Waldron Student-Alumni Connections Program Event with Junta Nakai '04: Global Industry Leader at Databricks
This is a recorded Waldron Student-Alumni Connections Program event where Junta Nakai talked with students about his career where he transitioned from finance to startups. Junta graduated from Northwestern in 2004 with a double major in economics and international studies. After 14 years in the finance industry, he decided to take the leap to startups. He now leads Financial Services at Databricks where he works with customers who are defining the future of finance. He is also a part-owner of Brooklyn Kura, the first Sake Brewery in New York. Learn more at Weinberg.northwestern.edu and search for Waldron or email us at waldron@northwestern.edu.
Cassie Petoskey (00:00):
Welcome to the Weinberg in the World Podcast, where we bring you stories of interdisciplinary thinking for today's complex world.
(00:08):
This episode is a recorded Waldron Student Alumni Connections Program event where Junta Nakai talked with students about his career where he transitioned from finance to startups. Junta graduated from Northwestern in 2004 with a double major in economics and international studies. After 14 years in the finance industry, he decided to take leap to startups. He now leads financial services at Databricks, where he works with customers who are defining the future of finance. He is also part owner of Brooklyn Kura, the first sake brewery in New York. I'm excited to introduce Junta Nakai. After 14 years at Goldman Sachs, Junta now leads financial services at Databricks, where he works with customers who are defining the future of finance. He is also part owner of Brooklyn Kura, the first sake brewery in New York. And with that, I will pass it off to Junta Nakai to share more about his career journey.
Junta Nakai (00:59):
Awesome. Thanks, Cassie. Good morning, good afternoon depending on where you are. I'm really excited to talk with you today. I'm actually wearing my Northwestern sweatshirt today, decided to dig this out of the closet. I'm going to talk a little bit about my time at Northwestern, my career, and most importantly, I want to talk about you, as you think about and prepare for the future and for your career. And before I begin, I want to tell you three things to keep in mind as you network and join more of these sessions. And these three things are, one, most advice is fatally flawed. Two is that success is fleeting. And three, follow your dreams is actually terrible advice in general. And you got to Northwestern today because you followed a pretty well-lit and defined path, a path that's been defined by variables with specific measures of success.
(02:03):
Think about grades, your SAT scores, your extracurriculars, volunteering, awards, et cetera. But one thing as you think about your careers is that there's no such thing as a pre-planned career or life. You could spend all your energy and time thinking about how you're going to get that job at Google or Goldman Sachs or McKinsey, but it doesn't end there. It begins there. That's just the starting line for your career. And there is no playbook for success in the real world. You have to constantly define success for yourself, what that means for yourself, and ultimately, find the right path for yourself to get you to the place you want to go to. Let me just talk a little bit about my time at Northwestern.
(02:57):
My time there was very different from a day to day perspective as you can imagine. There was no wifi, at least in the dorms or the apartments that I lived in. You had to plug in a cable to your computer to get internet access. No one texted each other. We all had cell phones. I'm only 38 years old. I'm not that old, but we had to either call each other or chat with each other on AOL IM in order to coordinate to go to places like the Deuce. I don't know if people still go to the Deuce. And finally, it was just around senior year, if I remember properly, in 2004 where some of us started to use this new thing called Facebook. And the world's come a long way since then. Those are superficial things, but the foundational elements about life at Northwestern is the same.
(03:47):
And if I can sum up everything that I learned in Evanston in one sentence, it would be to think beyond the confines of Sheridan Road. What I mean by that is to accept the limitations of your own knowledge or my own knowledge, but to not fear the challenge of augmenting that knowledge. That's about stepping out of your comfort zone, trying new things. A wise person once told me, You can't be good at anything unless you suck at it first. And I think that's the single biggest asset and mindset for you to keep in mind as you go forward. And I want to talk a little bit about my career. In 2004, I graduated Northwestern with mediocre grades as an international studies and economics major. And I dreamed of having a job on Wall Street. And in 2004, trading on Wall Street was the most coveted job that you could have.
(04:55):
It was fast paced and exciting and had the potential for superstar bonuses. And I remember I had to go through 44 interviews to get that job at Goldman Sachs. And I started in 2004 in July as an analyst in the equities division at Goldman Sachs. And I was at Goldman for almost 14 years. And what happened over that 14 years is probably going to be a common path for what you're going to see in your careers going forward as well. In 2004, when I joined Goldman, there was roughly 600 people trading stocks, equities on the trading floor at Goldman Sachs. When I left, there was two, so 600 to two. And it turns out that trading, especially liquid assets like equities, is a job better suited for machines. Trading stocks, executing trades, connecting buyers and sellers, turns out to be much more effectively done by computers than humans.
(06:03):
All these people, all these super talented people that went to all the best schools all of a sudden their jobs are gone. 600 to two, that means 598 people roughly had to go find something else to do. And I tell that story often because now I want you to think about how would you react if you were one of those people, one of those 598 people? They lived very comfortable lives. They were living fulfilling careers, exciting careers. And then over the course of a few years, everything changes. It gets disrupted. And today, I get probably dozens of resumes every month from people that I knew or I used to work with, that at one point another might have made millions of dollars a year that today have been jobless for several years. I think that the point of that is, as you proceed in your careers and think about your careers, the most important thing to keep in mind and to internalize is that extrapolating the past is very dangerous.
(07:15):
And with everything that's going on in the world today, that's probably more true than ever. And one of the things I thought about is to always keep in mind, what am I doing that's different? How am I going to get to the place where I'm going to go to? And if I have a view of where I need to be, I think the reality is it's much better to be a year early than a day late. And when I was sitting on that trading floor at Goldman and looking at everything being automated around me simultaneously, it was probably at the best point of my career in terms of my upward trajectory career wise, but also the amount of money I was making. But I thought to myself, Well, if this is where the world is going to be, I have to try to be a disruptor than be disrupted myself. And that's the path I took, and that's the path that got me to Databricks and to Brooklyn Kura, the Sake brewery that Cassie just mentioned.
(08:18):
For those of you that don't know what Databricks is, Databricks is one of the fastest growing startups in the world today. We're valued at 6.2 billion dollars. We're backed by Andreessen Horowitz and a few other big institutional investors. We are founded by the creators of something called Apache Spark. It's become the defacto big data and AI engine in the world today, so this is a technology that enables Uber to predict the fare, or Amazon to predict what you're going to buy, or Netflix to recommend you movies. All of that relies on big data and often are using a technology called Apache Spark. Databrick's a company founded by the creative Spark. It also took me on a different path. Simultaneously, when I was leaving Goldman, I became an investor and a co-founder of a Sake brewery in Brooklyn. I'm now part owner of the first and only Sake brewery in New York City. I actually have a bottle right here. There we go. It's called Brooklyn Kura.
(09:22):
And I could talk a little bit about that in a little bit. But those were actually decisions that I made that catered to the view of the world that I have, which is the world is changing very quickly. Depending on who you ask, there's a lot of course from the OECD and Cambridge University and all these places that say anywhere from 25 to 47% of all jobs could disappear in the next 25 years. I wanted to do two things. This is my barbell strategy. I had one of two things to do, which is I have to change and try to keep up with the technological advancements that are happening in the world today, or do something so manual that cannot easily be automated. And that's the two paths that took me to Databricks and also invest in Brooklyn Kura because Brooklyn Kura is very hard to automate and Databricks at the forefront of big data, AI and technology. And the one thing I know for certain about your career is that the future is uncertain.
(10:29):
And the defining characteristic of your career, or the defining word for your career is going to be the word change. I want you to really think about the world that you live in today, the world that you're going to live in tomorrow and about disruption. Your life and career does not follow a linear path. And when that disruption happens, either to your job or to your sector, or to the economy, what have you, how are you going to respond to that? How are you going to reset? How are you going to retool? And how are you going to reinvent yourself? We are going to have to reinvent ourselves multiple times in our career. We will not have the luxury to do one thing forever, unfortunately. And given with Covid 19 and the health crisis that we have now, disruption happens so quickly in the modern economy today, that success doesn't follow a pre-planned path, like I said. And if you don't keep evolving, it's very unlikely that law or banking or science or even medicine is going to provide you with a fulfilling career going forward.
(11:53):
A degree from Northwestern will only get you so far. And in the modern world, there's no golden ticket for success. And extrapolating the past is dangerous. The good news is the cost of curiosity today is lower than it's ever been. Meaning the information that you have access to, the people that you have access to is unparalleled versus any time in our history. If you keep that mindset of constantly evolving, constantly thinking about what's next and how I'm going to position myself to be successful in that and work towards that, there is a tremendous amount of resources that are available to you to get to those next steps. And the reality is, even though there's a lot of disruption and things happening in the world today, you live in an era that's unparalleled in prosperity and opportunity.
(12:54):
And I was just thinking about this. In roughly the year 2000, 20 years ago, when I entered Northwestern as a freshman, US economy, US GDP was about $10 trillion. The world's largest economy is $10 trillion. Fast forward to today, the US economy is roughly $20, 22 trillion. In the span of that time since I graduated from Northwestern, the world's largest economy doubled in size. It might not seem like it when you're in day to day interacting and living your life, but that's the type of growth that we're seeing in the world today. And that growth trajectory is going to likely continue. If you position yourself in the right places at the right time and will constantly keep in mind that ability to change and learn new things and challenge new things, and willing to be humiliated by sucking at something first, there is a tremendous amount of opportunity that I feel is still ahead of you. And so what does that mean from a practical perspective?
(13:53):
And this is something I talk to people all the time is I think the first thing that if I could go back in time and talk to myself when I was interviewing for a job or applying for a job or thinking about career change, is to ask these two questions to myself, which is, What is my story? And then, why me? What is my story and why me? And I'll tell you a little bit more about that. When I was trying to leave Goldman in 2017, I had been there for many years. I led a pretty big team. I had a significant business. I was under the impression I said, Hey, I work at Goldman Sachs. You know what? I'm just going to go do something else, and all these doors are going to open for me. But the reality is, that's not the case. Increasingly so, people care less about the qualifications that you've had academically or in the past and more about what are the skill sets that you're going to bring to my business or to me today that's going to help us succeed for the future?
(14:52):
That was a very good lesson for me in thinking about what is my story and why me? I encourage you to do this, spend an afternoon or a day with a piece of paper and write out your story and why you for that particular job. And approach it very systematically because as you go and talk to new people, talk to new potential employers, that's something that I wish I had internalized, so I could tell my story in a very concise way in order to appeal to them why I'm the best person for that job. And job market is super duper competitive. And that's practical one. Practical thing number two is when you get into an organization, always have in mind or architect out, where do I want to be in five years? The timeframe could be arbitrary, but what am I going to do to get there? And this is why I go back to the point I made earlier, is that most advice is fatally flawed.
(15:57):
If you ask anybody about advice, you'll inevitably get a set of confirmation bias outputs, meaning, it worked for me, so therefore it must work for you. This is what I did to be successful. But the reality is that is colored by such a unique set of individual circumstances that ultimately cannot be replicated or cannot be replicated, period. When you seek advice, you should seek it in such a way that you should only take the bits and pieces that resonate with you, because your individual circumstances is going to be so different, and you should never take it as gospel. And being able to leverage and talk to more people gets you to put the mosaic together to say, What does it actually mean for me? And how is it going to work for me? Going back to this, where am I going to be in five years?
(16:47):
What practical steps am I going to take to get there? Could be learning online or networking or trying new things, but that's something that you should always keep in the back of your mind because you have to be prepared when things change. And the third thing I would say is to always think about what is my plan when I get told no? You're going to get told no many, many times in your career, and I always talk about this, but one of the best quotes that I've seen, I love these quotes, is from Henry Ford. Henry Ford, as you may know, created the Ford Motor Company, car company. And he very famously said one thing. He said, "Whether you think you can or cannot, you're right." And that quote really resonates with me, because you are going to be told no many times in your life, and you accept that, and you accept the limitations of what you can do because of past experience of what you've done before, you are going to miss out on a tremendous amount of opportunity that could potentially be ahead of you.
(17:59):
It's all about that mindset. And going back to just my past few years. When I left the Goldman Sachs and tried to go to a startup, a lot of the places I interviewed said, Hey, you don't really have any experience in technology. You make too much money, blah, blah, blah. No. When I started a Sake brewery in 2016, 2017, they said, You can't make a sake brewery outside of Japan. That's crazy. You need thousands of years of history and Japanese people making it in order to make it. And many, many people told us no. When I was applying for a job at Databricks, Databricks, again, is a very technical company, a lot of people said, Well, you're not really technical enough. You don't have big data experience. You don't have an AI experience, so maybe not for you.
(18:51):
And each and every time you have to overcome that no and figure out how am I going to position myself and what are the skill sets and relevant experience that I can bring in order to turn that no into something that resembles more of an opportunity set. I was able to navigate that because again, I am aware of my knowledge gaps, but I've internalized that if you are too afraid to augment that knowledge gap and fill that knowledge gap and try new things, you're always going to be limited. People are going to always box you in a particular industry or particular job that you've done in the past, but we all know you're capable of much more than that. But in order to get that opportunity to do something that's much more than what you've done, you always have to approach it in a very systematic way to think about, what am I doing differently that's going to make me stand apart? And be able to pursue what I think is the better opportunity for me.
(19:57):
You could be in front of the biggest revolution in mankind, or the biggest opportunity set in mankind or something really, really big, but that's all you see. That's what it looks like when you stand there. When in reality, we tend to take comfort in what we know, and we tend to take comfort extrapolating linear trends and things that's happened in the past because they must happen in the future. But the reality is, if you think in that mindset, you'll miss these inflection points. And I think having a fulfilling career and a successful career is about preparing yourself to see that inflection, but more importantly, being able to be a part of that inflection if and when that happens.
Cassie Petoskey (20:39):
Thanks, Junta. That's great. Really helpful. I love that bit about thinking through the advice you're getting and really analyzing what works for you. I think that students in these situations get so much advice from all these different angles, from peers, from the staff at the university, et cetera, so I think that's really helpful. This has been a great session. We really appreciate you taking the time, and thank you to all of our students for attending. I will circle back with you all with some resources later today. Everyone have a great rest of your day.
Junta Nakai (21:08):
Thank you. Yeah, sorry. I appreciate that, and I appreciate everybody joining. I think if I could leave you one thing, is that going back to what I said about that quote. Whether you think you can or cannot, you are right. You are in the driver's seat. The world is changing, but you are very fortunate because you're equipped with a Northwestern education. You're equipped with people around you that are going to do interesting things. You're equipped with an ability to learn new things and access information in ways that are completely not been able to do before. Maximize the time you have in school. And secondly, just keep believing yourself because you can reinvent yourself. You can. And you're going to have to. There's no better time than the present to start thinking about that and preparing for that.
Cassie Petoskey (21:54):
For more information about Weinberg College and this podcast, please visit weinberg.northwestern.edu and search for Waldron. Also, we'd love to hear your feedback. Please email us at waldron@northwestern.edu with your thoughts on today's program. Thank you again for tuning into this episode of Weinberg in the World.