About Me
Hi everyone!! This is Vivian, and I’m a current undergrad at MIT studying computer science (+ econ) and finance. Born and raised in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, my Chinese immigrant parents raised my younger sister and I with both Chinese cultural values like discipline, work ethic, and humility along with American values like individuality and assertiveness. At MIT, I’m on the varsity swim team (don’t be so impressed, I’m the slowest one on the team), a business club, mentor middle school girls and non-binary students how to code, involved in my sorority Theta, and most recently a restaurant hostess & server (and more)!
As someone who originally wanted to major in computer science & engineering (6-3) but has converted to [the dark side of] finance, I’m still super interested in technology - but rather than through developing new tech, I’ve become more interested in the business-building & investing side of technology companies, and more specifically, I’ve been increasingly interested in the world of growth equity, which involves investing in fast-growing [tech] startups. I spent my last summer (2022) in NY at FTV Capital, a growth equity firm specialized in enterprise technology, fintech, and payments, developing both sourcing technology and spending time on an investment team. This summer (2023), I’ll be in Philly with Susquehanna Growth Equity (SGE), working with an investment team as well. While there’s a million reasons why I’ve fallen in love with growth equity while the rest of MIT goes on to FAANG, quant, or IB, I’ll save my pitch for growth equity another time (maybe for a blog post). So you could say I’m somewhat of a growth gal (or as my FTV intern class named ourselves, a growth gremlin).
About Underground Tech
So why Underground Tech? One night as I was trying to fall asleep, I thought of ways I could share the implicit “sourcing” I was doing through just reading newsletters and listening to podcasts. And some friends on the swim team had been clarifying the difference between “underrated” and “underground.” For those who don’t know the difference, here’s how my friends explained it (with regards to brownies + ice cream as a dessert): “[Underground is] when something is not talked about enough, but not in an underappreciated way because when you bring it up people go ‘yeah that’s bussin.’ Brownies and ice cream are not quite ‘underrated’ because everyone can admit they’re fire but they’re never the first dessert people think of to eat even though they’re undeniably an incredible combo.” So, along those lines, I’ll be writing about the “underground” tech startups I’ve come across - so these won’t be generative AI startups or companies backed by Sequoia or a16z. These are companies that you’ll (hopefully) agree have strong business models or large upside opportunities, but in either industries you haven’t thought of, geographies you haven’t considered, or just ideas that aren’t necessarily mainstream but have huge market potential.
I’ll be aiming to post every or every other week with a new company to discuss. By no means am I providing investing advice, but hopefully you learn something new from my mini-deep dives in these companies!
