Interview: David Langer on Your Hidden Potential

Last week Joseph Ajilore (Founder, Your Hidden Potential) interviewed me for his young entrepreneur blog. He asked me about how to be a successful entrepreneur, why I rejected multiple corporate job offers in favour of pursuing GroupSpaces full-time and who I find inspiring. Following a lot of great feedback we’ve both received on the interview, Joseph’s kindly allowed me to re-publish it for the readers of Freed From the Matrix.

Can you quickly give us some background information about yourself?

I’m a 24 year-old Internet entrepreneur, born and bred in Wimbledon, currently based in Oxford having completed a Mathematics degree at Oxford University in 2007. In addition to working on my startup GroupSpaces, I also write for The Gateway newspaper as their Entrepreneurship Columnist and train for my current sporting passion: triathlons.

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Decision Time

On many, many occasions during a degree, you contemplate what will come next. Some people are completely set on moving on to get a PhD in Theoretical Physics, while others have decided that McKinsey is by far and away the best place they could start their career in business.

However, most people aren’t fortunate enough to have this level of certainty. For an intelligent, talented student like you, furnished with a diverse range of skills and experiences, about to receive a good degree, how on earth do you choose from the thousands of career options available?

First up, let’s simplify the problem. Let’s assume you are ambitious and you want to enter the business world in some capacity. Also, let’s assume you don’t want to work in a medium-sized, mediocre, low-growth company. You want a little bit more. You want to make money or you want to make meaning or both.

We can now divide the available options into 4 categories:

1. Join a Large Corporate (Investment Bank, Consultancy, Law Firm, Professional Services etc.)

2. Go into Investment Management (Private Equity, Venture Capital, Hedge Funds, Pension Funds etc.)

3. Start your own Company (or continue with your existing company if you recently started one)

4. Join a Start-up Company

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