What is the minimal requirement to nurture Dark Talent?

Requirement to nurture Dark Talent

A Japanese friend of mine calls me "alien".

He found that my life trajectory is very uncommon in comparison with others, and really confused to clarify me. Because I came from a suburb in Osaka(no English speakers), dropout of the university, run a company and traveled the world with teaching coding.

If one feature of Dark Talent is "extraordinary unique achiever", probably I'm qualified.

So I'd love to share how I discovered "freedom to choose", and changed my belief, and walk thought as a real case study of becoming dark talents.

Problem — Asian culture hobbles talents

My life shift happened accidentally when I failed to pass the exam of University of Tokyo.

1. Free from expectation:

free to choose

I'm born and raised in Osaka, Japan. I've never lived overseas until 25.

My family are middle class, basically conservative, the typical Asian parents.

Since I was the top 3 "smartest" kids in Japan when i was 11 ~ 14 y.o., my mom expected me to get into the best university, University of Tokyo.

My mom wanted me to have a good social status, a secure job, a good husband, and have a kid.

I don't have any of them.

However I earned the more important thing for me; those who trust me as a builder/entrepreneur.

1. New Model, New friends, Agency, New economy

   • New Model — Elon Musk

   After I failed the exam, I labeled myself as a failure. Since I was on exploration mode, I started going to bookstore, and reading a lot of books. I found the Elon Musk's autobiography on the feature shelf. On his book, I was emotionally triggered by two points. a) The complicated relationship with his dad, and b) way of building a company by building a software.

   Especially the first point was relatable to my relationship with my mom. One episode is I survived for 2 months with 3 hours of sleep when I was 17. I wanted to achieve three things at the same time. Earn the top score of school exam, finish a music recording project and publish it, and practice a ballet performance everyday. The rule I tried to follow is "If you are good at studying, then you can afford to play." During this lifestyle, I thought I almost die. But I didn't die. Finally when I showed my score to my mom, she gave me a comment. "Why are you at the third, not a top?"

   I remember that the hope I'm slightly having to my mom was vanished at this moment. This is a painful lesson that chasing other people's proof doesn't make me happy. This strong emotional movement hit my heart, and I was convinced that he is a model that I can trust.

   I found my curiosity and thesis I want to pursue. "I want to compare Artificial intelligence to Human Brain? Where can I do this?" I started looking for the university. Then I discovered the university called SFC.

   I wrote the essay about the proposal of research theme, and got accepted. Finally I got into a university. I removed my label of failure. Unfortunately, some of my old friends called me "cheater" because the exam I passed was very unusual test in Japan. The exam contains three things; research proposal, the showcase of past achievements, and in-person interview with professors.

   I know why they call me cheater, because the most common university exam is based on test to measure memorization and reasoning skill, not presentation. Basically based on math, Japanese, history, geography, English, etc. I believe almost all thing is useless nowadays. But most kids spend their 6 years of adressence just to ace this weird domestic exam. From their POV, I'm a cheater, for sure.

   • New friends — hackers

   After I got into the university, I made a few friends who have unusual backgrounds. A couple of them didn't finish high school, and had their special skills or achievements. One friend is a boy who dropout high school to support his family when his dad past away, and made money by making a lot of softwares. He introduced me about Bitcoin, like "Buy now. It will go up." More than the speculation, I got curious about the system of Bitcoin. We tried to use the school server to mine Bitcoin, and got reported. This is the vibe of techy kids circle.

   There's one more boy who just came back from British boarding school. We thought he can speak English well. So I and two of my friends started reading the whitepaper of Ethereum together.

   • Lost the purpose — shatter academia dream

   I went to university to become an AI researcher with a neuroscience approach. I spent my first two years working toward academic researches. I realized I needed to learn more about theoretical computer science to understand this intersection of two different subjects, so I studied under a physics professor who was researching new computational models. Meanwhile, I noticed that even talented senior students, PhD candidates, and professors seemed to struggle to secure positions in academia. On the other side, a few of hacker friends stop coming to the school, and making money by working at startups. The smartest one earned 500,000 JPY/mo by implementing the AI research paper in python 1 day/week. That's a big difference. I saw something wrong at academia.

   I really wanted to have the financial independent from my family, because I hated the communication friction I had with parents. So I sifted my effort to improve my skill and make money.

   Urgency to earn financial independency shattered my academia dream, and make me exposed to job markets at 19.

   • High-agency — Bitcoin devs

   My fist economy is to get a job as an intern, and get paid in JPY monthly.

   Since I wanted to get a job in building on Bitcoin, it's so hard to find an opportunity in Japan for entry-level engineers. in 2018, Bitcoin conference happened at my university. I just went there, and met with real developers. I got interested in one speech about the tech architecture of Bitcoin<>JPY derivative market place on top of Bitcoin sidechain. I wanted to do something with them, so I reach out them and ask internship opportunity. They accepted it, and I started working with Bitcoin core developers in an office in Tokyo. That was the life changing event for me, for sure.

   What I observed is the communication gap between Japanese fintech team and Bitcoin core devs. But at the same time, I'm really inspired by the agency of devs. Core devs have a strong voice to propose new idea which comes from deep understanding of tech. It was so surprising for me, because normally tech startups make money by working with big tech company and they don't have high agency to pursue new tech frontier.

   I want to be like this core devs, but how?

   • New economy — Global Bitcoin hackers

   I started spending my time to "yap" on the dev forum. I wanted to contribute to Bitcoin, but the repo is so huge and I didn't get where I can start. Also it's very unsure if I can get paid. A founder of the startup I worked for gave me this unhelpful advice. "just contribute to open source, then Google will find you."

   So I just joined the conversation, and shared what I worked(lightning network) to help others. Then one guy reached out to me, and offer the job. They seems like building the arbitrage trading engine and they needed to deal with Bitcoin option markets.

   I love the idea and I joined it. Everyone is working remotely, and it's a covid time. I was not able to meet any team members. And I am getting paid in Bitcoin, I was able to learn Rust, and I love that env.

   I end up meeting all core members later. However, it was the loneliest moment in my life.

   It was hard to explain what I'm doing to my boy friends, family didn't understand what I'm doing. I stop going to the school. The bitcoin derivative are f*cking difficult to learn.

   I broke up with my boy friend, and moved to Yokohama. I listen brown noise to focus my work, and ate the pouch of curry and rice.

   All communication happed in text English, but I have not enough confidence to speak on the call. So I didn't talk to anyone for one week. I discovered that I need people who I can talk online or off line.

2. Painful lesson — become a founder in Japan

   After I left the project, I went to SF first time in my life to join the hackathon. I met with a teammate who is ex-Google, and surprisingly he just got the job offer from a Japanese crypto startup. So I decide to join the same company, and in 6 months I and he started out own company, Cerberus Research, with a dream of starting a unicorn startup.

   He left in 2 month and I built a mvp with another dev I met at ETHGlobal online hackathon. The idea has a lot of legal isseus to operate in Japan, and I didn't know how to resolve this. I end up starting the consultancy service to friend's company, and worked as CTO.

   It was tough, but I made it right. People started asking me to help their projects as the tech lead. That became my business.

   • Lesson being a founder is different from being a developer.
   • Founder must understand clients' need. Communicate better.

   However, it's super boring and not frontier of tech. A lot of power game with gray hair people or weird startups. Clients don't speak English, and rarely understand what happening in the market. So it's really difficult to find a right project, have money and enough interesting to work.

   I've been saving my money to leave Japan. It's a time to act. I did it.

3. New life in SF

After Arron encouraged me to start traveling, I followed his advice; I left the apartment in Tokyo, and trying to move to Lisbon at first. I didn't feel I fit into their culture — enjoying the beach life.

So I moved to SF.

I was so surprised that people in SF are so welcoming, optimistic and have a capital to throw.

A lot of young collage kids pitch their idea to investors, and get into the accelerators.

I finally was able to make real friends. Real friend is super important factor in my life.

If I told that "I'm looking for a co-founder who understand web3 and AI", my friend at same co-living place introduced me ODF, and I got in ODF22.

I decided to move to US, and get an entrepreneur visa, O1-A visa.

I prepared it, paid for my lawyer, and ready to get O1 visa.

1. Chase Agency — skill, money, network

2. Chase IRL community — SF, O1 visa, Network School

• down side of living on the internet → makes people lonely.

Requirements

Individual level — English, Code, Reach out

• Master the law of economics:
  • Become a better supplier
  • Become a demand detector

Resource level — friends, model, capital

• Model >> Audrey
• Friends >> in HK, SF and Stanford
• Capital >> Where to ask

Mind level — culture