05/06/2024
How Shark Tank investor Matt Higgins went from dropout to CEO
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Matt Higgins, CEO and founder of private investment firm RSE Ventures, has a story to tell. He recently sat in Glassdoor’s Hot Seat to chat with Community users, opening up about his challenging upbringing in the Queens neighborhood of New York City. He shed light on the challenges he’s faced and bravely shared his journey from dropping out of school to becoming a teacher at Harvard Business School.
On setting fears aside to start your own business:
My number one piece of advice is that you cannot derisk this move entirely, nor should you want to. The fear of failure and anxiety will drive you to success. I find the people who want to make the leap but are paralyzed; it's usually because they raised the bar impossibly high. They assumed they had to have every little thing worked out, but that's not realistic. You just have to trust that when everything is on the line, you will figure it out.
On getting past “imposter syndrome”:
I have come to see imposter syndrome as a feedback loop. I imagine what life would be like without that feeling. It would mean I'm settling for mediocrity. I've also come to realize there is no final arbiter of belonging. No one is going to welcome you and invite you to take the seat.
You just have to realize, you belong here because you are here. That's all there is to it.
On how his survival instincts guided his path:
Desperation led to a very calculated plan. I knew my mother was going to succumb to our circumstances if I didn’t do something to change our trajectory out of poverty. I also hated my life. Working overnight while trying to go to high school during the day just didn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense. Once I discovered this loophole – that if I did well enough on my GED, I could go to college at 16 and get a better-paying job, I couldn’t unsee that path.
Of course, everyone told me I would be branded a loser for the rest of my life with a GED. But I knew I could clean that up later on with a graduate degree. It took me seven years of college at night with two jobs at a time and another four years at night to go to school to get the JD.
On one of his biggest career risks:
[For me] It was the first time I left the Mayor's Office. I was frustrated that they wouldn't give me the job as Deputy Press Secretary because I was too young/didn't have enough experience. But I felt ready.
So I quit and took a higher-paying, soul-crushing job.
[They] called me back four months later and gave me the job I wanted, a higher salary, and paid for law school.
The safest best we make are the ones we place on ourselves.
On advice for new grads entering the job market:
As the applicant, think about creating an opportunity for yourself in an unexplored area with a pitch that speaks very specifically to the company's problems — not from the perspective of YOUR needs. AI is the perfect example. Imagine you are approaching a brick-and-mortar food business. You could propose [that] you will work on a project to identify best practices and emergent tools to use AI to increase same-store sale comps (the most important KPI)...just making it up. [The] point is, try to manifest an opportunity for yourself by identifying an unexplored problem, and then pitch it.
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