Matt Wong who is a member of our research team was on Ali Velshi’s financial news show on Al Jazeera TV last Friday. I don’t think Matt expected to be on TV 1.5 years after graduating. I can’t say I would have expected it either, but when they called, I was busy with client meetings, and it felt like Matt was ready.  And so I asked him if he’d like to do it, and after some thought, he said he was.

I’d recommend you watch him as he does a great job. Here’s the link.  They chunk it up minute by minute for some reason so start watching at 2:48.

But Matt’s interview on TV kind of reinforced for me the speed at which you can develop in an emerging company if you’re ambitious and work smart and hard. I still remember my year at the now infamous Kozmo. It was a crazy frantic year but in terms of knowledge, it was all about doing. Everything from investor meetings to product merchandising to hiring to setting up a warehouse was on my plate.

It was like learning in dog years.  In that one year at Kozmo, I prob learned as many practical things as I did in my following 7 years at American Express.  Of course, certain skills I learned at AmEx, I might not have ever learned at a smaller firm so there were benefits to both, but the shear pace of development I had at Kozmo was orders of magnitude more than any other time in my life.