#009 “Rishi Tripathy - Ikigai and Apprenticeships”

The Brandon Zhang Show

Today, I am chatting with Rishi Tripathy, a recent Duke Graduate who will be joining On Deck. This summer, Rishi worked as an apprentice to Steve Schlafman, the founder of High Output and Angel Investor. On the episode, we will talk about the meaning of Ikigai, what Rishi learned during his apprenticeship, the future of education, and what it means to create a new user manual.
Links:

1. Rishi’s Newsletter

2. Rishi’s Twitter

3. My Twitter

4. My Website

Show Notes:

I’m a big believer that you can admire people for very specific things, and not necessarily agree with their entire person.

I read the book Saddartha recently on his [Naval’s] recommendation and its like one of the most influential things I have done in terms of understanding my sense of self.

Let the seekers seek.

For me, the meaningfulness around Ikigai is that it can be broader than your work, your personal life, your relationships, your friendships. It is sort of this mindset that transcends any boundaries that you set in your life.

It’s [Ikigai] not something you need to always be thinking about. You do not need to always think about is this tying back to x. But if you are not feeling your best or if you feel like something is off, it should make you ask “is this something that is in line with what I want to be doing?”

The newsletter is a way for me to scale myself.

I like to explore the relationship between people and the things around them. Some examples include friendship and how intention plays into them. I think games are a big part of my life, asking how do board games, video games etc. how do they reflect a small part of life or a broader life principle.

For the apprenticeship, I actually found it just by scrolling through Twitter. I was at home, doing Zoom University and I was like “wow the summers going to be really boring.” My original plan was to travel for a while after graduating but I saw this role and thought I have heard really great things about Steve, he is super well-respected within the community, I might as well give it a shot.

If you're going to spend 40 hours a week doing a job then you might as well put 4 hours getting the job.

It was sort of a behind the curtains look at how startups grow, raise money, and how founders and investors view the whole process. For the time being, I see myself more on building a company side of things, but going through this experience has helped me in that aspect as well by being on the other side of the table so to speak.

A personal user manual is something that you would hand to your colleague on the first day of work to tell them how they should work with you.

When you are putting so much effort into a product for people. It is pretty low marginal cost and pretty high marginal benefit to spend 20 minutes talking about why you did it and sharing your process.

The High Output Library is a way to serve as the center of gravity for resources for early-stage startup founders. It is a page built in Notion that is filled with high signal, tactical advice compiled around the internet.

The creator economy is growing and more people are creating, the attention economy is also growing and more people are vying for your attention, so you will have to find a way to cut through that noise to find what content is right for you.

I wouldn’t say that I derived most of the value from college from the classroom. In all of these Zoom University models, so to say, the most important thing that is being replicated is the classroom experience.