Quick Wins & Updates

• New Endorsements: A warm shoutout to Alok Sama (former President & CFO of SoftBank Group Intl.) and Jihoon Rim (former CEO of Kakao Corp) for recently endorsing The Super Upside Factor.

• Let’s Go Viral: I also celebrated my birthday on December 23rd by posting on LinkedIn for the very first time about this concept of “borrowed vs. owned” reputation. Please take a moment to like, comment, and repost.

Borrowed Reputation

December is a bittersweet month for those of us who follow the Gregorian calendar. The artificial “end” of what we’ve defined as a year carries weight we can’t quite escape. Have we lived up to our commitments? How did another year go by? Where are we going in the next? Am I going to be okay?

This month also carries a personal touch for me: December 23rd marks another birthday—this year, the start of my 30s. It’s a natural moment for reflection, and one question in particular keeps surfacing:

Recap of My 20s

The start of my twenties marked the end of poverty for me. Taking a six-figure job out of college as a management consultant at BCG—and later Oliver Wyman—lifted my entire family out of financial hardship.

“Welcome back to the Ritz-Carlton Mr. Kang” followed by Michelin-starred dinners, made it surreal, like I’d stepped into someone else’s life. It had me thinking, I had “made it,” which in hindsight, is obnoxiously naive hubris.

But here’s the bigger crisis: once poverty was no longer breathing down my neck, my drive collapsed. Like it or not, escaping poverty had been a massive motivator. Sure, “making the world a better place” factored in, but I’d be lying to myself if I denied that my family’s financial safety was the primary push. So that deep sigh of relief arrived at an unsettling loss of purpose.

That’s probably why, at 21, I threw myself headlong into what I assumed was success: stacking prestigious degrees, chasing brand-name employers, cultivating a far-reaching network. Consulting launched me into the SoftBank Vision Fund—which, at $100 billion, was then the largest venture fund in the world. By 25, I’d earned a seat on the boards of billion-dollar companies.

And still I kept going. After two years, I left SoftBank to pursue a graduate degree at Oxford while also founding my own startup—joining the coveted Y-Combinator in just two months after launching.

Closing My 20s

Now that I’m wrapping up my twenties—and apparently the endless chase that came with them—I’m taking some time to reflect. Beneath the façade of achievement, I began to notice how fragile it all was.

Much of what I’d built wasn’t actually mine: it was borrowed, propped up by prestigious names and the fleeting glow of external validation. Two core realizations led me here.

1. Distinguishing Borrowed and Owned Reputation

When I used an @softbank.com email address, not a single CEO ignored me. To a lesser degree, BCG, Oxford, Oliver Wyman, and others had the same effect. That’s the cliché with prestige: it’s easy to absorb that aura and mistake it for your own.

Over time, this leads to entitlement, stunts your growth, and conflates external brand power with personal merit.

On some level, I “knew” the special treatment came from my affiliation with these institutions, but I didn’t really understand it until I started my own company—where all I had was my name. Three years of investor rejections and tough customer feedback made it painfully clear where I stood without the leverage of established brands.

2. Distinguishing Value and Reputation

A more salient reflection as I close out my 20s is building the basis of reputation. I can keep collecting stamps of approval, but all that does is reinforce the same loop I’m already in. Let me explain. In an essay I wrote about imposter syndrome, I point out the suboptimal order of operations, taking an example of running:

At a certain point, reputation without a foundation is bound to tumble down. That’s not to say I haven’t done anything, but a reminder for myself to align my character and competence to the ground truth rather than reputation (perception of others).

I had “known” this in theory, but only after racking up brand affiliations—and noticing where I stand without them—did I understand that genuine value creation must be the foundation of reputation. That’s where my focus is shifting as I head into 2025.

Looking Forward to My 30s

As I look toward 2025, I’m done chasing prestige and accolades. Instead, I’m laser-focused on building real credibility through tangible results. That’s why I launched this book—and why I’ve stayed committed to my startup. Both are asymmetric bets for outsized returns to truly create value at scale.

That doesn’t mean I’ll never borrow others’ reputations. In fact, for this book launch, I’ve been fortunate to receive endorsements from industry heavyweights like Nir Eyal (author of Hooked and Indistractable) and C-suites from SoftBank and Kakao. But in 2025, I’m doubling down on the few right things that reflect the ground truth, and ignoring everything else. It’s about building something unshakable, something no one can take away because I will know it and own it.

As you reflect on your own year and look to the next, a worthwhile question may be: is your reputation borrowed or owned?

The Super Upside Factor is available in the US, Canada, and Europe.