Significant Career Lesson from a Private Equity Associate at Apex Capital Growth Partners
Jerry's significant career lesson centers on the double-edged sword of "jumping to action really fast," initially beneficial for rapid decision-making and early company growth but ultimately requiring a shift towards "taking more time to deliberate on assumptions" as the company scaled. This involved sanity-checking ideas with trusted individuals to ensure decisions were "probabilistically in the right direction."
Decision-Making, Problem-Solving, Rapid Prototyping, Strategic Thinking, Leadership
Advizer Information
Name
Job Title
Company
Undergrad
Grad Programs
Majors
Industries
Job Functions
Traits
Jerry Zhou
Private Equity Associate
Apex Capital Growth Partners
UCLA, 2012
UCLA Anderson School of Management, MBA Candidate
Economics
Finance (Banking, Fintech, Investing)
Finance
None Applicable
Video Highlights
1. Jerry's ability to quickly take action and make decisions was crucial in the early stages of his career, allowing him to rapidly learn from failures and iterate quickly.
2. As his company scaled, Jerry learned the importance of slowing down and carefully considering assumptions before making decisions, since mistakes became more costly.
3. Jerry emphasizes the value of seeking external perspectives by discussing ideas with trusted individuals to sanity-check his reasoning and improve decision-making probabilities.
Transcript
What is one lesson that you have learned that has proven significant in your career?
I think this question is very subjective. It's really about self-reflection and your own personality traits. Everything is a double-edged sword; every trait has a good and bad aspect depending on the task or role you're in at that time.
For me, I tend to jump to action very fast, which is really good. When I was starting out in business, if I didn't jump to action and make quick decisions, I would be failing really fast and learning from that. I wouldn't have been able to start the company because it would have taken too long. We would have run out of cash, and things would not have gotten done.
In the early stages, I was trying everything: marketing, design, product, and team. But as the company scaled up, I realized that many of the assumptions I had, and many of the solutions I thought were right, weren't always correct. The mistakes were also becoming costlier. Before, when you have nothing to lose, you can make a mistake. But now, if the team doesn't have production set up, mistakes can be a lot more costly.
On that aspect, I would take more time to deliberate on my assumptions and not think I have the right answer from the beginning. Taking that time to really think about my assumptions and trying to find cracks in them will lead to much better outcomes. Sometimes, I would also talk to people I trust and bounce ideas off of them. This would really sanity check and rationally check whether the decision is more probabilistically in the right direction.
Advizer Personal Links