Co-Founder and President of Symphony, a global software design and development company.
It’s hard to believe it’s been one decade since I was a student at Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB). Now, as co-founder and president of a software design and development company and a proud alumnus (class of 2013), I’m excited to share my path forward since graduating and the lessons I learned along the way.
In life, prioritization is key.
Most business graduate students share one common goal: to graduate with an MBA. It makes life feel simple (at least, it did for me). My classmates and I spent our days immersed in our studies, completely focused on developing the skills and ideas needed to become successful business professionals.
Post-grad life tends to become more complex. Most of these complexities are beautiful, but with any change comes a sense of instability and uncharted territory. Learning how to prioritize is key to success.
I like to simplify life into four priority groups: family, friends, career and health. The order of importance of these groups will ebb and flow at different stages of life. This isn’t something to fear; it’s something to embrace. Recognize trade-offs. Set intentions as to which focus areas are currently most important, and adjust the scale, as needed.
Personally, I prioritized my career and friends in the earlier stages of my life. Now, I realize this is what led me to build a successful organization that, today, does not require my full attention for continued future growth. Meaning that currently in my life, I’m able to put my family and my children first. It’s all about balance.
Soft skills are greater than hard skills.
In the early phases of our careers, we tend to focus on perfecting the hard skills to prove ourselves—knowing how to calculate models, how to explain charts, read data, etc. As we progress, we realize that soft skills are even more important—and sometimes harder to cultivate.
During my time in graduate school, I learned how to make this transition and emphasize the development of soft skills. Now, I know that our careers revolve around these types of skills—how we are perceived, how we impact others and how we understand human behavior, interaction and motivation.
One of my favorite memories at GSB was fully immersing myself into an interpersonal dynamics class. The course taught me to be self-confident, lean into personal characteristics that my peers appreciated and be vulnerable about struggles that we were facing. This is critical for anyone leading a team, selling, fundraising, coordinating or facilitating business proposals.
Professional networking matters.
I cannot overemphasize the importance of networking, especially for entrepreneurs. In business school, it’s critical to get to know classmates, professors and MBA candidates at other schools to ensure you continue learning and growing after graduation.
As entrepreneurs, our goal is to eliminate as much friction as possible. In my career thus far, I worked with 25-plus founders, partners at major consulting firms and PE firms who came out of the GSB program. While I still needed to show competency and execute to succeed, I was already a part of the GSB ecosystem, which allowed me to create impactful connections.
Professional networking doesn’t limit itself to an industry happy hour or swapping LinkedIn profiles. In today’s modern workforce, there is an opportunity everywhere to build and maintain a professional network. Yes, there are innovation- and technology-based hubs, like San Francisco or New York City, but a professional does not need to live in one of those hubs to find success.
It is, again, an exercise in weighing priorities—does moving to Silicon Valley seem feasible in this current life stage? It’s OK if the answer is “no” or “not right now.” For example, I’m now based in San Francisco at my company’s HQ, but our more than 500 employees span across the world in cities such as Amsterdam, London, Sarajevo and Belgrade.
The bottom line is business is still mainly done between people. Building relationships with people creates trust and allows us to find inroads that would be more challenging otherwise. It’s about making connections—rooted in human interactions.
While earning an MBA or delving into other higher education routes, we are presented with many career paths, roles and industries that we can choose. As a 10-year post-graduate, it’s exciting to see my fellow alumni successful in a variety of different industries. But what isn’t often on display is the effort and sacrifices it took us to get where we are today.
I am of the mindset that to be truly successful, there is a lot of value in doing one thing great—whether it is to stay in the same company or industry or pursue new challenges and evolve. I believe in perfecting your craft in one focus area and excelling. With time and dedication, you become the subject matter expert.
To the 2023 MBA graduates: business school is only the beginning and the path to success is still a long road ahead. And to all technology leaders, new and experienced, I wish you the best of luck in pursuing your career goals!
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