In the summer between my freshman and sophomore year, my grandfather got me a job at a local messenger company working on Wall Street. I was lucky enough to have been in the business during a stock market boom but just before the fax machine appeared on the scene, let alone email and the Internet. As a result, the messenger business was booming.

That doesn't mean we should be doing it, though. We should always be carving back those things that are comfortable and institutionalized but not necessarily impactful.

The work I'm doing today gets me one step closer to the work I should be doing tomorrow. And that the way I learn this is by trying, failing, networking and experimenting. I'll stop doing that when I'm dead.

I grew up in a modern business environment and did not experience the kind of prejudice that my mother and grandfather experienced.

Harkening back to a story about my grandfather, I was lucky to attend a great high school in New York, Bronx High School of Science, which has produced more Nobel prize winners than any other high school in America.

I know a lot of great success stories of those who were excellent problem-solvers because they had found a need that they could fill well. As a result, they built organizations around them and those organizations had belief systems that could be described as a form of leadership.

During that time, I began writing and designing the propaganda that we distributed to the students who we were trying to convince to join us.