Dan Yoo, Former Vice President of Business & Data @ Coinbase
Dan is the Former VP of Business and Data at Coinbase. Prior to Coinbase, Dan created LinkedIn’s Business Operations function and popularized “BizOps” across the Valley. He also served as the COO of NerdWallet and founded and successfully exited ReliaQuote, an online insurance brokerage.
In this episode, we spoke to Dan about the following:
His recent decision to leave Coinbase after the company announced its apolitical stance
His tiger parenting strategy and why he thinks kids growing up today may have it tougher than he did
The role Asian Americans play in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion conversations in the workplace
and much more!
We know you’ll enjoy this episode as much as we did recording it. You can listen to him below, Spotify, or wherever else you get to your podcasts. As usual, we’ve gone through the episode and pulled out the quotes that we found the most meaningful, and shared them below. We hope you enjoy it.
With gratitude,
Angie & Jay
On the need to check boxes
“The need to check boxes is very much ingrained in us. I think there’s a lot of positives of that mentality, but there are also a lot of negatives. We want our children to have a growth mindset and we want them to enjoy life. But I think in today’s environment there’s a certain increased intensity to checking those boxes. Some of the unintended consequences are that kids [in this generation] will not be able to focus on things like creativity, having an innovative mindset, or just having the joy of learning.
These are the things I struggle with sometimes. I do want [my children] to understand what the “grind” is, you know? I mentioned I played the violin, which I was terrible at, but I grinded away at it and learned a lot of lessons. I learned you could still grind at something you’re not great at and achieve some level of achievement.
At the same time this can be overdone. We’re seeing the negative impacts of people just going through and checking boxes - even in adult life. They go from achievement to achievement. I’m sure you two [Angie & Jay] have achieved tons of great things already, yet you’re thinking about the next box, the MBA, or the next step at work, etc.
I think that there are certain times where you want to check boxes to build your brand. But at some point in time you have to think a bit more outside of the box. This is where you’ll be able to take risks and be in innovative environments where you’re truly testing yourself.”
Why only “checking boxes” may limit your career opportunities
“Well when you see what is happening in the crypto space, no one cares what degree you have. They want to know if you’ve created something useful in the world. There are so many different areas where if you just wanted to explore and you have curiosity, you could find a ton of opportunities.
I think [people will perceive] the boxes you check more as correlation than causation of success. If you have a ton of smart people, they’re always going to go through institutions like Harvard or Stanford, work at Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, etc. But ultimately there’s so much opportunity to create and build things where you don’t need a formalized, check boxing, curriculum in order to achieve that. I think that is where the world is going. It’s going to happen slowly. I mean, these institutions have great brands and they often use that correlation to imply causation. But I think as data-driven folks, we understand that’s not always the case, and people should be judged on the merit of their own creativity and intelligence, rather than the school they went to or the company they worked at.”
The role Asian Americans have in civic life
“Asians are a significant part of the tech workforce. If you look at the data it’s a plurality, but it’s almost a majority. If you look at Google’s workforce as an example, 48% of their workforce is Asian, and that’s up from 43% the prior year. If it’s a broad group like that, there’s going to be diverse viewpoints and there’s not going to be one monolithic perspective; which is great.
Although with reference to what we were speaking about earlier, the model minority myth can be used as a wedge against black individuals. It’s a simplistic mentality of saying, well these Asian Americans have come over here and have worked hard, and that is why their outcomes are different. This idea reminded me of an impactful conversation with my former co-worker John Russ. I used to work with him at Nerdwallet and at Coinbase.
John is a black man and grew up half a mile away from where George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis. John wrote a really interesting piece on Medium titled “Dear (well-intentioned) White People: A quick primer on branding and blackness in America”. John’s a marketer and he thinks about brand a lot, and what he wrote in the piece was that brand is a cognitive shortcut. These shortcuts are needed because we are faced with thousands of decisions every day. Brand [therefore] helps us make decisions. The brand of blackness is very different from that of the brand of Asians. I’ve been reflecting on this concept, and how being on different ends of the spectrum impacts other’s experiences, particularly in tech.
I think as a leader, and Asians as a collective, we should recognize these differences and understand the role we want to play with the fact patterns emerging around this. I do think that there is a level of responsibility we have to play in this understanding. We have to ask ourselves [as Asian-Americans] what our role is to drive equality and equity in these conversations - I think that is very important.”
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