Delos Chang

I am a Dartmouth student and entrepreneur who believes in connecting the world together through shared experiences.

Hello Fall Quarter

 Posted by Delos Chang at 9:19 am  No Responses »
Sep 112012
 

Every Fall at Dartmouth, I’m reminded just how old I am.  As I walk around the beautiful Green, I hear the classic flair, loud music blasting and seemingly clueless ’16s wandering around!  And that’s when it hits me – I’m a junior!  In a way, Fall symbolizes a period of renewal.  It’s an exciting time to be sure — everybody coming back to campus after a lengthy break (except for the sophomores over summer!) and life at the Big Green continues.

Not for me, though. For me, Fall 2012 is something new, something exciting. With three other guys and a vision, I am finally taking the Fall off to launch a start-up with $16,500 in capital raised from the Dartmouth Entrepreneurship Competition (if you’re curious, see here http://thedartmouth.com/2012/04/06/news/des). With an early prototype engineered and our value hypotheses validated, we’re currently pursuing different techniques to tighten the validated learning feedback loop between customers and our start-up. Ultimately, whether the start-up succeeds or fails by conventional metrics of valuation is personally irrelevant. In my mind, success stems from personal growth and evolution. What really finalized this decision to pursue the start-up path was the realization that as someone with a vision and capital, I really had nothing to lose and everything to gain!

So Fall still, to me, is a renewal in some senses.

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Summer almost Over?

 Posted by Delos Chang at 5:07 pm  No Responses »
Aug 162012
 

I promise I’ll keep this one short and sweet.

With the summer quarter almost over and finals beyond the horizon, the pace of Dartmouth life has been swift with great impact. Looking back, it surprises me just how much the classes here have engaged and taught me how to look at life from another perspective. Take astronomy: we learned everything from basic physics to supernovae to the big questions like: How big is the universe and how did life begin?

These big questions always throw me in for a loop. I take a step back and remember how amazing life is and how small the human race’s timeline is relative to the astronomical age of the universe. It seems to me that even if we had an iota of an impact on the universe, compared to the vast expanses of the galaxy and beyond, we still remain infinitesimally small. These humbling thoughts are both exciting and frightening to me at the same time. They further propel my belief that given the grand scheme of the universe, we should aim to make a dent on the universe in our lives.

Beyond this philosophizing about the universe, it’s interesting to witness just how much what you study influences your ideas and thought patterns. When I took accounting last winter quarter, I thought in a very rigorous, systematic way, always analyzing the smallest details and making sure each step of it was correct. When I took computer science, I sought to implement the optimized teachings and algorithms into my own life. And as an econ major, I realize that knowledge has increasing returns to scale.

 

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Coffee with a Dartmouth Alum

 Posted by Delos Chang at 3:00 pm  No Responses »
Jul 312012
 

It’s always fascinating to take a breather and look back at just how far we’ve come.  Even more compelling though is to see how much we’ve learned. Indeed, time flies. Looking forward, I believe there’s plenty of growth and development ahead of us. And personally, I believe it’s valuable to dig deep into the minds of those who have already ventured the beaten path for gems of insight. Luckily, Dartmouth’s tightly knit alumni community is perfect for this.

To that end, a week ago, I began reaching out to the Dartmouth Entrepreneurial Network, asking for advice from Dartmouth entrepreneurs more experienced than me. Most were eager to help out our startup, Memeja. After a few phone calls and email exchanges, I met up with Dartmouth alumni, Nader Aknoukh, who graciously agreed to meet up at Dirt Cowboy for a cup of coffee. My objective was to dig his brain as much as possible. Questions  like “What do you wish you had known while founding your startup” and “What was your biggest mistake” yielded insightful answers about the nature of venture capital and communicating with the market. We walk away thirty minutes later with pearls of wisdom rolling around in my mind.

What I’ve realized is that the Dartmouth alums really want to help you — especially when it’s obvious that you’re funneling tons of time and effort into something you love. They’re friendly, responsive, extend invaluable insights and love to reminisce about their adventures in the startup world. And hey, I don’t mind hearing what Dartmouth was like way back when, either! (apparently there were many more public computer terminals back then).

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A Day in Sophomore Summer

 Posted by Delos Chang at 4:16 pm  No Responses »
Jul 262012
 

I’m sure you’ve heard it before but I’ll say it again: sophomore summer is flying. So many things happening all at once, it’s all so surreal.

First, I wake up to an invigorating all-marching band playing on the Green. I peek past my window curtains and see everything from a communal to a caterpillar-costumed puppeter. Ah yes, glorious Dartmouth life: people are celebrating HOPfest, a two-day festival of the Hopkin Center’s 50th anniversary. The grass on the lovely Dartmouth Green has never looked greener.

Because today I feel more alive than I’ve ever been. With all the ’14s on campus, the spirit of Dartmouth’s tight-knit community appears stronger to me than ever. On top of that, I love the Dartmouth classes I’m taking, in particular Econ 20: Econometrics. It is a class that so brilliantly deconstructs indeterminate systems into quantifiable ones (think economics and statistics marrying each other in a wonderful thought-provoking union). The great ambiance in the background doesn’t hurt, either.

What a great day — and it still hasn’t hit me that we’re already halfway through sophomore summer! Ready to go, I notice that this week is summer recruiting interviews week! Every summer, top firms come to Dartmouth to recruit students for the summer. And my spidey senses are tingling…

Today, I’m coordinating key developments in my startup, Memeja, which won $16,500 in seed funding from the Dartmouth Entrepreneurship competition. Key decisions today: my team and I are building rough prototypes to release to test the market and iterate upon. It’s interesting to witness first-hand just how much a Dartmouth education has helped me. Econ 26, the financial institutions and markets class (with awesome Professor Kohn), has prepared me to understand venture deals and capital markets more thoroughly. Social psychology taught me how to be a decisive team player. And astronomy, of course, reminds me how insignificant we all are in the grand scheme of things (a very humbling insight).

Ah, yes, sophomore summer, how I love thee. I’m trying my best to savor the experience moment-by-moment and remind myself just how lucky we all are to be on campus!

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