How did you find you were good at finances?
It´s an interesting topic because motivation I feel it’s a lot of “what you´re good at” and “what you like” and sometimes what you like is not what you´re good at, it depends, right? And so, for me, my motivation started from a video game called “Team Fortress 2”. It was this first-person shooter that also had a virtual online market, and you could literally trade virtual items that had real value.
I started this game at 14, I started playing with zero dollars and basically with time, I loved it so much I grew my way up to one of the most valuable accounts on the game at the time. It was worth 5,000 dollars. And obviously nobody believed me, because I was like a kid, until I cashed it out and showed everybody.
And then afterwards, I realized that my passions are like finding inefficiencies in markets and I knew I´d probably be a finance guy.
Have you always followed your motivation?
Well, when I was going through UCI, in a pre-med program, that´s what my parents wanted me to do, that’s when I was losing motivation, especially in school. I´d been a good student for the most part, you know, like a real hardworking guy and my motivation dwindled. But the moment I decided to start doing what I wanted to do, my motivation flourished, and I worked harder than I have ever. I didn’t even think I could work that hard! I was pulling all-nighters effortlessly. So, the fact that I´ve made these achievements just motivates me further and give me even greater confidence to achieve more – I feel like I can achieve whatever I want.
That´s amazing. Can you give us any finance tips?
Yeah, absolutely. There are multitudes of them. Definitely, if you´re going to learn finance, you need to look into Warren Buffett, he´s not overrated at all. You need to preach his morals and I´ll simply explain some of them. 1) Be incredibly patient 2) don’t day trade – that is the worst thing you could. 3) Your wealth is basically how much you could save. So, just try to be effective, invest your money because it also feels very nice when you purchase a property or you put something into like an S&P 500 Fund and you watch it grow – it´s just satisfying.
Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
That´s a good question. I want to start a company that can disrupt, like a certain industry. I haven’t figured it out yet. Basically creating new, very like adaptable companies, that can basically bring down these 100-200-year-old companies and if I can have the opportunity to do that, that would be amazing. But as a backup plan, I would probably go into private equity and work with CEO, who want to exit their companies, basically purchase their companies and help grow them and my portfolio.