Chasing Capital Ep 5with Streamlined Ventures’s Nicky Kamra

5. Streamlined Ventures’s Nicky Kamra: Startup vs Big Finance after College, Is It Okay if It’s just Linear Regression, and the Importance of Radical Candor

In this fifth episode of Chasing Capital, I chat with Streamlined Ventures’s Nicky Kamra on a wide variety of topics like the importance of real ML insight vs good marketing, choosing a job that aligns with your natural abilities and enjoyments, and the benefits of joining tech right after college vs traditional Finance & co.

Nicky Kamra is a seed investor at Streamlined Ventures, focusing on automation, api companies, and data science innovations. Previously, Nicky led growth and ops at Skillshare and holds a BA in Econ from Columbia and an MBA from London Business School.

Reflections

It was great chatting with Nicky in this fifth episode of the Chasing Capital podcast. I especially enjoyed our discussion around how someone right out of college can maximize their success in the long run by finding a role (if they’re lucky enough) that actually fits someone’s talents or natural preferences — i.e. someone who likes planning might be a good operations person.

This bring up the interesting question of whether one should follow their passions or do what they’re naturally good at, even if they might not necessarily like it. The follow your passion side has definitely been trendy in the past 20 years once one’s basic needs are satisfied. However, the main issue with this hedonistic approach to work (and life more broadly) is that if everyone is toiling away following their passion to become a potter or investigative photographer, our contributions to society are deeply depressed. Not only does this wasted productivity potentially put one in a worse socio-economic position, but also stunts society’s progress. As Ben Horowitz put it in his 2015 Columbia Engineering graduation speech, “it’s what you can contribute.”

Even in a society with the perfect division of labor that Adam Smith once fantasized about, everyone doing what they’re good out is also suboptimal. Though such a situation would likely be more growth-inducing than a world full of (not very good) potters, it is also a recipe for stagnation. If everyone only did what they were good at, and more importantly thought that it’s what they should strive for, no one would develop or try anything new. Not only would this drastically slow down the development of new areas, but would also greatly reduce the number of interesting things people do. Whether it is in consumer tech, art, music, the most dynamic and intriguing developments/products/visions are a combination of disparate fields. Typically people aren’t virtuosos in 5–10 different areas, so such a remix is only possible through the exploration of new fields that comes with doing things you’re not great at.

Suffering through new ideas, activities, interests is better for the individual and society in the medium-long run than complacency in our passions or natural abilities.

Excited for episode 6 of the podcast with Earnest Sweat of Greatpoint Ventures where we discuss his interests in less sexy industries like construction and martech, staying competitive once an industry becomes hot, and the importance of developing clarity of thought in and right after college.