY want. After I finished taking the GMAT and began looking at business school applications, I saw a variation of one question that kept popping up over and over again: “Why do you want to pursue an MBA? Why now?” As I pondered this seemingly simple question in my head over and over again, knowing full well that the honest answer of “because I’m not sure what I want to do with my life” wasn’t going to cut it, I realized I could not, for the life of me, come up with a good answer. Maybe it was time to rethink everything.

What had originally brought me to India was the desire to do something tangible, something impactful. At my previous job, there would be many times where I’d be working a 70 hour week, writing some 15-20 page memo on some obscure derivative, knowing full well, that maaaaybe, 5 people would end up looking at it when I was finished. Working hard wasn’t the problem. Working hard doing something you knew made absolutely zero impact in the real world was. Call me idealistic, call me naive, but I knew I needed more.

I had never been overly interested in the tech industry before. I had no interest in coding in high school. I didn’t spend my college years dreaming of creating my own tech start-up. Sure I loved the iPhone as much as the next person, but I never seriously considered having a career in the tech industry until recently.

The light-bulb moment came when I did a walking tour of Dharavi, the largest slum in Mumbai and one of the largest in all of Asia. As I walked through the narrow alleyways, taking in the hustle and bustle around me, one thing struck me more than all else. It wasn’t the trash on the ground, or the amount of economic activity going on. It was the fact that, in a place representing one of the densest areas of individuals at the bottom of the pyramid in the world, there were smartphones everywhere I looked. My tour guide had one, the middle-aged lady on the corner had one, the teenager buying candy had one. If modern technology was here, where in the world was it not?

In today’s world of internet and interconnectivity, if I really want to do something tangible and impactful, what better way than through the medium of technology? Sure I can make business plans and create financial models for farmers, or analyze their crops’ supply chain, but there’s no guarantee that he’ll listen to me, much less implement my advice. Even if he does and everything goes well, my work will only affect a rather small amount of individuals and plus, true habitual change is really hard (especially if it requires more work). What if I could create an app that gives farmers live updates to daily crop prices or connect them with neighboring farmers to increase pricing power by aggregating supply? What about a database of best practices for each of his crops based on current weather and soil conditions? The potential for technology to create solutions for many of the world’s problems is enormous and ultimately, I find that very exciting.

Tomorrow, I start an intensive 10-week ‘bootcamp’ that will serve as my introduction to the world of software development. Is it scary leaving a promising career to go down a completely new path? Absolutely. Do I have fears that I won’t actually be any good at this? Of course. Do I doubt that this is the right decision to make at this point in time? Not at all. In my heart of hearts, this feels like the right thing to do. It comes closest to what I feel I REALLY want. I’m not sure how things will play out in the end but as the great Steve Jobs once said, “You can only connect the dots looking back”.

Does Income = Impact?

Its been a little over 2 months since I started working with TechnoServe. Work itself has been slower than I anticipated, as I’ve mostly been helping out with various projects and haven’t had a chance to really dive deep into any particular one yet. Hopefully that will be changing in the near future, but in the meantime, I’ve gotten a glimpse into TechnoServe’s methodology towards the projects it does.

TechnoServe takes a very business-minded approach towards development. The inputs, outputs, goals and results are usually based on hard data and measured in quantifiable terms. Although every project is different, a majority of them are agricultural based and deal with smallholder farmers as the ultimate end beneficiary. While a for-profit company measures its results and ultimate success through its bottom line, a non-profit developmental organization like TechnoServe measures its success by the ‘impact’ it creates. How can something like ‘impact’ be measured? For TechnoServe, ‘impact’ is typically measured through income growth. Therefore, the ultimate goal of a project will be something along the lines of: “sustainably increase the incomes of X farmers by Y%”.

Sustainability is key here, as what would the impact be if Farmer A increased his income by 50% in Year 1, only to see it drop by 50% the next year? One of the main ways TechnoServe tries to achieve sustainability is by creating behavioral change in the farmers, through introduction of best practice techniques and various other forms of training, sometimes followed by years of support.

Measuring impact through an easily quantifiable measure such as income makes sense to me. For individuals at the bottom of the pyramid, increasing income levels can easily be argued as the main avenue to a better life. However, I can’t help but think that this scope is a bit limited. Giving someone more money doesn’t mean that they’ll know what to do with it, that they’ll use the extra income in a constructive manner. Increased income only guarantees increased buying power but there is no guarantee that that buying power will translate into ‘improved lives’. A fellow VolCon told me a story about how a farmer he met used the increased income he earned to buy more beer and alcohol. Is that the type of impact we are trying to create? Didn’t a great philosopher from Brooklyn once warn us that, “Mo’ money, mo’ problems”?

One of the major reasons I became interested in development in the first place was from learning about micro-finance, through the stories of people like Muhammed Yunus, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and founder of Grameen Bank, and amazing institutions like Kiva and ACCION, where countless stories are told of aspiring entrepreneurs who bettered their lives through obtaining access to financial capital. The typical story goes something like this: “Tom has a small business selling XYZ. Tom obtains a small loan to buy inputs for his business. With increased inputs, Tom is able to increase outputs and sell more XYZ. Selling more XYZ increases his total income. With the increased income, Tom is able to put his children through school”.

Oh, if it was only that simple.

While TechnoServe is not an MFI (micro-finance institution), and is not in the business of extending loans to its beneficiaries, the thought-process behind its projects are similar to the ideas behind micro-finance. It helps grow businesses by improving the quality and quantity of inputs (i.e., skills training, best practice agricultural techniques, better procurement) which leads to increased outputs (i.e., creating market linkages, improved yields of crops). Ultimately, the end goal is the same, to increase the incomes of the end beneficiaries. But while, this goal may work for driven, ambitious entrepreneurs, who have a clear vision on how to use the increased income to better their livelihoods, the reality is that not all poor people qualify for that description. How can we impact those individuals that aren’t so driven, or would just piss away any additional money they earned, leaving no discernible impact on their wives, children, and family?

A fellow VolCon once asked me after coming back from a field visit, “What do you do if a farmer won’t implement your suggestions because he doesn’t think its possible to be more than what he already is. Can you teach ambition?”

I don’t have the answers to these questions, but while income growth is undeniably important, I do believe that creating lasting, meaningful impact, and not just surface level impact, extends beyond simply increasing one’s income. My guess is that educating a poor illiterate farmer by changing his attitude, thought process and any destructive habits could go a long way in creating an ‘impact’, especially if in conjunction with the aforementioned income growth. Now how you would measure these things? I don’t know.

What are some other ways to create and measure ‘impact’?

The Birth Lottery

Here in Mumbai, poverty is inescapable. Everywhere you turn, you see it. People of all ages constantly begging for money, oftentimes with a limb (or three) missing. Flimsy shanty homes crammed together seemingly on every other corner, as if collapsable from a hard shove. Kids out on the street, using buckets of dirty water to wash themselves. None of this is entirely new to me, but I’ve never been to a place that displayed such things so…intensely.

Seeing this everyday has really made me wonder: how much of our fate is truly in our own hands? Consequently, how much of our fate is already pre-determined by the time we are born?

In America, the most individualistic society in the world, we are taught to believe that we are in control of our own destiny. That our actions determine our results. That anything is possible, no matter the humbleness of our beginnings. These fundamental beliefs are the essence of the American Dream. But when I see malnourished kids combing the garbage for a few scraps to eat or a boy with both arms missing begging me for a few rupees with a purse draped around his neck, I can’t help but wonder how these beliefs I grew up with are simply inapplicable to so much of the rest of the world. How many great scientists, inventors, doctors, artists, musicians has the world missed out on simply because so many kids never had a chance?

I like to think that the reason I am where I am today is based on my own talent, work ethic and decisions that I made. But really, the biggest difference between me and that malnourished kid in the slum might be that I was born into a middle class family in the US and he was born into a family living in the slums of Mumbai. 

In the United Arab Emirates, a boy lucky enough to be born Emerati is essentially guaranteed to be wealthy his entire life. A boy born 150 miles away in an Iranian salt mine is very likely to be doomed to a lifetime of poverty. Who knows, that same Emerati boy may have had a similar fate to the Iranian boy had he been born 100 years earlier, before the oil started flowing. Is the main determinant of our fate how lucky we get in the birth lottery?

Fortunately, I am optimistic that the potential impact of our results in the birth lottery will lessen in the future.

Today, I went on a tour of the Dharavi slum, one of the largest slums in Asia. If you’ve seen the movie Slumdog Millionaire, then you’ll recognize it as the area where Jamal, Malik and Latika grew up. From my conversations with some of the locals here, it seems that the movie had received very mixed reviews here in India, the chief complaint being that Dharavi was shown in an un-flattering, and more importantly, un-realistic way. After having gone on the tour, I can understand why the locals feel that way. Most people (including yours truly) associate the word ‘slum’ with extremely negative connotations. Extreme poverty. Feces. Dirtiness. Smelliness. Just to name a few. Although these things definitely do exist, Dharavi is much more than that.

Dharavi covers an area of 535 acres and is home to over a million people, with a population density roughly 20x that of the rest of the city. Located on prime real estate in the heart of Mumbai, it is not a place where poor people waste away their days doing nothing. Rather, it is one of the most productive places in the city, home to a large number of industries and small businesses, with an annual turnover estimated between $650 million USD (per Wikipedia) and $1 billion USD (per tour guide). Dharavi is home to the largest recycling industry in the city. Roughly 60% of all plastic used in Mumbai comes through its factories, and a portion of the recycled plastic is sold to foreign multinational corporations such as LG. It also houses a large leather good industry, where the raw materials are sold and shipped to foreign luxury goods brands. So next time you purchase an Android smartphone or a Gucci wallet, there’s a good chance some of the materials used originated from this place.

Essentially, Dharavi is a city within a city. There’s a popular saying that once you go into Dharavi, there’s no need to leave, as anything you need is available there. These days there are even kids that grew up in the slum, went to college and obtained a ‘good’ white collar job, that still choose to live there. I am not trying to glorify the place by any means, but it is important to distinguish between the perception of a place based on something like a Hollywood (or British) movie and its reality.

The other thing I noticed when walking through the place was that, even in one of the poorest places in the city, the people there have access to some of the luxuries of modern day technology, such as television, cellphones (my local tour guide had a nicer phone than I did) and, most importantly, wi-fi and the internet.

I believe that if we are going to lessen the impact of our results in the birth lottery on our eventual future, advances in technology, and especially the internet, is our best chance. Our world now is more interconnected than it has ever been. The more places I go, the more I realize that our generation is more or less the same. We are exposed to the same TV shows, the same Youtube videos, the same Lady Gaga songs. The internet has truly flattened the playing field. There is so much free information readily available now on the internet, that even a poor kid born in the slums can take the same courses I do, if he so chooses to.

The goal of development is not to level the playing field so everyone has equal opportunities. Ask the communists, that’s never going to happen. The goal is to give everyone a fighting chance, so that their results in the birth lottery do not entirely determine their eventual fate. We have a long ways to go but I’m hopeful we’ll get there.