Mathematical analysis was my nemesis.
I had nightmares of “infinitesimal quantities”.
One of the biggest shocks of my life 25 years ago set in motion the chain of events that led me to start a financial AI company, SigTech.
It starts with my roots growing up in Shanghai, China’s largest city with 25 million inhabitants.
It’s a vibrant place filled with entrepreneurial energy. In Beijing, when people go out, they gossip about politics. In Shanghai, people talk about money.
When you grow up in China, you get used to the idea that whatever you do, a million other people are trying to do the same thing. You are constantly under pressure to compete because it’s drilled into your brain that no one's going to give you anything. You have to earn it.
You have to be an excellent student and go to excellent schools to get an excellent job. That’s the way it works. So, I worked hard to get good grades and won national Olympiads in math and physics. Being a top student was my identity.
When I was given the chance to choose any major in any university in China, I chose to join a class of 20 students of “special talent” assembled at Shanghai Jiaotong University, one of the world’s top universities.
I quickly realized I was not going to be the best. In the mathematical analysis class I took, I was ranked in the bottom half.
It was shocking!
Even worse, no matter how much effort I put in, I simply lacked intuition for “epsilon”.
At the time I thought it was inconceivable. It challenged my self-identity. If I can’t be the best in math, then who am I? What will I do with my life?
It was a critical period and it prompted me to start to think more about what I wanted, instead of what I was supposed to want. It’s not a common thing in China.
The reflection prompted me to take a different path than I had planned, eventually applying to Cambridge University for a doctorate, and working in finance in London afterwards.
Those lessons helped me, as a computer scientist, transition into broader roles, first at Barclays Capital and then at Brevan Howard.
I developed a sense of independence, fostered by the variety of jobs. When people told me to do something, I was less likely to blindly say yes. Instead, I asked more questions.
Looking back, the thing that probably contributed most to my professional development was being forced to sit in that room of 20 other students at university and acknowledge I wasn’t ever going to be at the top of the class.
Sometimes it takes realizing you aren’t as good at the game as you thought, to change your mind about the game you want to play.
Like a hunting cheetah in the Kruger National Park, South Africa, 2018