- "Leveling the playing field" - Aadil Mamujee (Business Edition) Terry McMullen 53:34
Aadil is a friend from Harvard Business School who I’ve always admired, but at the same time always wondered what made him tick. He’s lived an interesting life, being born and raised in Mombasa, Kenya, and then spending most of his adult life studying and working in Europe, America, and Africa. He’s been successful as an entrepreneur, a product developer, and maybe most notably as an angel investor focused mainly on emerging markets (with lots of investment back into Africa).
I admired Aadil because I remember in business school he seemed to have a very worldly and sophisticated view of life. It was almost as if he seemed to understand something that most others had not (or at least I hadn’t). Life always seems so complex to me and at times almost impossible to figure out how if we are supposed to be good, successful, happy, humble, fulfilled, or whatever else? Aadil seemed to encompass all of these things in almost an effortless way. Those are the exact types of people I want to dig into and question to understand what is underneath it all. Does he really have it all figured out? How does he view life and his reason for being here?
Aadil started off the show talking about his work in angel investing and how in some ways, it started back when he was 6 years old riding in the car with his dad in Mombasa. He remembers a moment when a young, seemingly homeless, child came to their car window asking for help. He wasn’t intellectually sophisticated enough to make sense of why this boy, who was the same age as him, was living on the street while he was riding in comfortable in a car; but he did feel a deep sense of unfairness.
Ultimately it led to his value of “leveling the playing field”, trying to create products and invest in organizations that help prevent kids like that boy, who didn’t choose to live on the street (just like Aadil didn’t choose to live in a well off family), from being put in that unfair position. He takes a very pragmatic approach to life, almost like a life hacker (meant as a compliment), trying to bridge his skills, desires, and morals to make the most impact, while living the most enjoyable life he can. Then we did the fun philosophical work of questioning it all, trying to determine if this approach to life made Aadil a good person, a wise person, or a selfish person (or maybe all 3?).
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