39 | Ethan Trang – Co-Founder of DoryAI, Host of the Major Talks Podcast

Hey, quick note before we get to the Q&A – I’ve launched a podcast!

Every Q&A (including this one) now comes with a podcast episode, where you can watch and listen to the guest yourself.

If you want to skip straight to the podcast, here’s the link: https://linktr.ee/ex.vicarious

Otherwise, back to the Q&A! (est. 5 minute read).

97% of “success shortcuts” burn you in the long run.

Ethan Trang has found the 3% that don’t.

During high school in Vietnam, he was eager to attend uni overseas.

So he created the Major Talks Podcast and interviewed Ivy League students. As his passion for interviewing grew, his guests diversified accordingly – from Google interns to retired VPs of Silicon Valley startups.

That was…

Shortcut 1 – discover your dream career and how to get there, in months rather than years.

Next, Ethan wanted to learn coding. But he didn’t want to pay thousands for a course.

So he applied to work at a local coding school, and landed a teaching assistant role. This involved learning and preparing the lecture content before each class – then teaching the class right afterwards.

With teachers and students that were dependent on him, what did Ethan gain?

Shortcut 2 – master a skill quicker than everyone else, and get paid for it too.

Shortly afterwards, “AI” became everyone’s favourite word.

But while most people were talking about it, Ethan was building it. Specifically, building DoryAI w/ Pete Tran, an AI platform that creates flashcards, quizzes and notes from anything in just minutes.

But how did this compare to software developers with 20+ years experience?

Well in the Build Club’s accelerator, Ethan and Pete competed against some of the best engineers and founders in Australia. And they won.

Along with 3 other teams, they scored a trip to San Francisco to meet founders and VCs at the forefront of AI. In other words, Ethan found…

Shortcut 3 – Benefit from a worldwide boom by contributing to it yourself.

The link between each shortcut is that they were all built off hard work. Smart work, but hard nonetheless.

I was lucky enough to explore all of these experiences (+ much more) with Ethan in the latest episode of ex-vicarious by Braith.

Want access to success shortcuts that won’t burn you in the long run?

Listen to the episode in the comments, or read the short Q&A below.

Q&A

What’s a dream you had as a child that has stayed with you to this day?

“ I’ve always wanted to be, okay, this is going to sound so dumb, but I’ve always wanted to make this YouTube series where I spend a month learning how to be a pilot or waiter or chef.

I’ve always wanted to experience a lot more out of this short time frame that we call life. So yeah, I think for me, it’s just, I wanted to create,  I wanted to just experience a lot of different things. I didn’t mention this before, but like at the same time I was applying to that tech internship, I was also applying to be a nurse at a local hospital, which is really divergent from what I’m doing right now.

Maybe I might not be able to do it all. But it’s the whole idea of, I want to know how  everyone in this world kind of experiences life. Although I’m very dedicated to the path that I’m taking, because I think being focused on one vertical is the greatest way for me to make an impact as well.

But, along the way, I still want to be able to experience more than what I traditionally would. So, I have dreams of going to Alaska and South Africa, which my parents would never approve of, but maybe eventually I’ll get to that point.”

What compelled you to actually start the Major Talks podcast and what sort of things have you learned along the way?

“ Yeah, in terms of getting started, definitely for selfish reasons. So, I was in high school and I wanted to find out – what are these top college students doing to get into Harvard, MIT,   because at the time I was interested in studying in the US. So I was thinking, you get a podcast, you use the podcast as an excuse to talk to them for two hours. And I knew that people resonated with what I wanted to know at the time because it would be helpful to peers among my age.

So, it was like this element of community service. I’m sharing the knowledge of top college students. But I would say about personal interest, it was just me figuring out what they did to be able to get into these really high, top colleges.

And honestly, it’s not really a bad thing. I think if you can tie your community interest with your personal interest and use that as a vehicle to progress yourself, that’s great. It’s a win for everyone, right? It’s a win for you. It’s a win for the guests. It’s a win for the people who listen to the podcast.

What were early barriers to pursuing your biggest dreams, internal or external? What mindsets, habits and strategies helped you overcome them?

“I wouldn’t call them like barriers per se. I would just say that the way that I think and the actions that I do is very much determined by the environment. And I think everyone is, in some way, a product of their environment.

So in terms of the way that I approached my studies and my work, before I went to Sydney,  it was very much dictated by the friend circle that I was in. That’s why they say you’re the average of the four people you surround yourself with.  When you’re young and you study hard, you get validation from your parents and your relatives. It trains your mind to want to do that even more, even though I didn’t understand it at the time. Why our parents say those things is also because it’s how they’ve experienced their life. So, my mom’s worried about me living alone and if I can take care of myself.

But in terms of being able to push the barriers or push my potential, it was definitely coming to Sydney and putting myself into a lot of different projects. So, whether that was joining the project with Pete, or joining the community at the Build Club. All those things have been able to open my eyes more, and I hope that the trip to America will do the same for me. Being able to expose yourself to a lot more increases your surface area of luck. And I think it’s something that Andreessen Horowitz does mention, how most successful people have relied on luck, like Bill Gates was the only student who had access to a computer at the time.

But I think you can’t make a perfect plan for your life. You have to rely on luck for you to have this conversation at the right time and the right place with the right person. So, for me, it’s about trying to create the most opportunity for myself and aiming generally where I want to be, and with the people that I want to meet and the things I want to do.”

If you could capture the attention of every single person for thirty seconds, what would you say?

When I wanted to do that coding course in Grade 10, it was just as simple as taking action. I had no idea it would lead me to business internships, tech internships, and being able to build my own startup. So forget about planning. I’ve always thought if you just take action in the right places and just make the right bets sometimes it’s just going to work out for you.

It will look different for everyone and the results will look different, but if you just make things move, you’ll create ripple effects and reactions that will come back to you.

So that would be my message – just take action.”

Thanks for reading my Q&A with Ethan.

You can connect with Ethan here:

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethan-trang/

• https://www.instagram.com/ethantrangg/

• https://www.tiktok.com/@ethantrangg

You can check out DoryAI and NemoAI here:

• https://www.getdoryai.com/

• https://www.trynemo.com/

But if you want to experience the full podcast with Ethan, listen here:

• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3E4sq9VTwOi1ulCCbnbWUW?si=f7656f2f627340b3

• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8j86a7gqvs

And as always,

Keep dreamaking.