My old Wall Street office was beautiful. We had the penthouse overlooking Wall & Water St. Full floor, panoramic views, the whole nine yards. It was the physical manifestation of potential, a monument to what could be.
And it became the site of my first spectacular implosion: a hedge fund that cratered, taking a hefty chunk of my ego and virtually all of my capital with it.
You want to talk about potential? We had it in spades. But I learned a brutal lesson then, one that’s become the bedrock of everything I do now: Talent is meaningless without ruthless execution. I had potential. After a little more hard work (and a lot more luck) I converted that potential into something that actually has value. But it took time, work and lots of failures.
You have potential, too. But let me be blunt: potential is a worthless commodity on its own. It's the cheap, easily acquired currency of dreamers who never wake up. The world is littered with "could have beens" with brilliant ideas that withered on the vine because no one had the grit to bring them to life. Potential is the graveyard of dreams, a vast, silent testament to inaction.
Execution is the only currency that truly matters in this game. You're sitting there, hoarding your potential like it's a precious metal. I'm here to tell you it's time to liquidate it, to burn it as fuel for the engine of actual achievement. My job, as I see it now, particularly with the tech startups I advise, is to help them stop setting their potential on fire and instead channel it into the furnace of deliberate action.
After the hedge fund flameout, did I learn my lesson immediately?
Not entirely. I pivoted.
Exhibit B: direct investing in operating companies. Another round of "potential” another series of missteps. I didn't just fail; I bombed so spectacularly that the blast radius sparked an entirely new idea. Licking my wounds, sifting through the wreckage of what went wrong, I realized there had to be a way to see these implosions coming. If only there were a system, a kind of financial smoke detector, to sniff out the rot before a company collapses under its own weight. That’s when the first real glimmers of my current path began to emerge, forged in the crucible of repeated, humbling failure.
This ties directly into my second core belief: Comfort is the enemy of greatness.
Your comfort zone? It's not a refuge; it’s a self-imposed prison. It's the warm, stagnant pond where mediocrity breeds and ambition goes to die a slow, unceremonious death.
Most people are comfortable being average, or maybe just slightly above it. I’m not. I can’t afford to be, and neither can you, not if you genuinely want to build something meaningful. My Wall Street days, before the entrepreneurial fiascos, were comfortable in their own way. I was a quant, dissecting companies' revenue streams, using fancy statistical models and Python code that could read financial statements faster than an army of caffeine-fueled interns. It was challenging, sure, but it was a known quantity. The real discomfort began when I stepped out of that world, when I faced the blank canvas of my own ventures and the stark reality of my shortcomings.
The path to building that "financial smoke detector" the software that now helps companies avoid financial incineration, was paved with discomfort. I had the analytical background, but my math skills weren't where they needed to be for the kind of sophisticated modeling I envisioned. Excel, the tool of my trade, was hitting its limits. So, I had to get uncomfortable. I hit the books, hard. I dove into SQL to wrangle the vast datasets I needed, and then I truly embraced Python, not just for its existing capabilities in finance, but for the superpowers it was beginning to unlock – automation, deep analysis, and then, the real game-changer: AI. Each step was a departure from what was easy, a deliberate move into territory where I was a novice again. Get used to discomfort. It's the crucible where champions are forged, where resilience is built, and where real innovation happens.
This leads me to the chorus I hear all too often, the anthem of the also-rans: Excuses are the currency of losers. I've heard them all, a thousand variations on the same tired themes. "I don't have enough time." "We lack the resources." "The market conditions weren't right." "Bad luck." They're all pathetic, flimsy attempts to justify inaction, to shift blame away from the one place it usually belongs: squarely on your own shoulders.
Radical responsibility will set you free as soon as you admit you’re locked in a cage of your own making.
After my hedge fund vaporized, I could have made a long list of excuses. After my direct investing efforts tanked, I could have blamed external factors. But what good would that have done? Successful people, the ones who actually build and create and win, don't waste breath on excuses. They find solutions. They see a roadblock, and they either go over it, under it, around it, or straight through it. Your excuses, whatever they are, are now null and void. The moment you verbalize an excuse, you give it power, you legitimize your own inertia. The founders I work with today get this message loud and clear. We don’t do excuses; we do iterations, we do pivots, we do problem-solving.
The intellectual journey from Wall Street analyst to AI software builder wasn’t just about learning new code; it was about systematically dismantling my own excuses. "I'm not a natural coder." Irrelevant. Learn. "This AI stuff is too complex." Bullshit. Break it down. "I don't have a PhD in machine learning." So what? Find the resources, talk to experts, experiment relentlessly.
The truth is, I got lucky that so much of Machine Learning and now the broader AI revolution "lives" in Python, a language I'd already begun to master out of necessity. I gave myself surface area for luck. I worked hard to get lucky. You should constantly work to expand your network of connections and your inventory of capabilities. Luck favors the prepared, and preparation means refusing to let excuses dictate your path.
And what underpins most excuses?
What’s the shadowy figure lurking behind our reluctance to execute and our craving for comfort?
Fear is a fabrication. Fear of failure? I’ve lived it, multiple times. It stings, but it’s not fatal. In fact, it’s an incredible teacher if you let it be. Fear of judgment? Let them judge. The people who matter will respect the attempt, the audacity. The rest don't count. Fear is a self-limiting belief, a ghost story you tell yourself to protect your fragile ego from the perceived dangers of striving for something more. It’s a lie, a distortion field that shrinks your world and your capabilities. You have to conquer your fears, actively, consciously, or they will undoubtedly conquer you. There is no middle ground, no truce to be negotiated.
My decision to leave the traditional finance world, even after the initial stumbles, was fueled by a different kind of fear: the fear of being left behind by a tidal wave I saw coming.
The “whoa, technology is going to change everything” AI lightbulb didn't just flicker on; it became a blazing spotlight burning a hole in my head. I realized that AI wasn't just going to be another tool in the toolkit; it was going to be the toolkit. It was going to rewrite the rules for every industry, managing money, running companies, creating art, everything. Today, AI isn't just reading the numbers for me; it gets them in context. It understands the intricate connections between a company's performance, its market, its supply chain, the whole ecosystem. This AI wave, coupled with the incoming advancements in robotics, isn't just an incremental change; it’s permanently transforming wealth creation, and all creation in general.
Some call it the singularity, a period of constant novelty, of exponential progress, navigated by AI copilots and informed by trillions of sensors. Our lives, especially in a world like that, will revolve around creation. The entrepreneurial among us, the ones who embrace this future, will spend their time building vast digital nets to catch the opportunities cascading from this explosion of innovation.
So, what's the takeaway from my scars and my obsession with next generation technology?
The principles I’ve laid out aren’t just philosophical sketches; they are battle-tested directives for anyone who wants to achieve anything of significance, especially now, on the cusp of the most transformative technological shift humanity has ever seen.
If you move fast right now, you really can achieve anything. That’s how wide-open the technology explosion will make the balance of power and opportunity across every industry.
Be consistent. Be intense. Be resilient. Be the definition of urgency. Be extremely open to pivoting, remixing and reimagining.
Your potential is just a starting pistol. Ruthless execution is the race itself. Your comfort zone is a cage. Break out of it and learn to thrive in the bracing air of challenge. Your excuses are anchors. Cut them loose. Your fears are phantoms. Face them down. The future is being built now, by those who dare to act, by those who embrace the discomfort of the new, by those who refuse to be defined by their limitations.
The AI revolution is here.
The robotics revolution is next.
Success demands a new level of agility, a new commitment to lifelong learning, and an unwavering focus on execution. The tools are more powerful than ever, the opportunities vaster than we can imagine. But they will only be seized by those who are willing to pay the price, in sweat, in resilience, and in the courage to step into the unknown, again and again. Don't just stand there with your talent. Liquidate it into action. The world doesn’t need more potential. It needs more progress.
Tough love session over.
Now it’s time for you to build, connect and grow.
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I started Wealth Systems in 2023 to share the systems, technology, and mindsets that I encountered on Wall Street. I am a Wall St banker became ₿itcoin nerd, ML engineer & family office investor.
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