Duke

Shaan's dad: 'Excellent will seem average' surrounded by great peers

Shaan recalls calling his dad as a struggling B- freshman at Duke, ready to transfer; his dad told him grades didn't matter — being five feet from brilliant peers would recalibrate his baseline so that excellence would feel average to him forever.

“You being friends with these people, you're not even gonna realize it, but your whole— what you think is normal is actually gonna be excellent because it's just gonna seem totally average. Excellent will seem average to you just by spending 4 years with these people. So don't stress yourself out about the grades.”

Your tuition bought a network you've never tapped: cold-email the alumni

Prompted by Plaid selling to Visa for $6.5B (founder is a Duke undergrad), Shaan argues that almost no one taps the real value they paid college for - a free intro and foot in the door with any successful person from that school.

“I paid all this money to go to school and I don't care what school you went to. Like, I think Duke's got a pretty big alumni network that's doing things, but really any school, I guarantee if you're listening to this, you've not tapped into the value you paid for, which was to get the stamp and get basically a free intro, a free foot in the door. With anybody who's successful and from that school.”

Steal thisTreat your alma mater as a free intro engine - cold-email successful alumni; the shared school is your foot in the door.