Ep. 189 – Sam Garcia | From STC to Harvard Law and Venture Capital

���� And, uh, and it started the podcast several years ago with the intent of sharing my guest journeys. Because I think a lot of my students, as I've shared before. We're apprehensive, anxious about what came after high school, even navigating college and then life after college. A lot of them were nervous about finding the one job, the job that they were going to do for the rest of their lives. And as a reminder, you know, the podcast, I think is a great reminder that nobody's path or it's rare to find anybody who has a straight path. That we're most likely going to change careers multiple times. So. I'm a blessed to have been able to collect all of these stories. I think I've lost count as to the number of interviews that conducting. But it has been a blessing just to be able to collect all of these stories and to talk to my guests. Hear about their journeys and today, today's another addition. To this collection, my guest today was recommended by another guest I had recently in the podcast. And in the funny thing is. He doesn't know this, but he was actually the. His brand or our mutual contact was actually the 2nd person to recommend faculty member out of UT. I think right a story about him and said, hey, I think you should get this guy on the podcast. And so we'll get into that. Sam, why don't you share your story? But why don't you introduce yourself to our yeah, yeah, happy to have you do so. I'm from the Rio Grande Valley and from mission. That's right. I typically was hanging out and hanging around. I went to UT Austin shortly after graduating and then went from there to Harvard Law School. At Harvard Law School, I joined the law school just like everybody else trying to become a lawyer. I studied, you know. Worked with the intention of becoming a lawyer at some big law firm, which was very much within reach from Harvard Law School. But then, you know, as fate would have it, when I was a 2L. I run into this guy named Heel Tile. He's a 6 centric kind of business person who was at the law school. He had just come off of working at Bessemer and then leading the seed practice at any. So Bessemer is one of the longest running venture firms in the world. And any is one of the largest. He led the seed practice there, which is a really hard thing to do a little bit more in his background later. But he's like a former boy genius now, I guess, just a regular genius. I guess he grew up and now he's just a regular genius. And I had met him on a train. It was like kind of a weird meetup on kind of an accident. And then I had never heard of venture capital before in my life. I didn't know it was a job. In fact, it kind of sounds like not a job. You know, I look at really cool ideas all day and I kind of size up investment opportunities. Sounds like a lot of fun. It is. And so I met him. He asked if I could write for him initially. So at the time I was writing for Forbes on immigration, being from the valley. I had a lot of really great connections. I had a lot of really great just general like new sources that I could hit that other people really didn't have access to. I could speak Spanish, I could do whatever else. So that was that was a huge plus. So I got that that he asked if I could write for him instead. And I said, sure, at the time. And this is kind of a weird side note. I was as a law student, people maybe think you have a lot of money because, you know, you're like, you're close to earning a lot of money, but not not close enough to get the money. You are still very broke and still very much a law student. I was no different. I had very little money other than the money I got from my student loans and like the money I made working over the summer. At one point, I got a really bad toothache. I'm not sure if you've ever had a root canal in your life. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you know what I'm talking about. By the time you're getting a root canal, you are in such severe pain that you will do anything make it go away. So I ended up going to the Harvard Dentist School, which I thought I would get a discount. I don't know why I thought that. I was like, maybe, right? Like, obviously, I think they're a network, you know, I'm a student, why would they be? It was like $3,000 to get this tooth out. I didn't have $3,000 really without cutting into like living. And so I had to do it, you know, and I would have paid any amount of money to get that tooth out of my mouth, really. So or that pain to stop. So I paid the money and I was pretty, pretty desperate out there. And this guy was like, hey, you do business stuff, which is exactly how I phrased it. And I was like, yeah, sure, I would love to. And in that, you know, instance, I became actually the first person to work at Amplo. And now that was at our fund one of $100 million. I had no idea what I just agreed to, really. But I was a full-time venture associate while I was in law school. I then worked for him for about two years in law school, doing a lot of grunt work, doing a lot of research, doing whatever. And then I went to a law firm for about four months. And I was at this firm called Debo Voice and Plumpton. It's, you know, I would say there's like 20 firms in New York that are pretty interchangeable, that are like excellent top-line Wall Street law firms. They're all kind of similar. They all pay the same. They're all pretty similar. But I was only there for four months, five months if you round it up, I guess. Four months if you're being accurate. But I was there for about four months. And the reason I went back is because he closed and fun to close. And he was like, Hey, do you want to come back and be a senior associate? And I was like, absolutely. And the way that this worked is I actually had sent him this message like, Hey, man, I hope one too is closed. And it was a long message that I was I was like kind of reflecting back on how much I love to do this job. And I was hoping that the fund would close soon and maybe I could go back to his credit. He responded to that long message with a link, a docusign link to an offer letter, which is maybe one of the coolest moves I think I've ever seen in the history of negotiation. I mean, that was truly some art of the deal stuff. But he was he was a great. And so I ended up signing it and joining Amplo as a senior associate and the rest is kind of history. I went on to now I lead the seed practice or lead our seed efforts at Amplo. We're on our third fund now, which is a $300 million fund. Now part of a larger investment vehicle called collective global that now does taking in a bunch of other diverse ways of investing capital. I still lead just venture investing. Then I went on to. Well, I did it for a few years. I went from associate to senior associate to principal to partner all at the same fund, which is pretty rare. Typically people move around. I where I really hit it was in a few different investments, mainly in telecom kind of odd. I was not a telecom person before this. And in a few other like to be SaaS companies, so software service companies. And those really propelled my career to where it is today. And I was fortunate enough to be picked for Forbes 30 under 30 in the VC list in 2024, which is really fantastic. I got picked in next chance 30 under 30, which is a list of 30 Spanix that are making their mark. I think that was last year. I got picked the VC business insiders or business insiders VC rising star list last year. And what's really interesting about these awards is what they're judging and when they come in your career. So there was a time in my career where a Forbes 30 under 30 award would have been a huge boost for me. Like, wow, like, yes, like I've made it. And, you know, this is a big stamp for me, but it's never really how that works. You get it after it could be useful for you. Like, you know, I like when I was principal trying to become partner. A Forbes 30 under 30 award, I feel like would have been very helpful, you know, like that would have been fantastic. That would have really helped me in my negotiations and like my push to become partner. But then I was already partner and I was already doing whatever I adjust. I then landed a professor or a lectureship. Sorry, I joined the faculty at Harvard Law School and became one of the youngest Hispanics ever to join Harvard Laws faculty, which was fantastic. I'm now in my second year of teaching there, but I'd already done that. And then I got the Forbes 30 and I was like, wow, I mean, I'm really happy and this is amazing. But this is not exactly as help. This did, you know, it was just like kind of, you know, like pouring instead of just raining, which is great. You know, I enjoyed it and I was very happy about it and grateful. But and then I got VC business inside of Rising Star and then I got next 10 30 under 30. And I was like, gosh, like these would have been way more helpful like last year, like a year before. But I had to fight and scrape and do it my own way. And for what it's worth, I'm sure that that has its own reasons. But yeah, these things kind of come usually after a point when they're useful for you. But even outside of that for VCs, you know, other categories are judged on how good you are. And in this kind of similar. But the difference is there are other people that I cannot control that that are like part of my performance. For instance, like if a company I invest in completely sucks, I can't like stop them from sucking. You know, like there that's just like that. You know, it is what it is. And if a company soars, you know, I of course had a hand in helping and doing whatever, but I don't run that company. So like in a way, it's a reflection of the companies I invested in and how fantastic and how successful they've been. And in a less way, a reflection of my ability to pick them, which is great. And, you know, I'm glad that that got shown. But really mostly a reflection of how well my companies have done. Not really me, which is an interesting way to get in. Yeah. Now I teach at Harvard Law School. I actually just wrapped up my second year at Harvard Law School teaching. The class is called Applying Legal Knowledge and BC Business Diligence. One of the most I feel like the law or sorry, the class has a huge waitlist. I don't know how, but it's got a fantastically large waitlist, even though I tried to make it larger. I actually begged them to open up more spots because they kept on getting so many emails about people who wanted to get in. I actually don't control who comes in off the waitlist, which is like nobody believes me, but I really don't. And so like it's the registrar. I have no say in this. But yeah, so they all wanted to come in off the waitlist. I had them open up a few more spots. Still, the waitlist actually grew by more than the spots we opened it up, which was, you know, I guess a good problem to have, but still a problem. And so that's been a fantastic go about. So yeah, it's been, I mean, just all kinds of great things have been happening. And that's a bit about myself and what I do, where I'm at, and happy to go into any other any bit of that that might be. Well, it's all it's all interesting. And I think I have a feeling, Sam, for a lot of our listeners out there, there are a lot of terms that just went right over their heads. So we'll have to unpack some of that. Sure. Sure. Sure. But as with but thank you. Thank you for summarizing. It as with all of my guests, I always ask you to identify starting for your journey. You've had quite the journey already. Or would that starting point be for you? So the starting point for me, which is where I think a lot of people can, especially in the Valley, if you have access to South Texas College, it's also where they can start it. This isn't exactly I'm not paid by South Texas College. I have no vested interest in them, but they were fantastic at this. So I went to Sharon Land High School, but this program is available at every single high school that has a connection to South Texas College. I think all the McAllen ISD schools, all the PSJA schools, I'm sure Elsa does. All out. You know, I know they all have a connection to STC. You can take dual credit courses in high school. And I know that that might sound lame, but why does that matter? So my journey to Harvard Law School started six to seven years before I ever applied. Now, how did that happen? There's this thing called an LSAC GPA. The LSAC GPA is the GPA that is used and sent out to all law school. So when you're applying to law schools in college, like years later after high school, you're using an LSAC GPA. An LSAC GPA includes every single college course you've ever taken in your life, including your dual credit courses at STC when you're in high school. So when you're trying really hard as a sophomore in high school, getting an A in this like English STC course, that actually will help you like six years later. When you're applying to law school, because when you add those, so this is the part that some people really you have to see it to believe it. And fortunately, I had an older brother who was really helpful in guiding me and telling me how to do these things. That class at STC that you took as a sophomore in high school, that A counts the exact same as the A that you went to UT Austin and like killed yourself for. It's the exact same. As long as it's the same amount of hours, which is typically three. It's the exact same. So when you're doing your LSAC GPA, you can stack the odds in your favor by getting a bunch of A's in high school in an environment where it's much easier to do so because the teacher student ratio is far lower. And the teachers have like a, you know, these are teachers from the valley that you can reach out to them, you can talk to them, you can get tutoring. That's not even that's not available at UT for like big classes. You know, that's for an A and M or a Texas Tech or whatever you can do that in high school, like with your teachers and professors from STC. They're like regular people who live in the valley and they can just like give you tutoring and help you. And if you get, I went to UT with, I think it was 32 or 36 hours of straight A's already. Like usually graduate with about 120 hours of college or college credit courses. So my GPA from the beginning, when I first started at UT was extremely stacked in my favor because my brother had told me that's how it works. And I blindly trusted him, fortunately, in this case. And I was, you know, like pretty militant about doing it this way, getting A's in these courses. I graduated at the top of my class in high school. But that actually wouldn't have, that actually doesn't matter. What mattered is I got the A's in these classes, which then carried over when I was applying to Harvard Law School as a junior, no, sorry, as a senior in college. So at the beginning of your senior year, you're applying with only the grades from your freshman to junior year and any other college courses you took before. And so I took classes that would normally be extremely difficult at UT. Calculus one, calculus two, English, histories. I took them at STC and I stacked those, that deck in my favor as much as I possibly could. And then when I went to UT, it was the higher level classes that were less people where it's more available and easier for you to get higher grades and do whatever. And so by the time I was a senior applying, my GPA was, I mean, well above average. So that's the starting point was taking those dual credit courses in high school that were offered by STC. And I mean, that's really where it started. And so anybody who's thinking like, hey, you know, I'm a junior high school, like it doesn't matter. It totally does. It matters like so much. And you can actually stack the deck in your favor like really hard right now if you're if you're interested in doing so. So Sam, thank you. Thank you for that. And I think that's a great tip. And and I appreciate you talking about that because so I, in a previous life, I was on the school board and I remember we were working on. Getting a early college designation and I remember my concern was I also taught at the university from the RG. My concern was I always saw students coming to the university who had taken a bunch of college classes, but hadn't done well. But for whatever reason, and so. I remember when we were trying to get this early college, please make sure that works kids. That these classes matter and that these grades matter and this is a great opportunity for them to, as you say, right, stack the odds and favor. And so I appreciate you reinforcing that and and sort of sharing your own. How would apply to your own life that is incredibly helpful and I know that clip that sound bites going to get a lot of play when I shared this. Yeah, Sam, let me ask you though. Here you are your your student, Sheryl, in high school. Did you know you wanted to go go to law school and become a lawyer? I did. I did. So from a very early age, I really wanted to be a lawyer, although I did it for a very short amount of time. I still did it. My my dad was a lawyer. He was a plaintiff's attorney. You know, he had an office right on the other side of the street from the courthouse in Edinburgh. And I always grew up admiring, you know, attorneys that practice law and him mostly by my dad and his style of practice. Although it was, you know, fully being a lawyer and doing whatever is actually really similar to how I practice in the venture capital world. So and it's actually more similar to what I do than it is to like other areas of what you might mean big law. So big law is like your corporate white shoe law firms in Wall Street, whatever. Nothing like the show suits. It's not exciting. It's a lot of paperwork. It's a lot of whatever. What he would do is he would take a risk on big cases and he would do whatever like it was like a his job was like a boom and bust, but he hit it big on some things and, you know, didn't hit it on some other things. But ultimately, you'd come out ahead and that's a very similar to how I do things in the sense that I'm investing in these companies. We have no idea who's going to return or not. Some of them hit it huge and that makes your whole career. And like, that's really what dictates you as an investor. Yeah, I knew I was going to be I wanted to be a lawyer from the very beginning. And yeah, I'd been aiming to go to Harvard Law School. I mean, there's a note when I was eight years old writing about me wanting to do this. I've been wanting to do this my whole life and wanting to go and do whatever. So I was I was over the moon when it actually happened. But, you know, it's a it was a lifelong dream of mine. It's a lifelong dream for a lot of folks, but it's a thing to dream it. It's another to actually go do it. It's really you got to dedicate yourself, but you can do it. Absolutely. Oh, wow. Wow. You graduate top of your class, you go to UT. Yeah. And but here you are, you're going to UT. You like you, as you said, you've got thirty to thirty six hours with you. Was. Was the transition to UT difficult at all? It was difficult for a couple reasons. So one, my dad had just passed away, which was unfortunate. But and, you know, from an emotional standpoint, devastating from a financial standpoint, devastating, any point you could imagine devastating. But now all of a sudden I was kind of charting my own course. No one to really talk to you except for my my brother, who I relied on heavily when he would tell me things that I would just listen to him right away. And fortunately, fortunately, the guy knew what he was talking about or else he could really set me in the wrong direction. And I remember all these things, but I remember the first semester being a bit of a shock to the system, but not as bad as it could have been. So what I did strategically, as my brother had told me, was I took some of the hardest classes that you might take at UT. I took them at STC. So that way I didn't have to take them at UT. And so when I got to UT, my classes were smaller classes. They were not so overwhelming. There are some. So what they call them auditorium classes. When you're taking calculus at UT or Texas A&M or UT RGB or Texas Tech or Texas State, these classes are huge. They're like 300 people. Those classes are graded on a ruthless bell curve, which means that you you could be really smart. But if there's like engineers in your class, you will not get an A, which is devastating, you know, because you're going to work really hard for that B, which is like that sucks. You can go to STC or the entire class because it's like, you know, a 20, 30 person class, the entire class could get an A. It doesn't matter to the professor, right? As long as you do well and you learn the topic and you master it, you get an A, which is not actually the case at UT. And so what do they have to do to make sure that there's like a stratification, like a bell curve? They make it really hard. And so like they make it really hard. There's guaranteed to be some engineers or some whizzes like know this stuff really well in your class. It's class 300. You're setting yourself up. Did not to have a hard time if you're doing it that way. If you plan ahead, you can set yourself up for success and you can set yourself up to like succeed, right? Like so that was what this was all about. You know, like, yes, it was a bit of a shock to the system. It was a different level. It was whatever. But I had set myself up years in advance to come in and really hit it and go for it. But after that first semester, I didn't feel any adjustment. It was it was all from there. And I performed, I think it's the highest level top of my class at UT and Macomb's the whole way through. Wow. Yeah. You know, Sam, and I have to admit, I think you're one of the. Got enough that did about 190 maybe close to 200 interviews, right? I think you are probably. You'll less than a handful. Who who who as high school students, right? And it sounds like credit to your older brother. Yeah. Really had a strategy about what I'm going to do as I student. I'm going to set myself up. I love the I love having brain that right stacking the the odds in your favor. And then going to UT and already OK, I get I'm going to avoid some of those larger classes, a lot of those classes, whether they're like weed out students, right? And so that I can bypass those because I took them at SDS and then I can focus in, you know, my major courses that are typically smaller with more hands on, right? You know, instruction and support. So. Wow. Yeah. And you know, there's. Yeah, go ahead. Go the other way, say things like. And I heard from some of these people and I talked to my brother about it. Now I'll be very candid about how this whole thing whole thing went, where people were like, hey, you take, you know, I remember I was choosing a microeconomics professor. There was this famous professor, Hamernesh. And then there was another one, Sidley. And Sidley, if you go into UT system, it tells you how many A's the professor gives, right, with like some variation, but pretty, pretty spot on. Sidley gives the most A's by a lot, by a lot, right? And I had to take this course at UT. It was a mandate, so I had to do it. Hamernesh follows the bell curve and the classes are both like 300 people, right? Sidley is not following any bell curve. He's just given a bunch of A's. He's having a good time. But everybody, a lot of people told me you want to take Hamernesh because he's really going to teach you microeconomics. He's really going to teach you all these things. He's the best teacher. Well, guess what? I don't remember barely anything from that class, but I did get an A in it. And it wouldn't have mattered if I took it with Hamernesh or Sidley. And all that mattered is I got an A and that I moved on and did whatever. I spoke to my brother and he was like, never, ever listen to those people. All that matters is the A's that you get. And he actually had messed up in this and this was a credit to him. He had messed up, done the thing where he's like, I'm going to try to wander lust and learn and do all these things. And it had messed up. Yeah, I, you know, my brother ended up doing amazingly for himself. But I think there was some reflection and I was the huge beneficiary of him saying things like, you're not going to mess up the same way. I did. You listened to nobody that tells you to go like learn and do whatever. All that matters to you is A's. A's, A's, A's. And then later we'll start setting for the LSAT. And then that's all that matters. And then like, and if you do those two things, you'll go to Harvard Law School. And if you don't, then you won't. And it's your own fault. So like, you know, I listened to him. I listened to him too. But in fact, I went way more extreme than he ever thought anybody could. And I went the other way, you know? And, and, and ended up in, and there are some things you can't avoid. Like there's some hard class that you see that just they are what they are. But I did things that were wacky. And there was a class of MIS 301 that's like an infamous killer. It's so hard. I transferred into the business honors program. The really hard program to get into, but I transferred into it as a sophomore. Has my GPA, the freshman year and whatever else. And I was the only person that year to find a way to take it as a senior. Now, why did I want to do that? Why would I want to ruin my senior year with this hard class? Well, it's because I didn't want to ruin my GPA as I was going to law schools. So I pushed it all the way to my senior year. I was in that class in spring semester. I'd already gotten into Stanford and Harvard Law School while I was in that class. And I was getting like destroyed. And everyone knew me as like the senior that didn't care at all, because I was already accepted. And so it didn't matter that past class like nothing mattered and you you're not going to fail. You know, so I was like, this was a. That's how extreme I was willing to take it. And my advisors told me, no, no, no, you should take that now because of this. And I was like, I don't care. All I care about is getting into Harvard Law School. That's all I've ever cared about. Like I don't care about going to McKinsey. I don't care about working at UI. I'm going to do this. And I was ruthless about like making sure that everything I did was slated towards that one direction, which is kind of how you have to be at some point. It's a tough game. I think people that talk about them going to law school and they're just like, oh, I just like kind of decided that I went to HLS. They're lying. They're absolutely lying. I've met some of these people that claim this. They're liars. Everybody who is there deciding in advance that they were going to do it and to do it, they had to be this way. Oh, yeah. OK. OK. So. Tell us about telling about Harvard Law. Yeah, it's a I mean, it's not cutthroat. I actually like what people think. People may have seen the movie Paper Chase. You may have seen whatever. It's actually extremely collegial. And one of the things that's that's maybe extraordinarily shocking to some is that there are no grades. There are no grades at Harvard Law School. There's not ABCD. There is something similar, but it's very different. It's pass, which is a P, L, P, which is a low pass. And then there's a high pass, which is an H or whatever, like honors. And then there's one above that, but it's a discretionary grade called an H with an asterisk. That's what it is, but it's it's the Dean's Scholar Award. A lot of classes can't even give it because they're too small. And so you have to get it in one of the larger Harvard Law classes. But for the most part, everybody knows that as long as you're doing just fine, like getting peace, because like 80 percent of the student body gets peace in their courses, you're going to get a job at a great law firm doing whatever, you know, and you're fine. And so what that allows you to do. And so the school is not cutthroat in that way. Like people are pretty collegial. People are pretty friendly. People are pretty outgoing, kind of shocking. I didn't know that it would be this way. But it also means that if you're going to diversify and figure out some other life for yourself, law school is the time to do it, which kind of sounds odd. So I have this story. I was at a summer associate at a law firm when I was a one L. I was working in Houston and I know. Wait, wait, wait, I need to stop. So one L is that's your first year in law. First year in law school. OK. So I'm going to put that. Yeah, I was a first year law student. And that summer I went to go work at a law firm in Houston. It was an awesome deal. They pay you so much money to work there for the summer. You basically do nothing. But the stuff they were asking me to do was so miserably mind-numbing. I actually went down to a convenience store that's in the building. So it's like a huge, you know, like skyscraper. I went to there's a convenience store at the bottom floor and I bought a lottery ticket. And I was like, if I win some money, like I'm out of here. I lost. So I marched right back up because I needed the money. But, you know, it was like it was assigned to me as a two L. That I had to start doing things outside of the law because the future for me as a law firm associate would not be very good. And so like I knew that early on I had to start plotting ahead. Just like I did before, just like I did with other things. This was no different than that. But it was a lot more broad. Like, you know, it wasn't to go to Harvard Law. It was to do something other than the law, which is the very broad mandate. I was really fortunate. And the things kind of fell into my lap. And once I saw them, I didn't let go. You know, and once I saw how much I liked it, I latched on. I, you know, bit down hard and went that way. So I think. That's that's a piece of advice I give to folks like if you're in law school, that's the most excellent time ever to like discover something else. Should this law thing not be great for you? Because a lot of lawyers are very unhappy in their jobs. And it's it's reality, right? So like, how do you diversify and hedge against that risk? Well, you figure out something that you might like, or you might decide, hey, the law is really something I love. Fantastic. Stay in it. Never leave. It's super lucrative. That's great. And like, if you love it, stay stay forever. But if you don't, like you want to find something that's also lucrative that that you can go and Harvard is actually fantastic about providing me all these opportunities, access to people, resources, letting me use their name to write and do all these other things. I mean, they couldn't have been more generous about that. In a weird way, I feel like Harvard was the most supportive institution of me. Ever. And they've been so supportive of all the things I do and whatever else. And just they've been excellent. And they're like that with everybody really at the law school, which is actually pretty fun. So if you can go, you have to go. It is totally worth it. I met some some kid. He wasn't from the valley. He was at UT and he's like, I'm wondering. I got my I got into HLS, but I also maybe want to go like work as a paralegal for a bit to see what it's like. And I was like, you are insane. Go right now. Are you insane? I was, you know, much more money you make on the other side, but like the paralegal job is already not great. You know, like it's just that as being an attorney, you just get paid a third. You just like go in there and then get paid the full. Bit. I always advise people if you can go to HLS or Yale or Stanford or Berkeley, you have to go. And why did I need those four specifically? So Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Berkeley, they all have no grades. Yes, they all don't have grades in the same way that Harvard does. And so life is a lot less pressure filled. And you can explore other things. Should you want to do that? I think they assume everybody that's there is already pretty good. So it's a really interesting quirk. And frankly, I didn't even really know about it until I was a senior in college. Once I got in, I was like, they have no grades. Fantastic. I was like, that's great. I mean, wow, OK, I didn't even know that. That's that's cool. Sam, you're having this moment, you know, as it is as an intern, right? Yeah. And you're realizing, you know, you want to maybe do something else. Right. Are you are you in conversation with anybody at this moment? Just kind of just your brother. Just my brother. He's my best friend. So yeah, I talked to him like every other day or every day, really. And at this point, you know, I was talking to him. I was talking to some of my friends, maybe, but there was nobody that I was plotting this out with that wasn't immediate family or like a friend with an occasional conversation. So it felt very uncharted. You know, I never uncharted. Sorry. And I just I didn't really know what to do. Which, you know, that happens in life. It's just by the life. You don't know where it's going to go. But as long as you're willing to really once you find something that you think is it's worth it, lean it, go for it. Don't be don't go one toe in, one toe out. I that's been a hallmark of how I've done things. And I think it's been successful for me and successful for others. Once you find something you like, go in. Don't don't mess around. You thank you for that. Yeah. You you. So you have this moment. And in the beginning of our conversation, talked about that you were doing some writing for Forbes. Yeah. And how did you get into that? That was wild. I actually. So this was during the first Trump administration. So first Trump administration. I mean, kind of going just like this one right now. He had sent a bunch of. Kind of really terrible things about the Valley. And I think there was really nobody writing a counter narrative on what was going on there. So I just decided to start writing. And, you know, sending pieces out to different newspapers to see you know, commenting on his policies like, Hey, this, you know, they started off with, I mean, I was kind of going through like the real policy arguments. Like, why would this make sense when it would actually make a lot more business sense to do it this way as opposed to this way? And like, why would you feud with Mexico so deeply when they're a biggest trading partner, one of our biggest trading partners? And maybe one of our biggest avenues to like lessen our reliance on China. Like it's got to be through Mexico, right? Like that there's no other way. Yeah. And nobody in America is going to be making these parts. So like a lot of things, even back then were true. They're definitely true now. I mean, maybe more true now. And so I started writing for these, these areas I'd gotten published quite everywhere in New York Times, the Washington Post. And I wasn't a. Well, like I was a freelancer, so I wasn't a contributor to anywhere at this point. I got this wild idea to write for Forbes, because they saw that they were, they were looking for contributors. And so I messaged them. I sent them this crazy thing I expected not to hear from them. And then like four weeks later, an editor, one of the lead editors, Forbes, reached out to me and they're like, Hey, are you interested in doing this and writing and you have a lot of autonomy and you can do all these different things. And I was like, that sounds amazing. There was one complication, though. I was working at a law firm while this was going on for the summer. And I mainly just thought like, OK, I got this great thing with Forbes. They need an answer from me pretty quickly. And I have to start writing immediately. But I have this law firm job that I work at from like nine to six. What that meant is from 8 p.m. to 1 a.m. I was writing. Every day almost. And so I thought, what do I do? You know, do I let this go or do I work like 16 hours a day? I was like, I'm going all in. I'm working 16 hours a day. I'm doing this. And so I did. And I thought that was. I mean, I don't regret it at all. I thought it was amazing. And the results were fantastic. And we got some really amazing stories through. It's really excellent policy. These are there. They're quite contradictory. I ended up interviewing the now governor of Novelion, confusingly enough named Samuel Garcia, who is is my Tokyo. I messaged him. I emailed him. I got his email through one of his contacts and he messaged me back. Tokyo. One word that was it. And I was like, OK, are you open to be interviewed? And he was a fantastic person. I mean, he was a fantastic person to interview. I mean, he was like. He's a character. Got a lot of charisma. He's got, you know, and he has some policy points and other things. And so I wrote this whole article about him. And it ended up being like my most viewed article of all time until later when I started writing for The Guardian. But he was he was an interesting character. And I remember this because he the article was written by me, Samuel Garcia, about Samuel Garcia. And so people started tweeting at me accidentally. Of course, it was meant for him. And I know that they were meant for him because they're in Spanish and calling me corrupt and my wife. At the time, I was not married. So I thought that was actually pretty funny. But yeah, so that was that was an interesting bit. And then later on in my career, when I go when you're at a law firm, you're not allowed to write as a full time employee. I never shared the law firms. And I was at Summer Associate that I was doing this. So whatever, it doesn't matter anymore. But when I was when I came back to this VC firm, I was allowed to write. I was allowed to do whatever I was allowed to teach. Didn't matter as long as they write something crazy. And so I wrote some for The Guardian. And those have become by far and away the most read pieces I've ever published. I was number one in The Guardian's most viewed articles. For the week, like three times or no, twice. Once for explaining how Texas laws allow the cartel to arm themselves super easily with guns. I mean, it's like kind of common sense, right? Like they're extremely easy to buy in Texas. So they're extremely easy to stockpile, which means they're extremely easy to move. And one of the things people don't maybe wouldn't know off the street is you buy a gun in the United States, you go to Mexico with that same gun. The price has tripled. And you can sell it for quite a large amount of money, which provides incentives for these smugglers, one of the other things that this this usually blows people's minds. You know how many gun stores there are in Mexico, the country? I'm going to say, you know, there's one one store in Mexico City. And it's like a military one. It's very hard to purchase a gun in Mexico legally. Very difficult, which like I think blows people's minds because when they think of Mexico, they think like, oh, they're all these criminals with all these guns. And they're like, they may think they're probably buying them in Mexico from Mexican gun stores. No, those are all coming from America. So like think about where in America they're coming from. And I wrote this big article about how the really lax Texas gun laws are making it super easy for the cartel to arm themselves. And, you know, Governor Abbott had done this whole doggen pony show of making them terrorist organizations. Well, it doesn't matter because you've made it so easy for these guys to get the guns and, you know, and do whatever you're alleging their criminal terrorist organization. But yet it's so easy for them to arm themselves with guns made and sold in state. Wow. And that became one of the most read article I've ever written. Yeah. And then some others on immigration that were pretty fantastic. But yeah, that that was that was for the Guardian years later. And I'm still there. Are you still writing? Occasionally, it has to be something I'm excited about. And if I write now, it's usually for the Guardian. So the Guardian, which is the UK, big news outlet. And the Rio Grande Guardian also great, but they're I guess a little cool. A little smaller, man, much more regional. Smaller. I think the average readership of the Guardian is definitely in the mill. That's a whole the collarity to get published. So you're writing. And you said, you know, you referenced the DC work. Yeah. And and if you know, please correct me, they'll start with somebody asking you in the business stuff. Yeah, I did. Yes, to tell that story. Let's go there. Yes. So so when I go, I meet this guy, I actually meet him on a train. So at Harvard Law, there's this thing called the Harvard Law Texas Club, which is actually one of the most well funded clubs at Harvard Law, which is kind of odd. A lot of law schools, actually a lot of big law schools will have a Texas club because the region is so large. At this point, the funds of the club are highly dictated by the price of oil. So price of oil was quite high. So things were looking good for us. And so things are looking great. The whole club had decided to finance a trip from Boston to New York to watch the Spurs play. And so I'm a huge Spurs fan. So I was like, nice, I'll definitely go. And I was on this trip and I happened to sit next to Shiel Tile, the general partner of Amplow on this train. Didn't know him really. And so I started chatting with him, had no concept of what he did. We was. And later on, I saw him again and we talked more and he asked, like, you know, what are the things I'm working on at law school? And I'm like, I write, I do a bunch of other things. But, you know, I'm looking for something else. And he was kind of, I think he was in the business of trying to find somebody who was really smart and would work for close to nothing. And found me, you know, like I was, I didn't really know what was going on. And so all I really needed was enough to not die. And he was more than willing to accommodate. And then later on, I mean, eight years later, I'm here as a partner at that same fund, fund three of 300 million bucks. So worked out. Sam, I'm going to, I've got to stop you because I've got to look. And I don't think this is particularly descriptive or characteristic of kids from about, right? I think it's, it's people in general, where we're often, I think, as a whole reluctant to jump into something we don't know anything. And, you know, like, I'm going to write a piece and, you know, see if it'll get picked up. Somebody approaches me and says, Hey, are you interested in doing something, you know, business? And I don't know, I'm not, I'm not confident in my skills. That's not something I'm, you know, I don't want to, I don't want to risk failing it. Right. Why? Why go in? Why did I do it? Even though, yeah, like, like just, it was, was there ever any doubt? Was there ever any fear? Like, I'm not going to be successful or, or what if I fall flat on my face? I mean, yeah. For sure that, that happens. But, uh, one of the things my, my dad taught me and was really insistent on was the concept of a risk reward and the opportunity to make a risk, almost a riskless bet. I'll give you a scenario. Okay. Let's say coin toss odds, uh, you either lose a thousand dollars or make a thousand dollars. Are you taking the coin toss? Me personally, yes. Yeah, maybe, right? Maybe. You know, another person might say, no, I'm not willing to risk a thousand dollars, but I like change that scenario. Right. It's a coin toss. But for whatever reason, I've waited the coin and it's a 90% chance that you win a thousand dollars and a 10% chance that you just lose nothing. Are you doing that? Yes. Definitely. You're definitely doing that. So like there are, in those scenarios, they're called like, everybody in the finance world looks for this concept of this ATF arbitrage, riskless profit. That doesn't typically exist. But what does exist is these areas where the payout is so large and what you lose is just like time or like, you know, a small amount of money or a small amount of time or some medium investment of time. When you're a student, you have endless time. So you're looking for these bets where the, the payout is so much larger than what you're putting down. And the more you take, the more will hit. So go for it. When you see these things and all you have to do is risk like a few days of learning the thing, you know, maybe looking like a full once or, you know, whatever, it doesn't matter because the payout is extremely large. So go for it. And in these scenarios, when I wrote the back end story of this, I didn't get picked up by the Washington Post immediately. I didn't get picked up by the New York Times immediately. I have, I'm not kidding, probably thousands of rejection emails from all these publications and whatever saying that they didn't want to publish my piece or, you know, whatever. In fact, I even got rejected from the McCombs business school when I was applying from high school, uh, initially, right? I got rejected and then I got, and then I eventually made my way into the honors program or whatever else, but to try and, you know, try again and to do whatever it means, all it costs is a few hours or a day or whatever, but the result can change your life. So I'm going to do it. And I find myself in a lot of these positions and I think people find themselves in these positions a lot and maybe think to themselves, like, well, I don't know anything and it might, you know, I don't know if I can risk a few days or do whatever. No, do it. Like, you know, when I was writing for Forbes and it was like, I'll have to write from like 8pm to 1am every day to make this happen. I, I was like, okay, I'll lose a few hours of sleep. I do whatever. I don't care. I'm going to do it. And you know what? If I'm wrong, I'm wrong and I'll look like an idiot for a week. But if I'm right, I get to be a Forbes author and I get to do all these other things and the payoff is large and I get to write about really excellent things that matter and, you know, a lot to me. And so when you're in these scenarios, oh God, I love one of these scenarios. All right. Cause it's such an, it's an, it's a choice that makes itself. Uh, and I love thinking about life in those terms and I've, I've been fortunate to get a lot of those opportunities. Oh, thank you. Um, so you're still with ample. Yep. And now you're also a teacher. Yep. You get there. Oh man. So I actually, one of my buds, he's the king of this, uh, this guy, Jerry Ting and, uh, May May, so Jerry and May May were two of my law school classmates. Uh, Jerry was the year above me. May May was the same year as me. And, uh, they were the, so Jerry was the founder of Ebisor, a company that sold the workday for a huge amount. Uh, and May May was one of his first employees and they were good friends of mine and they were doing whatever. And before the company sold, they were teaching, they just started teaching a class on legal tech at, at Harvard Law. They asked, I think, cause somebody canceled quite frankly, they asked if I would come guest lecture on VC. I think they had a bigger VC that was going to come, uh, than me. This was three years ago. Uh, and they asked me to come teach and I went. Um, and it just went so amazingly. It went so well that Jerry and May May recommended that I go to the dean and they kind of put me up. They put me in contact with him. Um, who at the time was the new guy cause our dean, when I was in law school, it changed over. And so they put me in touch and they said like, Hey, this guy's fantastic. He has an excellent kind of like new angle on this. And I followed up and I followed up and I followed up and no answer and no answer and no answer. And then five months later and like maybe 10 follow ups. I was, I was relentless. I was not going to stop until they did it. Um, I finally get in contact with the guy's secretary, uh, who was like, talk to this guy, Jesse freed, who is like the leader of like kind of the private equity arm of the law school, private equity business. And so I talked to him and he's a huge fan and he was like, I love it. I actually, I hope he didn't remember at the time, but I was actually in one of his classes that I like, wasn't a star in this class. So it's just like, you know, just a regular student. I wasn't even trying particularly hard. Had I known I would one day have to like pitch him to get into the Harvard faculty, I probably would have tried harder. Um, but it was, uh, you know, it went super well. He actually sat in on one of my classes, uh, two weeks ago. Uh, and it was a class on sports gambling and event contracts. And, uh, it was a fun class. It was experimental on, and I think he, he didn't know how much you would enjoy it. Uh, cause it's a fun class. If you go into really fun topics and do whatever. So we even, you know, do the, the whole sports gambling thing. And it's a, it's really fun. So yeah, that's how it all happened. And now the process went and then, you know, you go back and forth with the curriculum committee. It's a rigorous process. It takes like four or five months of vetting and then you get added to the faculty big deal and then to come back a second year is even is really hard as well. I would say a lot of people don't make it to the second year. Uh, so going from the first year is already such a big hurdle going to second year, even less folks. So I feel very blessed to have made it and hopefully I'll come back for it. Yeah. Sam, you, um, start your journey. You had a very clear idea of what, what you wanted to be in the path that you take, but it sounds like that path led a lot of different. Graduation. Thank you. And, um, and, um, and so I want to be mindful of our time. I know for obviously a very busy guy. And so I've got to know, I've got to ask, right? If you wanted to leave our listeners who was out there with one piece. He's an advice. If the only thing you have to risk is time and the payout is large enough, have to do it. You have to make that rule for yourself and then stack that up over time. You will, you will have like hugely disparate outcomes from other folks. If you continuously take these risks that only cost you just a bit of time. It's just free. You know, it's almost free to go for it. All right. I appreciate, appreciate this. Sam, um, thank you. Of course. Thank you for taking the time. Very with us. I'm really looking forward to sharing this, um, because I know, um, I don't know that it'll resonate with a lot of folks. I mean, I think it will, but I think it'll inspire. I think a lot of people, particularly young people, or maybe afraid or, um, trying to find their way. And so I think, I think there, I think it'll have probably. Let's hope for it. All right. Well, this concludes another episode, the way to college. Podcast. Thank you to my guests. Sam Garcia. Thank you to our listeners, viewers out there. Please don't forget to subscribe, break, follow all of that good stuff. And do me a favor and share the podcast with one other person. I'd appreciate it. See you again soon. Take care. Bye.